A Fairy Tale for Writers

This is a modern day fairy tale. A writer's fairy tale. It was such an upper that I just had to tell it. I read the story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (P-I) on August 1st.

It started in 1999 when an author named Robert Wilson wrote a mystery called A Small Death in Lisbon (ASDIL). At the time ASDIL was published by HarperCollins, Wilson was mostly known for his previous political thrillers (set in West Africa). According to Publishers Weekly, the novel "tells two stories: the investigation into the brutal sex murder of a 15-year-girl in 1998, and the tangled, bloody saga of a financial enterprise that begins with the Nazis in 1941."

The mystery won the British Crime Writers' Golden Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel for 1999. Terrific reviews and subsequent sales of the novel permitted Wilson, who lives in an isolated farmhouse in Portugal, to become a full-time writer. In the years since it was released, the book has had steady paperback sales with multiple printings by several publishers.

You're probably thinking that just to win a prestigious award and be able to devote your efforts to being a full-time writer is enough of a fairy tale ending. But, wait! There's more.

Fast forward to the summer of 2005 halfway across the world in Seattle. Specifically, to Elliott Bay Book Company, an independent, family-owned bookstore, founded in 1973. And to a conversation between two displaced Texans. One was Leah Brock, a veteran bookseller at the store, who happened to wear her Gilley's T-shirt to work one day. The shirt advertises the Texas roadhouse that shot to fame in the movie "Urban Cowboy."

The other was a customer, Paul Goode, a former Microsoft publications manager who gave up his job to become a stay-at-home dad after the death of his wife. Like Brock, Goode was originally from Texas.

Goode commented on Brock's T-shirt, and the two struck up a conversation. As such things always do with readers, the conversation soon turned to books. Brock mentioned that she was reading World War II mysteries. Goode immediately told her that she needed to read "A Small Death in Lisbon."

Coincidentally, Brock already had a copy of ASDIL. She'd been intrigued by the paperback's cover, which featured three windows and a door placed against a red brick wall in the shape of a swastika. However, when she'd started to read the book, she put it down after only one page.

With Goode's recommendation, Brock went back and tried the book again. "I loved it," she says. "It was the best mystery I had read in so long." (P-I).

So, of course, Brock posted a card on the "Staff Recommendations" display in the bookstore along with a couple of copies of the mass market paperback.

Now, up to that point, she reports that Elliott Bay Books had sold only a couple of copies of the book each year. In the first month after Brock posted her recommendation, the store sold more than 30 copies. As readers shared their glowing reviews with friends, sales continued to pick up. By October, it became the bookstore's top seller. In December, it kept that title by selling 113 copies. In the seven month's since, it has never fallen below #3.

Elliott Bay Book's repeated reordering caught the attention of the Seattle sales rep who handles Penguin Group paperbacks. She passed the word along to her superiors and also to Jenn Risko, who publishes "Shelf Awareness," a newsletter for booksellers. With 6,000 Internet subscribers, "Shelf Awareness" brought A Small Death in Lisbon national attention, seven years after its original publication.

The New York office of Berkley (a division of Penguin Group) urged its sales reps to push the book elsewhere. "Craig Burke, Berkley director of publicity, reports that sales increased 44% in April over March [the "Shelf Awareness" story ran in April] and have continued an upward trend since." (P-I)

Meanwhile, the Oxford-educated Wilson comments from Portugal: "I've been delighted by this story, not only because it relies on coincidences, which are NOT allowed in crime novels, but which happen all the time in everyday life, but also because this is what every writer craves: word of mouth." (P-I)

Perhaps the coincidence factor is what appealed so strongly to me. It had the flavor of that chance meeting between Jack of Beanstalk fame, who was on his way to sell the family cow when he encountered that vendor of magic beans on the road. Or perhaps the coincidence by which the Prince stumbled across Rapunzel's tower at the very moment the witch called to the beautiful heroine to let down her hair. At any rate, I was delighted by the story and wanted to share it.