From 46439007cf417cbd9ac8049bb4122c890097a0fa Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "Charles.Forsyth" Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2006 20:52:35 +0000 Subject: 20060303-partial --- lib/ebooks/oebtest/publishing.html | 73 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 73 insertions(+) create mode 100644 lib/ebooks/oebtest/publishing.html (limited to 'lib/ebooks/oebtest/publishing.html') diff --git a/lib/ebooks/oebtest/publishing.html b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/publishing.html new file mode 100644 index 00000000..18b069fd --- /dev/null +++ b/lib/ebooks/oebtest/publishing.html @@ -0,0 +1,73 @@ + + + + + + +Bill Wattenburg’s Background: Publishing + + + + +

Publishing

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Bill Wattenburg is also the comical author Will Harvey who once entertained +nationwide audiences on major TV shows such as “The Phil Donahue Show” and +“The Tonight Show”. Wattenburg’s media career began when he wrote a surprising +best-seller while he was the president of a scientific laboratory in Berkeley. +He had written short stories during his college days. He told us that in 1971 a +group of women at a University cocktail party, who had read some of his short +stories, bet him that he couldn’t write a book that was funnier than the New +York Times’ then best-seller on sexual fantasies, +The Sensuous Woman. So, he whipped +out a book for them in three weeks with the title How To Be Good To A Woman, +which they liked enough to make hundreds of Xerox copies of the manuscript to +send to friends all over the country. But New York publishers said it wouldn’t +sell when he tried to give it to them to publish, free—so his friends could buy +cheaper copies. Unconvinced, he changed the title of the book to How To Find +And Fascinate A Mistress, changed “woman” to “mistress” +in the text, and had a Berkeley printer produce the first five thousand +hardcover with a catchy jacket designed by his engineering draftsmen. He then +gave away 200 copies to airline flight attendants (for whom he had written a complimentary +chapter in the book). Orders began coming in from all over the country.

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Three months later, his kitchen publishing company, Montgomery Street Press, +had shipped over sixty-thousand hardcover copies to every major bookstore chain +in the country. The New York publishing houses that could have had the book for +nothing were soon bidding for the paperback rights. Pocketbooks (Simon and +Schuster) finally bought the paperback rights for a reported $650,000. +Pocketbooks sent him out on a national promotion tour to a few major TV shows. +Requests then poured in from other shows all over the country who wanted him. +Over the next year, he appeared as funnyman Will Harvey on over 130 local and +national TV and radio shows. He was invited back to some major shows several +times in 1972. Paperback sales of his book climbed to over 2,000,000 as he +tickled audiences all over the country with his cowboy humor and the image of +the hapless male struggling to keep up with the sexually aggressive women of the +burgeoning feminist movement.

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A former Pocketbooks executive has told us that Wattenburg received an +advance for the paperback rights of “over $500,000”. She remembered +that he caused quite a problem at Simon and Schuster during the bidding for the +paperback rights to his book. She recalled: “He didn’t have an agent. He +thought that our standard royalty contracts with authors were crazy. He demanded +a guaranteed cash payment up front—not conditioned on future book sales, as was +the usual case. He cleaned up after that. I think he still owns the +hardcover. … He wouldn’t stay at some of the best hotels we booked him into +during the promotion tours. He found out that travel expenses were being +deducted from his royalties after sales went above, I think, 2,000,000. … He +drove us nuts. We had to plead with some famous newspaper columnists and book +reviewers to meet him for interviews at Holiday Inns. …”

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Before it was over, the book that he had tried to give away had earned him +over $1,300,000! It was published in six countries. Bantam books bought the +rights to his next book for an undisclosed sum. He says he still has to explain +on the radio to women who like to tease him that “in no way could I ever +live up to the exploits of Will Harvey.”

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We asked him in 1990 why he didn’t write more books. He said: “You can +sometimes beat the pros at their own game once. But they don’t often let you get +away with it a second time. It’s much easier to find another field.”

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