Heavy Hype, Slow Buzz for Gilmore Book

Most new books reach store shelves without so much as an ad or media interview to herald their arrival. These books have to make their own way in the marketplace, needing good reviews or satisfied word of mouth among readers.

On the opposite end of the marketing spectrum are the Big Books of Michael Crichton, Robert Ludlum and other brand names that go on sale in tall stacks supported by plentiful advertising.

Mikal Gilmore’s “Shot in the Heart” occupies its own niche. The new book, written by a Los Angeles-based contributing editor to Rolling Stone, is positioned by Doubleday as a work of art and became one of the more widely anticipated releases in publishing circles because the marketing started three years before the book was published.

Gilmore’s grim exploration of the family history that foretold the violent life of his brother Gary Gilmore, the murderer who was executed amid a media circus in Utah in 1977, has been painstakingly rolled out by Doubleday since 1991 when the publisher signed the author.

After Doubleday topped all competitors by agreeing to pay a reported $700,000 for the hardcover (and the paperback, which sister company Bantam will publish later), filmmaker Alan Pakula bought the screen rights, and the author proposal that had stirred such excitement was reprinted by Granta, the British literary magazine.

In the spring of 1993, six months before the original publication date, Doubleday sought to amplify the buzz by handing out an attractively boxed and revised edition of Gilmore’s proposal at the annual convention of the American Booksellers Assn. This “special booksellers’ preview,” a keepsake that surely cost thousands of dollars to produce, opened with a letter from Doubleday editor in chief David Gernert, who recalled that the proposal had “knocked us out, and we immediately realized the best way to launch the book was to share it with all of you.”

At the 1994 booksellers convention held last month, Doubleday continued to beat the drums, this time distributing a 24-page “companion” to “Shot in the Heart” designed to stimulate discussion among book groups. The booklet, which repeats the haunting book-cover portrait of the Gilmore family taken about 1950, is being sold in select stores for 50 cents a copy.

Finally, after such an impressive buildup, publication this month has generated outstanding reviews.

“Intense suffering, it’s been noted, can be the source of fine works of art,” reviewer Dan Cryer wrote in Newsday. “That is surely true in this case . . . a stunning, heartbreaking family memoir. This is a book born out of despair and completed in triumph.”

In the Washington Post, crime writer Ann Rule praised it as “perhaps the most fascinating book I have read in many years.” National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air,” considered a book buyer’s magnet by the publishing industry, interviewed Gilmore for much of a recent hour.

And the payoff?

“Shot in the Heart,” which is No. 8 on this week’s Newsday bestseller list, reflecting strong sales in the New York area, has been slow to catch on nationally, especially considering the critics’ raves. It was No. 255 Thursday on USA Today’s list of top-selling books in the country, dropping from No. 233 last week. A lengthy piece about Gilmore scheduled to air on ABC’s “20 / 20” last Friday was postponed for O. J. Simpson coverage.

It could be that a book so personal and challenging as this one will take longer to meet Doubleday’s lofty expectations. It could also be that a book so downbeat, as all the critics describe it, is misplaced amid the carefree days of summer. Or that Norman Mailer exhausted readers’ curiosity about the Gilmore saga with “The Executioner’s Song” in 1979.

With 120,000 copies now in print, Gernert said this week that Doubleday’s strategy has been to highlight Gilmore’s fine writing to distinguish “Shot in the Heart” from the true-crime genre. Although “it is extremely difficult in this marketplace to sell anything original and unique,” Gernert added, the book is selling better each week.

On the Racks: Gay-oriented publications devote much of their new issues to stories pegged to the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising in Greenwich Village, which spawned the gay-rights movement. The July / August edition of Out contains a pullout map of the Village and environs that pinpoints where gay life percolated from 1969 to 1971. . . .

The plight of the literary novelist is examined in the New Yorker (June 27-July 4 double issue) by reporter James Stewart, who profiles his friend James Wilcox. Although Wilcox has had six laudably received comic novels published in the past 12 years, he earned $25,000 in 1992 and $14,000 last year. The advance for his next book, to be published in a year or so by Hyperion, was $10,000.