Neither of Mackay's works -- his second is numbingly titled Beware the Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt -- rely on especially original insights to propel you through them. Instead, Mackay offers a structure and tone so easy to read that there is no compelling reason to stop. Chapters are splintered into lessons, most of which aren't even two pages long. And just as your attention span shrinks to fit those, Mackay switches to "quickies," which take up even less space. Such inventions allow readers to, in industry jargon, "biopsy" the book. And whereas Tom Peters might exhort you to wander around your factory more, Mackay simply offers hand-holding wisdom about keeping a job, coping with customers and bosses, staying afloat in turbulent waters. "There's not a lot new in business concepts," he says.
And nothing urgent, no coming depression to get worked up about. He rambles through stories about his dad, his tennis partners, his kids, and even customers (during a hymn to Billy Graham, he neglects to mention where the good pastor's organization procures envelopes). He smears flattery like thick relish, handily illustrating the central point of both books: not that flattery will get you anywhere, but that well-aimed, well-informed, and well-organized flattery will take you further than you ever imagined. In Sharks, for instance, he offers a 66-question customer profile that, when filled out, provides you with raw material for feigning interest in a customer's family, hobbies, alma mater, or whatever. In Beware the Naked Man, he offers similar questionnaires, one enabling employees to capitalize on their employer's culture, and another helping managers manipulate employees better. The books may sound spare, but Mackay carefully creates little in the way of expectations. As he writes in Sharks: "You're reading this book for a reason: in the hope that buried somewhere in these pages are at least one or two ideas you'll be able to use."
That one sentence says as much about Mackay's success as everything else in his books. The single biggest weapon in his conquest of the alien publishing world harkens back to marketing fundamentals: he found out what people craved, and he diligently tried to serve it to them. The lengths to which he went would have been considered extreme in any industry; but in the antiquated and quirky business of publishing, his methods verged on revolutionary. "There are two kinds of writing: one is writing as an art, and the other is writing to be read, used, and sold," says Kenneth H. Blanchard, who coauthored with Spencer Johnson the 1982 blockbuster The One Minute Manager. "Harvey made his choices before the book was written."
Blanchard was his inspiration. Mackay first met him in 1977, when the college professor and textbook author spoke at an envelope industry convention. Through a contact, Mackay even helped Blanchard get his book into one of the big retail chains. After hearing Mackay speak, Blanchard encouraged him to build a book around some of his speeches, which carried such pithy themes as -- in an eerie foreshadowing of another author's eventual best-seller -- "Ten Lessons I Didn't Learn in Business School."
Under Blanchard, Mackay served as an eager apprentice in the field of phenomenon creation. He carefully noted how Blanchard and his coauthor garnered attention from publishers by soliciting endorsements from a dozen top managers; how they attracted retailers by offering a money-back guarantee; how they lured consumers with a gold seal that read: "A Gem -- Small, Expensive And Invaluable." Most of all, he clearly understood that what the pair had created was essentially "a children's book for adults," as Blanchard admits. "People don't want to read a lot, so we made it a 45-minute read."
For their brevity, they were repaid with a smash best-seller. From the very start, Mackay sought similar rewards. "My modus operandi is that if I'm going to do something, I am going to do it well," he says. "If I'm going to create a book, it has to be a good product. Once it is, I'd like to give it every chance to be a big hit." Blanchard fully expected that Mackay would "take everything just a bit further."
But nobody imagined just how far he would go.
* * *
Now if you or I set out to write a book, we'd probably go and read some of the books that are already out there. Well, don't take this personally, but that's a dumb place to start. After all, as Kenneth Blanchard will tell you, studies show most people don't bother to read most of the books they buy. So forget getting read. Focus on getting bought.
Knowing that, Mackay focused his pre- Sharks research on the obstacles that prevented authors from selling books. At every opportunity, starting in 1986, he mined his Rolodex to talk to writers, booksellers, and others with publishing experience. Prowling bookstores -- never at lunchtime, when managers get very harried -- he'd ask how authors could help sell books. He also wanted some basic information about the industry. When you run out of books, how do you get new ones? He stored away the answers. With authors, he'd get specific: how important is the title? Should I have illustrations? Most voiced one regret: that they hadn't sold more books. "Always, they'd tell me it was the publisher's fault," says Mackay.
Wandering through bookstores, Mackay began to believe that authors simply weren't giving publishers any-thing different to sell. The titles all sounded alike. The covers looked interchangeable. And all the books carried virtually the same yawn-inducing endorsements. By spinning his Ferris wheel of a Rolodex -- he obsessively collects and uses contacts -- Mackay was convinced he could do better.
