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Happy Holidays. Now Buy the Boss's Book.
Hearst Magazines president Cathie Black has discovered a promising new market for her advice-filled memoir: her own employees.
This afternoon, the company held its first-ever book fair for Hearst authors. The scribes sat at tables arrayed around the Hearst Tower's atrium, selling and signing copies of their latest literary efforts.
While Black, whose Oprah-endorsed Basic Black appeared in October, entertained a long queue of customers hoping to snag some face-time with the boss, other writers were less fortunate. There was no wait for an audience with Esquire editor-at-large A.J. Jacobs or Cosmopolitan editor in chief Kate White.
White has been a best-selling author for years thanks to her series of Bailey Weggins mystery novels. Did she have any idea why Hearst chose this year to start giving its authors a chance to market in-house? "I guess there are just a lot of Hearst books this year!" she offered.
(By the way, Basic Black is Black's first book.)
Michael Clinton, Hearst's executive vice president, chief marketing officer and publishing director, was faring somewhat better: He said he'd sold about 60 copies of his travel-photography book, Global Faces, on the day, and the title had cracked the top-10 in its category the previous day on Amazon.com, thanks to a promotional appearance on Good Morning America. He's already at work on his next volume, which will be called American Portraits, and is actively looking for models of interesting ethnic heritage to round out the 30 or so subjects he's shot so far.
I tried to ask Black how many copies she'd managed to unload on her employees, but she scurried away before I had a chance -- though not before she could borrow 10 dollars from Clinton.
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