Posnanski and the Paterno book

Would the book have done better in terms of sales if the Sandusky stuff never happened? I happen to think it would have sold better as the definitive legacy biography if Paterno was still St. Joe.

 

No. Just as I think there would be a much smaller thread about the book on this site without the Sandusky scandal.

 

I think the thread here would be much shorter, but I'm willing to venture the book would have sold better without the scandal, particularly because Paterno died. At this point, Penn Staters - and college football fans generally - would be in full-out Joe Pa mania mode. It's macabre, but his death would have pushed sales through the roof, I bet. A sugary sweet biography about a beloved old guy who just died? Slam dunk, even for sports.

Publishers seem to think that bad news sells, and I think they're probably right when it comes to politics, wrong when it comes to sports, for the most part. Remember the A-Rod book by Selena Roberts? Or Jeff Pearlman's Walter Payton book? In both cases, it seems like they were marketed as scandal sheets. In the Payton case, in particular, nothing could be further from the truth. I think there were two books on Roger Clemens that both bombed, sales-wise.

A few years ago, I was covering a college program that was suffering through a god-awful season. A couple of the student newspaper kids told me excitedly that they were going to write a book about it.

I looked them square in the eye and said, "Who the fuck is going to want to read that?"

I have no doubt that it would have made for a great read, but "Season on the Brink" was one-time, lightning in a bottle. People don't read sports books very much, generally. And when they do, I don't think - and, again, this is generally - they don't read negative books. So, as counter-intuitive as this seems, I bet the scandal increased the buzz, but suppressed sales.

 

You just wrote this much better than I ever could but you are exactly right.

 

In book publishing, the only thing you can really know is that no one really knows. There's no formula for these books. You want to do fitness books, cookbooks, gardening books, there's a formula for those. But in the realm of general non-fiction books that you read, cover to cover, there's just no rule that works the same way twice. And God knows, they keep trying to find one. The first question a publisher asks about a proposal: "What's the closest thing to it, so we can look at comps?" Well, if there was something that close to it, we probably shouldn't be doing it anyway.

To your point, I don't think it's about positive or negative books; there are plenty on both sides of the ledger. It always, always, comes back to one thing: Are we giving the readers something that makes them want to spend money? Not whether it's a great topic or a great read, but whether it's something they want to OWN. Ultimately, that's the harsh reality. Easy to judge after the fact why a book worked or didn't. Not so easy when you're making the deal.

In the case of the Selena Roberts A-Rod book and the Clemens books, I think the public was just sick of the steroid story, and the SI excerpts basically gave the whole A-Rod book away for free. The Payton book was also a victim of the excerpts, which cherry-picked the controversial stuff and made it appear to be an expose instead of a balanced bio.

Paterno? Just a bizarre set of circumstances you could never recreate with another book. The publisher looks at all the options, and says, "This." It's a business decision that involves almost a million dollars when you factor in the advance and costs and everything else. Take your best shot, and move on.

 

Paterno book sold 6,500 copies in its second week according to BookScan.

 

Posnanski was on Costas Now the other night and said it was much less than $700K, but a decent chunk. I'm guessing between $200-$300K.

 

my theory on this book and its sales is that the real damage will be in the long-term. some people will want to read it now because of the news interest. but by rushing the book, and missing its target in the eyes of critics, it will never become the classic the publishers likely hoped it would be, the kind of book whose sales are goosed year after year by appearances on lists of greatest sports books and the like.

 

Book possibly being adapted for film, with Pacino to be Paterno. Cue Godfather quotes that fit Paterno's life.

http://www.deadline.com/2012/09/joe-paterno-movie-al-pacino-penn-state-gridiron-scandal/

 

Pacino makes sense as Paterno. But I wonder who would play Sandusky?

 

Who plays Ganim?

 

Chris Berman can play Sandusky.
After he finishes shilling for Applebee's.