When I worked in book publicity, my boss liked to trot out the following fun fact, though I suppose it depends on your definitions of “fun” and “fact”: the reason hardcovers sell well in L.A. and paperbacks don’t is because no one in L.A. is reading the books. At best, they’re wondering if they can be optioned. At worst, they’re lining their untouched bookshelves.
True or not (in my experience, not), this theory always made me laugh, because it bolstered our sense of ourselves as underdogs. We worked exclusively on paperback-publicity campaigns, gathering what media crumbs the hardcover publication had left behind. The world has changed, and my boss, my dear friend, isn’t in it anymore. I wrote about his death and our friendship in my most recent book, Grief Is for People. And now our story is out in paperback. The subject has become the object, the object the subject.
