When Simon & Schuster signed a book deal with Mary Cheney two years ago, it pulled out all the stops.
“Now It’s My Turn,” which promised details of Cheney’s behind-the-scenes experience working on election campaigns for her father, Dick Cheney, marked the first acquisition for a new Simon & Schuster imprint. It was aggressively marketed, with the author appearing on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” and came with a reported $1 million advance for Mary Cheney.
Despite the blitz and best-laid plans, the book sold only 9,000 copies, according to Nielsen Bookscan.
“I know Mary Cheney’s book didn’t do as well as they had hoped,” says Charles Flowers, executive director of Lambda Literary Foundation, a national resource organization of gay and transgender literature.
Gay books, particularly memoirs or sensationalist works (“I Had to Say Something” by Mike Jones, the prostitute who allegedly had sex with disgraced pastor Ted Haggard leaps to mind) get a lot of play in the gay and mainstream media, but don’t always perform well. (See sidebar on page 36 for more details.)
Cheney’s “Now It’s My Turn” did especially poorly, gay booksellers say, because Cheney lacked appeal to gay readers on one hand and conservatives on the other.
“It’s not going to be the church reading club book in Indiana for tea or anything,” Flowers says. Although her appearance on Larry King suggests Cheney tried to reach out to mainstream audiences, her marketing scheme didn’t seem to include gay bookstores.
Philip Rafshoon, owner of Outwrite Bookstore & Coffeehouse, a gay bookstore in Atlanta, Ga., says that he met Cheney at an event in Washington, D.C., and invited her to read at the store, but she never took him up on the offer.
“We sold very few of that. We sold 12,” Rafshoon says. “I’m not a Cheney fan, I’m not a Bush
fan, and I think that our customers … weren’t interested in a book where she defended the Bush/ Cheney policies on gays and lesbians. Good God, what is there to say about that book? She’s a person who could have affected so much change and didn’t at that time.”
Further depressing sales figures was the fact that Cheney didn’t go in depth about being a lesbian in the book, Rafshoon says.
“‘Now It’s My Turn Not To Talk About Anything Important,’” Rafshoon scoffs. “I think it was a unique gay celeb book that didn’t sell. There were some people upset that we even carried the book here, but we, of course, chose to feature both sides of that story.”
Linda Bubon, co-owner of Chicago feminist bookstore Women & Children First, says memoirs have become increasingly popular in the book world. (Despite this, her store didn’t stock a single copy of Cheney’s work.) Women & Children First has tripled the space given to the genre in the past two years, although, she says, books written by celebrities are an uncertain venture in terms of sales.
“It really, really varies,” she says.
When another political figure, former New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey, wrote a memoir “My Confession,” about his life as a closeted gay man, he also went on a media blitz, including a hyped-up appearance on “Oprah.”
His book has sold 38,000 copies.
“I’m really surprised, I must say,” says Flowers. “Ten or fifteen thousand, that’s about right [for a gay celeb memoir]. The fact that McGreevey could sell a lot more, that’s amazing.”
Flowers says McGreevey’s relative success was probably due to a significant media campaign in addition to his political role.
“He was elected by people. Mary Cheney’s never been elected to anything,” Flowers says. “New Jersey has a very large gay and lesbian population, and I think they have been pretty progressive in terms of adoption and marriage and domestic partnerships.”
McGreevey could also speak knowledgably regarding gay political issues, which plenty of gay celebrity writers could not, Flowers points out.
“Someone like Reichen [Lehmkuhl], do we expect him to really know the nuances of domestic partnership policy or adoption policy or something,” Flowers asks.
Lehmkuhl’s book, “Here’s What We’ll Say: Growing Up, Coming Out and the U.S. Air Force Academy,” has sold just 6,000 copies to date, despite his being in the public eye during his then-boyfriend Lance Bass’ coming out. Some think this all happened suspiciously close to Lehkuhl’s book release.
“I think that’s the danger, they get attention, which is good, but then they are somehow expected to speak for a community that they speak for [only] a part of,” Flowers says.
IN A CULTURE of celebrity, the winds are fickle, especially when the Internet provides up-to-the-second bits of information, as opposed to an entire book, which may or may not be entertaining or worth the time.
“The publishers are looking for a way for someone to sell the book and that’s part of the attraction of a celeb book, they’ve got this platform,” Flowers says. “I’m not sure people make the leap to, ‘Do I want to read a whole book about this person, or by this person?’ So I think it’s something to be careful about in acquiring a celebrity book. If they’re over-exposed, people may not buy a book about them or by them. They already have their opinion made or think they know the person.”
John Amaechi, a retired NBA player who came out of the closet with the publication of his book, “Man in the Middle,” this year, has sold as many copies as Mary Cheney’s book, despite having a less public image.
Outwrite Books held a successful reading with Amaechi in February, Rafshoon says.
“It was fantastic. We had, I think, about 290 people here,” he says. “John was a great spokesperson and still is. His story resonated with a lot of people. With sports, there’s so few out role models, especially in men’s sports.”
Amaechi’s race might have helped him sell even more copies, as out black gay male athletes are in short supply. Amaechi’s appearance drew one of the most racially diverse crowds Outwrite has had at a reading, Rafshoon says.
“This was the first basketball player and I think it resonated because it crossed the color line here, because he was a person of color. Here in Atlanta, we had a lot of basketball fans who never even thought that a player would come out.”
The
following comments were posted by our readers and were
not edited by the Washington Blade. We ask that you
treat others with respect; any post deemed offensive will
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Charles Flowers on 8/16/071:04 PM:
Dear Washington Blade,
Thanks for your recent article on lgbt celebrity books by Katherine
Volin -- it sheds light on a small, but media-drenched segment of
LGBT books. Your headline, however, is misleading by suggesting that
all gay books are a bust, when in fact, the climate is very good for
publishing an lgbt book (over 140 publishers submitted books for the
Lambda Literary Awards last year, for example). Getting those books
into the hands of readers is the main challenge.
