WHAT PUBLISHERS DON'T GET CAN HURT THEIR SALES:

UPDATE: paper airplanes, paperback launches (Robert Ferrigno, 10/24/06, Robert's Blog)

If you’re reading this, you’ve proably already bought the hardback of Prayers.

I just want to say THANKS

Prayers, originally dubbed “career suicide” by my long-time agent and rejected by my long-time publisher, went on to become a New York Times and LA Times best-seller, and the most sucessful book I’ve ever written. My new (Scribner) publisher’s decision to promote the book almost exclusively through blogs led to over 200 blogs covering the book: news blogs, political blogs of every description, here, here, religious blogs, 2nd Amendment blogs, smart guy blogs, military blogs. Mark Steyn is a category all his own. I also got lots of hate mail, which I confess, I enjoy. Every major newspaper in the US and the UK covered the book, along with the Times of India,.

As of today, foreign rights have been sold to:
UK
Russia
Mainland China
Taiwan
Romania
Turkey
Netherlands
Thailand (we’ll see if I get paid after the military coup)
Egypt
Hungary

What’s interesting about this is that most of these countries have never bought any of my eight previous books. Even more interesting to me is that Italy, France and Germany, where publishers have bought all my previous books immediately rejected Prayers, citing the fear of lawsuits or worse. France and Italy have strict laws against publications that “insult” religion, the same laws that entangled Orianna Fallaci, the most courageous journalist I’ve ever read, may she rest in peace. The fact that Muslim countries like Turkey and Egypt found nothing in Prayers that insulted their faith evidently was not persuasive. Fear eats the soul.

Based on the strong sales of the hardback, my publisher has rushed out the mass-market paperback from Pocket Books, available NOW. If you’ve already read it, I urge you to tell your friends to buy it, then you can borrow it and read the first two teaser chapters of the followup included at the back of the book.