change is good, but change is hard

In the spring of 1999, I asked for a meeting with the brass at Little, Brown. I was selling a lot of books by then, so I got the meeting. The publisher, Larry Kirshbaum, had become a close friend of mine. He still is. We lunch at Patroon, Stuart Woods’s fictional hero Stone Barrington’s favorite eating and drinking spot in New York City.

I’d been writing a mystery novel a year, and the Little, Brown execs had it all programmed on their little spreadsheets. Now I told them I wanted them to consider a change—a big change for the entire publishing business, as it turned out.

I took a breath, then told the Little, Brown elites my idea. “I want to write two, maybe three books a year.” No audible gasps came from the august group, but I detected skepticism and at least one wrinkled brow.

I gave them three ideas for new books. One was for the Alex Cross series, one was a twisty beach mystery called The Beach House, and one was a love story, Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas.

During the meeting, I told them how the story for Suzanne’s Diary came to be. At that time, my wife, Sue, had already taken about five hundred thousand photographs, maybe a million, of our baby son, Jack. A couple of thick photo albums were sitting on a table in our living room.

One afternoon I started leafing through them. It struck me that at some point, Jack might be looking at the same photo album, but Sue and I would be gone. Then I had a much worse thought. I imagined Sue and I going through the same album—if Jack somehow died before us. That’s how Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas came to be.

I told the Little, Brown executives the story, and Larry Kirshbaum teared up. His instincts were usually very good. He immediately got the power of Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas.

Then Larry gave me his thoughts and his decision on the three books. “We love the Alex Cross, of course. And The Beach House sounds fabulous. But Suzanne’s Diary, Jim, that just isn’t your brand.”

That struck me as an interesting comment. I was the one with the big rep for watching over brands like Ford, Burger King, Kodak, and Warner-Lambert. I was pretty sure I understood brands as well as anybody in the room. Or in the building, for that matter. So I wrote Suzanne’s Diary anyway. Little, Brown published it. It became one of my top-selling books ever.

If you haven’t read it, now’s as good a time as any.

Go on, get out of here. Head out to a bookstore. Or go online.

Yeah, you.

In the words of Truman Capote, “A boy has to sell his books.”