North Doesn’t Look Like a Hero at L.A. Bookstores

When Dutton’s Brentwood Book Store received “Taking the Stand,” the first book to be published on Oliver North, the reprint of the Marine lieutenant colonel’s congressional testimony on the Iran- contra affair sold not a copy for 10 days, according to owner Doug Dutton.

By contrast, the book displayed next to it, Brandeis University ethicist Sissela Bok’s “Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life,” sold out, Dutton said.

Across town, readers had bought only 10 of the Alhambra Book Store’s 100 copies of the North book by Friday, but showed more interest in a comic “Ollie for President” poster in which the former National Security Council aide wears a leather jacket and bandoleer and shoots a machine gun that spews shredded paper.

Rushed Into Print

After North’s earnest Iran-contra testimony produced an outpouring of public sympathy and suggestions that he run for President, Simon & Schuster rushed into print 775,000 copies of North’s version of the Iran-contra events, making the thick paperback available in bookstores as early as July 18, four days after North concluded his testimony.

But an informal survey late last week of bookstores, supermarkets and news-stands in Los Angeles revealed that the $5.95 Simon & Schuster paperback is enjoying less-than-blockbuster success here--despite a fetching cover picture of the solemn North in his Marine uniform.

Although sales nationwide appear to be stronger, the book’s early soft showing in Los Angeles may give pause to publishers planning other books on North, including “Defiant Patriot: The Life and Exploits of Lieutenant Oliver L. North” by Peter Meyer, which St. Martin’s Press plans to release in September, and “ ‘Guts and Glory’: The Oliver North Story” by Benjamin C. Bradlee Jr., which Donald I. Fine hopes to publish this fall.

‘Not Selling Too Well’

Simon & Schuster said that 775,000 is much larger than the usual first paperback printing of 200,000. But several local book outlets reported that the book is doing poorer than the initial sales of the Tower Commission report, which appeared in March, and which criticized White House management practices during the Iran-contra effort.

At the B. Dalton Bookseller store at Farmers Market in the Fairfax area, assistant manager Iva Parrish said “Taking the Stand” was “not selling too well here.” She said the store received 100 copies when the book was issued three weeks ago and probably had 80-85 left. Mike Nagel, manager of Doubleday BookShops in downtown Los Angeles, recited similar figures.

Sheldon McArthur, manager of B. Dalton Bookseller in Hollywood, said the book “is selling but not near the level that everyone anticipated. We had lots of requests. . . . We got it in with huge quantities stacked up and it sold about half the rate that the Tower Commission report sold.”

Dick Haust of ARA Services, which distributes the book to supermarkets, convenience stores, newsstands and 17 locations at Los Angeles International Airport, said that “for the first few days it sold very briskly and then it dropped off very fast. It’s still out there, but the reorder activity is very minimal.”

Meanwhile, the book’s publisher and sales offices of national book distributors offered evidence that the book is doing better nationally.

Roger Bilheimer, associate director of publicity for the Pocket Books division of Simon & Schuster, said the book reached No. 1 on the New York Times paperback best-seller list its first week and would be No. 2 this week.

Bilheimer said no national sales figures were available but “it’s doing great. The only measure we can have is on the feedback we’ve been getting. . . . The stores we’ve polled here and there around the country, the sales have been all quite positive.”

Dave Harpur of the Ingram Book Company in Nashville, Tenn., who called his company the largest book distributor in the United States, said “the book is doing very well.”

Harpur said that in its first week the North book was his company’s No. 1 selling paperback, with about 7,500 copies sold nationally. He said the following week it dropped to No. 7 and “I would anticipate that this week it would probably be around 10 or 12.”

He called 7,500 sales a good week, comparing it to a Sidney Sheldon novel that reaches about 10,000. “The big difference is that we see this as a short-term seller.” By contrast, he said, “You would see those kind of numbers on a Sidney Sheldon book for months and it would back-list for years.”

Meanwhile, Robert Haft, founder and president of Crown Books Corp., said that the book was doing well in his nationwide chain of discount bookstores. “It would be one of the top books of the early summer and would be considered in the best-seller category,” he said.

Speaking by telephone from company headquarters in Maryland, Haft said that although the “Tower Commission did more initially, this is doing more over a longer period.

“The joke in the book industry is whether this current book is fiction or nonfiction,” he said. “We’ve taken the nonpartisan approach.”