Of Author Lunches and Penny-Pinching

By Bob Hughes - Apr 14 , 2009

Sometimes, it pays to pay to get your writers noticed

I was recently at an event I had thought was in danger of disappearing from the publishing landscape: the author lunch.

These lunches used to occur quite regularly. A publisher would herald the arrival of a new book by a noted author by inviting members of the press to meet that author at a lunch in his or her honor. Depending on the importance – or ego – of the author involved, the restaurant could be pretty fancy, indeed.

But, like everything else these days, the author lunch has become a victim to rethinking, whether through cost-cutting or by questioning the very necessity of throwing a lunch for an author instead of spending some of that money on co-op fees for better placement of the book at stores.

These lunches did serve a purpose. I myself have been more likely to remember an author I had met, and more inclined to read that author’s book and consider coverage of it. Sometimes, that is. For a few years in the early part of the millennium, publishers were throwing so many author lunches on top of each other that they ran the risk of blurring together. And if you couldn’t remember one particular author after going to two or three author lunches in a week, the lunch had become useless.

So I was surprised when the Knopf-Doubleday Group invited me and quite a few other journalists on the book beat to a lunch at one of New York’s fanciest restaurants, Le Bernardin, which has a national reputation (and prices to match).

The aim of the lunch was to introduce three new authors to the press. Note the word “new.” These are debut authors to whose work the publisher is trying to draw attention. Not proven bestsellers. First-time book deals, in danger of drowning in the sea of books published every year.

In introducing these authors at the luncheon – which was very well attended (in this economy, who among us, even journalists now doing the work of three at staff-starved newspapers, can pass up a free lunch, especially at a four-star restaurant?) — the executive who’d arranged it said he knew his publisher would have qualms.

He said, “He asked me, do you know the expression “while Rome burns?’” Meaning – why throw an expensive lunch when people are losing jobs? Wouldn’t it cast the wrong impression?

But it didn’t. It made me realize that Knopf-Doubleday is still behind its authors, still cherishes the written word, still banks on new voices to help illuminate the world around us. The food was great, but the focus of the lunch – on writers writing, on books, on reading – was even better.

Now, I haven’t read these books yet – two novels and one memoir — but to judge from the comments each of these authors made, I think I’m in for a treat.

Let me introduce them to you—–

• Melanie Gideon, author of a memoir, The Slippery Year: A Meditation on Happily Ever After
  
• Nicola Keegan, author of a novel, Swimming
• Evie Wyld, author of the novel, After the Fire, A Still Small Voice

Now, I can’t promise a free lunch to help you remember these authors (that’s why I was at the lunch)—

But I am betting that if Knopf-Doubleday was willing to risk the wrath of today’s penny-pinchers to help promote its authors, then they’re probably worth your time, as well as mine.

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Robert J. Hughes, a longtime reporter for The Wall Street Journal, writes on the arts, based in New York.