The Oh-So-Bumpy Road to Bestsellerdom

Contrary to what everybody thinks, publishing a book brings with it a large, instantaneous dose of humility. Mostly it’s a matter of the statistics: 40,000 new titles come out every year; 90% of them go onto the remainder table in six months.

If you’re lucky you might avoid this fate with an author’s book tour. Mine was to feature a bit of reading from my book “On the Wing,” accompanied by slides that highlighted the story of radio-tracking peregrine falcons from the Arctic to the Caribbean. So it was with high hopes that I headed north to Alaska in September to start plugging.

But at the Northern Lights Bookstore in Anchorage, instead of the nature-focused audience I anticipated, the small auditorium was packed with grizzled gents grinning through tobacco-basted teeth. To them, birds were airborne feather dusters to be blasted off the windshields of their bush planes. As soon as they heard that the hero of my tale, former World War II combat instructor George P. Vose, wasn’t on hand, they rose as one, pulled on their parkas and, carrying cans of chew-spit, walked out.

My next attempts at sales came in Seattle; Portland, Ore.; and San Francisco, the land of Audubon Society ladies who snoozed through my slides and departed without buying anything. So the publisher and I went to radio. “Tennant!” my first interviewer barked. “What about water? It’s killin’ us! Am I right?” I said he sure was, but I hope that everyone who buys my book to find out about water pollution never writes to tell me how mad they are.

Between interviews, I found -- again contrary to expectations -- that what ruins the book circuit is the five-star hotels. Never a five-star guy, I kept waiting for somebody to hand me a mop and bucket. Plus, in those posh digs I couldn’t afford to check my e-mail. Internet service ran $8 a minute. I begged to be booked into a nice Quality Inn, or even a Motel 6, where computer time is free, but all I heard was that no other writer on a book tour had ever complained about L.A.’s Biltmore.

Then there were my escorts. Well-dressed ladies who met me at every airport, chatting intelligently. I thought I knew why they were there. The publisher, I figured, had prior experience with book tour authors passed out under the table at strip clubs. So now I had keepers. I couldn’t even throw up alone.

From one particularly elegant hotel breakfast menu, still thinking econo-plan, I ordered oatmeal. To my surprise, it arrived artfully overlain with a hillock of herbs and spices. Went down without a hitch. But on the way to my morning date with talk radio I realized that, at least for a two-star guy, those condiments had been a bad idea.

Fortunately, the door to the radio station men’s room had a lock. Yet, between abdominal spasms, I could hear agitated scurrying and strident enquiries. At last, summoning strength, I pulled open the door to find the building’s maintenance crew ready for a break-in, and my keeper, who, having called New York and gotten permission, wanting to bustle me off to the nearest five-star hospital.

My book’s breakthrough arrived finally, on Imus, but at some cost to the truth. Don’s big laugh during our telephone interview came -- and I have no idea where he got this -- when he went on and on about how Kinky Friedman and I must be somewhere down in Texas “smokin’ these big enchiladas.” You can’t argue with success, though: The next week, “On the Wing” flapped its way onto the New York Times bestseller list.

My last hurrah, it turned out, was a movie deal. I wrote the book only after Terrence Malick -- having seen my slides on a nature trip -- suggested it. Then he went to Robert Redford and National Geographic Feature Films with the story, and (gulp) I was to make my promo pitch to their representatives.

But by now, I was ready. The presentation was down to a science. A prime time slot was booked at Santa Monica’s Barnes & Noble, optimally situated near both the Redford offices and National Geo’s Beverly Hills digs. Its auditorium looked perfect and my keeper was genuinely interested. She even brought me a pre-talk Evian.

A dozen movie people filed in, their collective commercial antennae attuned to the responses of the book buyers (and potential filmgoers) soon to appear. Target-market gold, I imagined, for anybody considering a buddy movie about two dudes in a beat-up Cessna outwitting the cops and the military of three countries to follow the lovely, lost Amelia, a continent-crossing falcon femme fatale.

Great stuff, I said to myself. Except that, as the minutes passed, no target audience appeared. I drank the last of my Evian. Still just the film folk, getting restless, surrounded by rows of empty chairs.

Finally, an idle Barnes & Noble clerk wandered in, followed by one customer. And so, humbled once more, for two solitary listeners I began the climactic spiel of my book sales oddyssey.

Contrary to expectations, it worked. Next up: the movie tour.