Fairstein gets the star treatment

In what might be Sara Nelson’s final piece for the NY Post (since she jumped ship to helm PW and take it to 21st century relevancy) she leads off with Scribner’s expensive plans to promote former prosecutor and bestselling suspense novelist Linda Fairstein:

In addition to a 10-city tour and appearances at both bookstores and universities and at least one museum, Fairstein’s work will also be promoted in a series of 60-second television ads.

According to a spokesman for Fairstein’s publisher, Scribner, the ads will stress Fairstein’s experience as a legal expert as well as a writer. They will begin airing "soon," she said. Very, very few authors get television ads, and while this is Fairstein’s seventh novel with Scribner, it is the first that will get the TV treatment.

Ads are very expensive, of course, and in an era when most writers can’t get their publishers to pay for a magazine ad or a book party or even the printing of the invitations for a friend-hosted one, much coveted.

The reason Scribner’s doing this when in the past, such treatment’s only been accorded to the likes of Stephen King or Kathy Reichs, is fairly simple: get her to sell more:

All of Fairstein’s novels have appeared on bestsellers lists, but insiders say her net sales rarely exceed 100,000 copies. TV ads are likely to boost that number, the thinking goes.

In recent years, Scribner has begun paying Fairstein over $1 million a book.

Which means, implicitly, that she’s probably not earning out and the publisher wants to recoup something. Even if that means spending more money to do so…

Scribner’s kind of an odd imprint. They have blockbuster authors, some excellent editors (Colin Harrison comes to mind) and then they get clueless about what to do with their more midlist-y fare, especially now that legendary editor Susanne Kirk retired.  It’s no wonder that a number of writers got orphaned and had to go elsewhere (Barbara Seranella back to St. Martin’s, for the time being, Stephen Booth to Bantam Dell, to name a couple) Even though I can’t argue with Fairstein getting gold star treatment, I suspect other folks with the same publisher might be a little nervous.