The Buzz From ‘Disneyland for Booksellers’

Other than their matching ponytails (his was considerably shorter), what Stephen King and Gloria Steinem had in common as they met the press this weekend was their roles as featured stars in the annual gathering here of the American Booksellers Assn.

This year’s convention, the organization’s largest, drew 30,000 booksellers, publishers, publicists, authors, aspiring authors and others connected with the printed word to the Jacob Javits Center. Scouts for talk-show hosts and TV producers scoured the convention floor for potential guests. Tables exploded with handouts and food samples. From time to time, a life-size version of Clifford the Big Red Dog, or L. Ron Hubbard’s costumed “Dianetics” characters wandered by. The effect was often surreal.

Even King, a veteran of best-selling authordom and its incumbent vagaries, was impressed by the scope of the meeting and labyrinthine display space. He called it “Disneyland for booksellers.”

The news that emerged at the ABA, as the convention is known, ranged from a renewed focus on so-called “basic” books--those limited in size and appeal--to the continued reliance of the industry on blockbusters to carry the banner in troubled economic times.

Bookselling is a $4-billion-a-year industry in this country, but when times are tough, many consumers see books as options to be trimmed from their budgets. The four-day ABA, which concluded Tuesday with its parade of big-name authors, its nonstop parties and its ear-splitting buzz about what’s hot for fall, is a kind of yearly antidote to any potential publishing doldrums.

(The hottest rumor this year was that Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf was in town, meeting with executives who are bidding for the right to publish his autobiography. Industry sources report that the bidding started at $3 million and may climb as high as $5 million. To some, that’s a big risk for a book that will not appear for two years and may have trouble earning back the advance for its publisher.)

“The ABA is a little bit like Lourdes,” said Stuart Applebaum, vice president of publicity for Bantam, Doubleday, Dell. “It’s like a miracle cure. No matter how shabby or disappointing one’s business has been in the spring, you feel you are going to be cured because there are so many things coming out.”

Along with King and Steinem, both of whom have big books scheduled for fall, authors who are expected to occupy berths on the bestseller list include Tom Clancy (“The Sum of All Fears,” Putnam); Ken Follett (“Night Over Water,” Morrow); Amy Tan (“The Kitchen God’s Wife,” Putnam); Katharine Hepburn (“Me,” Knopf); Norman Mailer (“Harlot’s Ghost,” Random House), and Shirley MacLaine (“Dance While You Can,” Bantam).

After 16 years, Robert M. Pirsig has written “Lila” (Bantam), a much-awaited sequel to “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” Another eagerly anticipated fall sequel is “Scarlett” (Warner), Alexandra Ripley’s novel that picks up where “Gone With the Wind” left off.

These books generated very large advances and in turn are expected to bring in very big audiences. But as vital as this equation remains in publishing, many ABA attendees saw a new emphasis on books that come with less fanfare and deal in subjects that, on the surface, may seem downright unglamorous.

Five years ago, Esther Margolis, publisher of New Market Books, said she was unable to persuade booksellers to carry a title about caring for disabled children. Today, Margolis said, some bookstores have entire sections devoted to such topics.

“People want very practical things,” said JoAnn Deck of 10 Speed Press/Celestial Arts in Berkeley. “This year I think that’s even more important. People have less money to spend. They want their books to be practical, really helpful.”

Guarded after a year of increased consumer wariness, booksellers “want to make sure that the coverage that they have in stores is profitable,” said Margolis. “The idea is that instead of just looking for the quick kill, they’re paying more attention to the customer.”

The fact that the publishing industry has room--and even welcoming arms--for such a variety of books shows its renewed strength and diversity, some ABA observers said.

Bill Porter, manager of the University of Wisconsin-Stout bookstore in Menomonie admitted that he was “a little bit shellshocked out there on the floor,” but said he had nonetheless observed “a lot more interest this year in back-list and mid-list books,” meaning titles that are unlikely to top bestseller lists. Porter also said that many new books seemed geared toward “helping with smaller things. They’re not going to solve the global crisis, but are helping with things on a smaller level.”

On the convention floor, there was far less frivolity than in past years, far fewer gimmicks, such as performing bears or dancing waters. At ABA, Applebaum said, surveying the scurry and flurry around him, one constant rule in any state of the economy is that “for all the prognosticating about what is going to be the sure-fire runaway, somewhere out there on this floor (the bestseller) exists, but only its publisher knows for sure.”

But even if they don’t know for sure, many publishers tried their hardest to position their authors’ books as potential bestsellers. Publicity and promotion are “the fuel that makes the publishing engine,” Applebaum said. According to that theory, the ABA is a kind of pumping station.

An author of the caliber of Gloria Steinem, whose “Revolution From Within” (Little, Brown) will be published this fall, might seem out of place hyping her literary wares. But, Steinem said, even in publishing, business is business. To effectively promote a book, “you have to think like an organizer. . . . You have to think like an entrepreneur.”

Stephen King, who knows a thing or two about success, said he is troubled by something that he said has not changed in his 15 years in the book business: “For every person who reads novels, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, who do not.”

To provide some perspective, King said that after completing a pilot for a television series, his producer told him, “if everybody who bought your last book turned on the television” to watch one episode, he would earn just 1/22 of what the network considered vital in rating points.

“All at once, Stephen King, the Titan, looks like the midget of the entertainment world,” said King, whose three titles this fall are “Four Past Midnight” (Signet) and “The Wastelands” (Plume) in paperback, and “Needful Things” (Viking) in hardcover.

And so it continued, this four-day orgy of buying and selling and shamelessly promoting--and maybe of encouraging people to read as well. “That’s just what we’re trying to do,” said Bill Porter, the Wisconsin bookseller. “Just hope that people will read more books.”

Times staff writer Josh Getlin contributed to this article.