Book Business

Bestselling Books in 1974

By Dan Balowon July 1, 2014

Starting today, and every six months, we are going to take a ride in the “way-back” machine (with special acknowledgment to Mr. Peabody and Sherman), traveling back in time to grab a snapshot of what books were selling on a particular date and year. To get an idea where publishing is today, it’s good to get an idea where we have been.

Forty years ago this week, half-way through 1974 here were the books on the New York Times Best Seller list:

Fiction

Watership Down, by Richard Adams (Macmillan)
Jaws, by Peter Benchley (Doubleday)
The Fan Club, by Irving Wallace (Simon & Schuster)
The Snare of the Hunter, by Helen McInnes (Harcourt Brace)
Cashelmara, by Susan Howatch (Simon & Schuster)
Burr, by Gore Vidal (Random House)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, by John le Carre (Knopf)
The Partners, by Louis Auchincloss (Houghton Mifflin)
I Heard The Owl Call My Name, by Margaret Craven (Doubleday)
The Other Side of Midnight, by Sidney Sheldon (Morrow)

Non-Fiction

All The President’s Men, by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward (Simon & Schuster)
Times to Remember, by Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy (Doubleday)
You Can Profit From A Monetary Crisis, by Harry Browne (Macmillan)
Plain Speaking, by Merle Miller (Putnam)
Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, by Piers Paul Read (Lippincott)
The Gulag Archipelago, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Harper & Row)
Thomas Jefferson, by Fawn Broodie (Norton)
Working, by Studs Terkel (Pantheon)
Management, by Peter Drucker (Harper & Row)
The Memory Book, by Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas (Stein & Day)

The prices were interesting to note as well. The hardcover editions were right around $10. Trade paperback editions were from $6.95 to $8.95. (Everyone used fives in prices) Inexpensive mass paperbacks were $1.95.

Of course, in 1974, the average household income in the United States was around $12,000 per year, so everything is relative.

Christian publishing in 1974 was dominated by a few extremely fast-selling titles.

The Living Bible (Tyndale) was selling millions, but the best selling book of the year in the Christian market was The Total Woman by Marabel Morgan. It sold ten million copies while it was in print.

A sampling of other Christian books published in 1974:

A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, by W. Phillip Keller

Discover Your Spiritual Gift and Use It, by Rick Yohn

How to Live Like A King’s Kid, Harold Hill

Peace Child, by Don Richardson

Something More, by Catherine Marshall

Truths That Transform, by D. James Kennedy

Have any of the books in today’s post had an affect on your life?

A Matter of Experience

By Tamela Hancock Murrayon June 19, 2014

Sometimes I’ll have one of those days where I’m minding my own business, when I pick up the phone to discover the author on the other end of the line is irate. (No, this is not a rerun of an article from the 20th century. I do still have a land line for my office). “Ohhh, Tamela! I know that Hell is indeed located on Earth and where is it? It’s at my publisher’s …

Category: Book Business, Career, Communication, Tamela, The Publishing LifeTag: Book Business, Career, publishing, The Publishing Life

Editing Etiquette

By Karen Ballon May 28, 2014

Writers and editors have a love-hate relationship. Okay, sometimes it can feel like a hate-hate relationship. Writers all know they need to be edited, but getting the manuscript back with those edits can be more painful than passing a kidney stone. And editors know they need to respect the author’s voice and style, but seriously? They want to use an em dash where? Generally speaking, though, we …

Category: Book Business, Communication, Craft, Editing, Grammar, Karen, Writing CraftTag: Communication, Editing, Writing Craft

Actually, The World is Pretty Big

By Dan Balowon May 27, 2014

At one time or another, every one of us have remarked how small the world is, usually caused by meeting someone by chance and finding out that you both know a certain person, or went to school with the person, are both reading the same books, are fans of the same team, etc. But you might be surprised how a “small” view of the world can alter your entire perspective. I am not referring to a …

Category: Book Business, Branding, Dan, Get Published, Marketing, Platform, The Publishing Life, Trends, Writing CraftTag: publishing, The Publishing Life

The Paranoid’s Guide to Things That Are Out to Get You

By Dan Balowon May 6, 2014

This is the second in a three-part series on attitudes, specifically for people in publishing, but probably applicable to just about anyone. Two months ago I addressed the issue of pessimism. Today, we’ll talk about the first cousin of pessimism…fear. If a book were to be written about fear, it would be the titled something along the lines of this blog-post. It would be a short volume with dozens …

Category: Book Business, Career, Dan, TheologyTag: Career, Fear

Success! Are You Ready?

By Tamela Hancock Murrayon April 24, 2014

Recently one of our faithful readers asked, since there are so many blogs about handling failure, if I would write a blog on how to handle success. Here are a few of my thoughts, in no particular order: Once you are successful, prepare to… …be gracious. Whether you struggled for years to be published or if you’ve never heard the word “no” from an agent or editor, when …

Category: Book Business, Career, Money, Platform, Tamela, Writing CraftTag: Career, Success

It Takes a Committee

By Tamela Hancock Murrayon April 17, 2014

One well-known and frustrating fact about seeing a book finally accepted is the looooooong process. Trust me, literary agents would like to see the process move faster, too. Believe it or not, the fact that at most large publishers, a proposal must go through several rounds of review before a contract is offered is actually good for the author. Yes, you read that right. It’s good for the …

Category: Agency, Book Business, Career, Get Published, TamelaTag: Career, Editors, publishers

Why an In-the-Know Agent is Your Best Partner

By Tamela Hancock Murrayon April 10, 2014

Even in the tightest market, new opportunities develop. Not only can authors keep up with these opportunities by being well-connected themselves, but this is just one part of your career where partnering with a great agent is key. Why? Because editors don’t always put out a call to every writers’ loop when they need proposals. Most don’t have time to become inundated with lots of …

Category: Agents, Book Business, Book Proposals, Career, Communication, Get Published, TamelaTag: Agents, Career, Get Published

What About Medium Stuff?

By Dan Balowon April 8, 2014

Today I stand in support of medium stuff. There is no argument that big important things deserve our undivided attention. There seems to be some disagreement over small stuff…do we sweat it or not? According to the Stan Jantz and Bruce Bickel’s book, God is in the Small Stuff, we probably need to be paying close attention to those things. I am concerned with those things in the middle…the medium …

Category: Book Business, Career, Dan, The Publishing LifeTag: Book Business, publishing, The Publishing Life