A New Page in Tie-Ins of Books, Films

Can books save Hollywood?

Movie producers may grumble and publishers mumble over slow summer business, but Esther Margolis is smiling.

This has been her year of the book, the “serious” Hollywood motion picture tie-in book, from “Far and Away” to “The Age of Innocence.”

Margolis, through her Newmarket Press, operates on several levels: publisher (book producer, too, she says), packager, agent and, for some, consultant to the stars and studios. Let others wait for their one-shot limo rides to fame and fortune; she is busier than a bus driver in a presidential road race.

Book tie-ins are an expanding and increasingly important phase in marketing movies and other forms of entertainment, especially in capturing a particularly desirable demographic segment: people who read and spend time and money at bookstores.

Buy a book, see the movie. See the movie, read the book. Somebody gains.

Margolis is often contacted by producers or studio marketing departments to develop book campaigns long before a movie comes out. Her task is to calculate strategies and realistic programs--what kind of book would best represent the upcoming movie. If not her books, whose? She might suggest that a paperback novelization of the script be published by a large mass-market company or reprinting an original novel or a special art book project.

At the same time, she determines programs for her own New York-based Newmarket Press, which in the last 10 years has developed a niche--publisher of usually large-size paperback books about the making of a movie that incorporate a star or a director as the author, reproducing lavish numbers of photos and special reading material, from scripts to production notes.

Here is an evolving art form: the movie as literature, as coffee-table adornment, as collectible . . . as attention-getting tie-in.

Margolis prefers the term “companion books.” Others do tie-ins.

“There seems to be a growing interest generally in book tie-ins,” Mark Gill, a senior vice president at Columbia Studios, said. “A heightened presence. The more the publishers do this field, the more it seems to pay off.”

Ted Turner found that to be the case. The smallest of his many divisions is 2-year-old Turner Publishing, which already can claim to be profitable. The Turner tie-ins are synergistic--the MGM film library became in part a TNT movie and a book called “When the Lion Roars.” The reissued film “Casablanca” became both a hardcover and a paperback book. The Turner book “Save the Earth” became a six-hour TV documentary. The book “Kisses” became a TNT special.

CNN’s coverage of both the Gulf War and the Soviet Union coup became books, too: “War in the Gulf” and “Seven Days That Shook the World.”

The Turner book “Dinotopia,” which had a first run of 100,000, now is up to 450,000 and is being sought after by several studios.

The company’s “Native American Project,” a working title that started as an idea for a TNT film on the history and life of Indians, will involve separate productions from four Turner divisions: CNN, TNT, TBS and the book-publishing wing.

Hollywood’s filmmakers have, almost from their beginnings, embraced literary classics and bestsellers. Not out of any cultural sensibility, but as a means of luring people to their movie houses with familiar titles and characters even though the story lines might be tampered with.

What studios are now finding as they break down their audiences into categories of age, sex, interest and possibly blood type is that book tie-ins can be an important tool in developing word-of-mouth, especially for movies aimed at older (the over-30) audiences. Book buyers, one marketing expert said, like to talk. Book readers also belong to professional organizations, they teach, they join clubs, they go to cocktail parties, they chat, they network. Some also belong to institutions that buy large quantities of books--libraries, colleges, schools.

“A book properly prepared can develop a great deal of interest on its own,” Margolis says. “Jimmy Carter’s book helped generate interest in him and his presidential campaign. The same thing for Albert Gore’s book, which is now on best-seller lists. We think our early books on the Indian leader Gandhi six months before the Richard Attenborough movie helped stimulate interest in the movie.”

There are more than 100,000 outlets for books in the United States--from chain stores to discounters. Getting books out before a movie opens, whether a picture book or a novelization, becomes part of the whetting of cinematic appetites, of loosening word-of-mouth tongues.

While there may have been only one Bram Stoker 95 years ago with his epic Dracula, the tie-in count for this fall’s Francis Coppola movie, “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” now reads:

Stoker 1. Books 7.

Long before the movie emerges this fall, seven books carrying Columbia Studio’s blessings--each with a target audience--will be shipped:

* A first printing of 50,000 “Bram Stoker’s Dracula: The Film and the Legend.” This will be “the official” picture book from Newmarket Press along with script, production notes, cast interviews and 160 pictures and drawings. The target: Dracula fans, filmphiles.

* A $40, large-size art book on the costume designs of the movie. Target: the coffee-table crowd, filmphiles.

* A paperback novelization based upon the movie story. Target: mass audience and Dracula fans.

* A paperback re-publication of the original Stoker story. Target: ditto.

* An audio book from Penguin. Target: the auto-bound.

* Two series of graphic novels (upscale comic books.) Target: younger audiences.

Can a Dracula quick-bite cookbook be next? A use-it-or-bruise-it exercise video?

More than a year ago when the Coppola film project was blessed, Margolis was brought in by Columbia to consult on book tie-in ideas. Then the strategies began.

This year’s Newmarket “companion books” include Ron Howard’s “Far and Away,” Roland Joffe’s “City of Joy” and Andrei Konchalovsky’s “Inner Circle.” Margolis also consulted on “My Girl,” the tie-in book for “A League of Their Own,” and two books based on the Robert Redford movie “A River Runs Through It.”

Beyond Dracula, Margolis will have two books on Martin Scorsese’s December release, “The Age of Innocence,” based on Edith Wharton’s classic about two 19th-Century New York families, one a hard-cover art book using illustrated material from the movie, the other a large-size paperback on the making of the movie as well as a republication of the original.

Newmarket’s most companionable book has been Kevin Costner’s “Dances With Wolves.” The illustrated book sold more than 100,000 copies, three other versions based on the original Michael Blake book have come out, and this year a children’s book written by James Howe was issued.

The book-movie connection can move in reverse, also.

Isn’t that yesterday’s movie on this week’s bestseller list? “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe.”