On Hot Capital Scene, Who Still Sizzles? Nancy Reagan

Trying out her new persona as author, former First Lady Nancy Reagan returned to the capital over the weekend for the first time since her husband left office in January and promptly proved to be the town’s hottest celebrity ticket.

Book sellers and book publishers, who normally are relatively star-jaded, flocked to a reception at the Library of Congress Saturday night, hoping for a glimpse of Mrs. Reagan, or better yet, one of her notoriously genteel handshakes.

A spokesman for Random House, which in October will publish Mrs. Reagan’s memoir, “My Turn,” said 615 people sent replies for this most-coveted party of the four-day, Washington convention of the American Booksellers Assn.

But closer to 900 people queued up for a receiving line that snaked around the Library’s majestic mezzanine level. A caterer, frantically trying to keep tables filled with grilled eggplant and tiny rolls stuffed with Peking duck, said the crowd was eating as if it were twice that number.

While Mrs. Reagan dutifully pumped hands and exchanged cheery small talk, her co-author, Bill Novak, described the travails of collaborating with a “very, very private lady” like Nancy Reagan.

“Nancy Reagan is a person who is used to being very private, and who worked very hard to be as candid as possible in this book,” said Novak, who has been the co-author of books with former House Speaker Tip O’Neill, Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca and Mayflower Madam Sydney Biddle Barrows, among others. Novak refused to compare Mrs. Reagan with any of his earlier subjects, demurring: “Each one is difficult in their own way. Each person is their own universe.”

Nor would he discuss his own political leanings or his views about the Reagans before he began this project.

When Random House Publisher Joni Evans first telephoned to propose that he take on the book, Novak said he checked with his wife, Linda, to see how she felt about it. “She didn’t miss a beat,” Novak said. “She said, ‘Just say yes.’ ”

Novak said that “roughly a year ago,” he began meeting regularly with Mrs. Reagan, traveling to the White House as often as once a week to conduct interviews with her and the President. But he added that much of the material came also from the extensive diaries Mrs. Reagan kept during her years in the White House.

The book contains no “overriding shocker,” Novak said, “so much as intimate details of what it is like to live in the White House.”

Nevertheless, he promised that “My Turn” would be “a very emotionally rich book” with surprises about Mrs. Reagan’s White House tenure, as well as her relationships with her family and others in her immediate circle.

Generous First-Run Printing

For Random House, the surprises are expected to translate into big sales. The publisher has scheduled a 350,000-copy first-run printing of “My Turn,” a figure considered generous by industry standards.

But Mrs. Reagan’s maiden literary effort was only one of a score of “highly commercial” fall titles that some publishing officials felt accounted for the record crowd at this year’s ABA convention.

Her fellow big-draw authors for the fall included names such as Erma Bombeck, Stephen King and Danielle Steel--as well as former Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, and Robert H. Bork, Supreme Court justice manque.

“Well, why else would you go into the Administration except to sell the rights when you get out?” columnist Art Buchwald wondered.

In the opinion of longtime Washington-watcher Buchwald, “The Administration is only a step toward getting a good literary agent.”

With his own book, “Whose Rose Garden Is It, Anyway?” scheduled for fall publication by Putnam’s, Buchwald playfully lauded the “packaging” of Ronald Reagan, now at work on two books about his Presidency.

“Do you realize what a fortune Abe Lincoln could have made?” Buchwald asked. “Or Ulysses S. Grant?” Grant, known for his fondness for the grape, “could have gone to the Betty Ford Clinic,” Buchwald suggested, “and then written about it.”

Jim Wright’s Misfortune

As for the misfortunes of another recent Washington author, outgoing House Speaker Jim Wright, Buchwald offered an easy explanation for the troubles that forced Wright to step down from his job. Wright only had problems, Buchwald said, “because he was selling wholesale.”

At the book sessions, a crowd the size of many small cities roamed a Convention Center designed to accommodate, at best, a tiny village. When the air conditioning gave out midway through the first day, the atmosphere turned particularly oppressive. Washington’s infamous summer came early this year, and the sticky, 90-plus-degree temperatures outside seemed rapidly to find their way inside.

“This is just like the subway,” said Dan Weiler, a media consultant in New York. “Only the subway is cooler.”

Initial estimates placed the count at 20,000 book sellers, publishers, authors, literary agents and others connected with the industry.

But working her way through a bruising mob that bore eerie resemblance to a fire sale at Tiffany’s, one ABA spokeswoman said the weekend’s daily attendance was probably closer to 25,000.

For the first time at an ABA convention, every one had to work his way through a metal detector to enter the meeting area. The heightened security was a response to death threats by Muslim fundamentalists against Salman Rushdie, author of the best-selling “Satanic Verses,” and anyone associated with its publication or sale.

‘So Many Lunatics Out There’

“I don’t mind the security one bit. I really like it,” said Lori Ames, working at the William Morrow booth, just across the aisle from the Penguin display space. Penguin, the paperback imprint of Viking, Rushdie’s hardcover publisher, was among those targeted for threats when the book first came out. “You just never know,” Ames said. “There are so many lunatics out there.”

Stuart Applebaum, Bantam vice president, characteristically found a humorous side to the increased security.

“Usually, you just have book sellers sniffing out what the bombs will be,” Applebaum deadpanned. “This time, you have book sellers and trained guard dogs.”

Conspicuously absent at this year’s ABA were the two-person dogs and dancing bears that have clogged the halls at earlier conventions. Handouts were abandoned, as always, but hype was at a decided minimum. Only one adult in a gorilla suit was spotted, and even Spiderman was unaccompanied by any of his other comic book cohorts.

“It just seemed that people were rushing around with their noses to the grindstone,” said Martha Jackson of A Clean, Well Lighted Place for Books in Larkspur, Calif. “I think people are working hard.”

500 Uninvited Guests

But after hours, they also were partying hard. Book people may like to read, but it also turns out that they love to have fun. Almost 500 uninvited guests showed up at Houghton Mifflin’s party at the Phillips Collection, for example, making vice president Marly Russoff feel “like I was conducting the invasion at Normandy” as she warded off crashers at the staid old museum. It looked “like a New York nightclub on Friday night, everyone lined up and getting in two by two,” Russoff said.

But Russoff, too, took the enthusiastic masses as a positive sign for the publishing industry. “Business is good, for one thing,” she said. “Bookstores are selling books. Sales are up, and we’re publishing more aggressively than ever.”

Even as they pushed their way through the throng to inspect displays of new books or products, convention goers seemed eager and upbeat, Russoff observed, adding: “There’s a great sense of optimism this year.”