Mackay decided in late 1986 that he was going to write a book. "We took it seriously," recalls William Jacobs, then president and chief operating officer of Mackay Envelope Corp. "He was always taking big things on." As a writer, Mackay wasn't the sort to retreat to the solace of a cottage, pecking away until sundown robbed him of sufficient light. At 5:45 a.m. every day, Mackay set off on a seven-mile run. He'd return home to a yellow legal pad, on which he scribbled down thoughts. Driving in his car, he strapped a dictating machine into the passenger seat. He made notes aboard airplanes, and during rare reflective moments he wrote from his desk at home, gazing out on shimmering Christmas Lake.
As his readers would later do, Mackay picked up the book sporadically -- during a two-week family vacation in Rio, poolside at a tennis camp in Phoenix, where he arrived for lessons toting a racket and briefcase. He reread speeches and articles he had written, pondered the lessons his dad, the St. Paul correspondent for Associated Press, had taught him.
Although he preaches niche-picking in Beware the Naked Man -- "little markets often mean less competition," he writes -- his books strew advice every which way: toward investors and salespeople, entrepreneurs and middle managers. "I did not pick a niche. If you are a good businessperson, the same things apply to being a good coach, or a good parent," he says. "These are life lessons." Rather than restricting himself to, say, salespeople -- or even businesspeople -- he structured the book so that any reader can easily browse, and zero in on especially relevant lessons.
To help him visualize his dream of reaching a wide audience, he taped the title of his book onto a copy of The New York Times best-seller list, then tacked the page to his office wall. "I just pounded it out," he says of his manuscript. "Writing was no big deep-down thing." Instinctively, he was conserving his energy for selling.
By February 1987 Mackay had most of a rough draft finished. Blanchard gladly arranged a meeting between Mackay and top executives at his publisher, William Morrow & Co. "While Morrow was waiting for my next best-seller," says Blanchard, "I could become a hero by bringing them Harvey."
A first-time author, and one with no agent at that, would be lucky to meet with a senior editor. But in March 1987 Mackay -- thanks to Blanchard's intercession -- sat across the table from Larry Hughes, chairman and chief executive of Hearst Trade Books Group, which includes Morrow, and Allen Marchioni, chairman, president, and CEO of Morrow. "When one of our best-selling authors speaks, we notice," says Hughes.
Having read the 350-page manuscript, Hughes pronounced that it had "excellent prospects to be a good seller," maybe even a best-seller. Not only did Hughes underestimate the book, he couldn't have anticipated the man behind it. A proponent of what he calls "superior information," Mackay dug up as much as he could about Hughes beforehand. He found that Hughes had never had a bad break with an author. And that golf could serve as neutral ground.
As is his practice before any big meeting, Mackay jotted every point he intended to make on a yellow legal pad. Then he memorized the whole list. He put himself in the publishers' shoes -- as businessmen, they were interested in selling the book, not debating its literary merit. They toiled, after all, in an industry where some days it took a jeweler's loupe to detect the profit margin. So he would make sure they knew of his success as an envelope salesman, of the standing ovations he had inspired as a speaker, of his ability to bring in endorsements from such celebrities as Dear Abby herself (see "The Selling of Harvey Mackay: Chapter 1," page 7). When he hired salespeople, he wanted to know they were committed to the product; he would show Morrow the same single-mindedness. Instead of just touring the top eight markets to publicize the book, Mackay would tell them, I'm committed to an extensive tour. Even if it means taking a year away from my company.
And just what, exactly, did he want from Morrow? In a word, money. Not only in the form of a "very competitive" six-figure advance, as Hughes puts it, but also a guaranteed advertising budget. Any self-respecting first-time author would be thrilled to walk away with, say, $35,000 in unguaranteed money; Mackay wanted $150,000. Publishers generally want the option of funneling funds to whatever book gets hot. "I don't think he could have talked us into this deal without the manuscript," says Hughes, "but we thought it had excellent potential."
There was just one more thing Mackay sought. His talks with authors had shown one reason why books didn't sell more: there weren't enough of them. That's why he thought his first printing should be more generous. Like, oh, 100,000 -- extraordinary for a first book by an unknown author. Hughes blanched. "We never guarantee the author a certain number of copies," he says.
Mackay backed down. Well, sort of. Truth to tell, an odd thing happened. In the fall of 1987, a few months before Morrow actually published the book, its sales reps solicited bookstores to help figure out how many they ought to publish. They got a respectable 20,000 orders. The sales department checked once more before going to press in February. Orders had shot up, close to a whopping 100,000.
What on earth happened in between? Here's a hint: Rolodex.
"Authors will promise things and then they don't always deliver," says Adrian Zackheim, the senior editor who worked with Mackay. "They don't understand marketing, nor should they. Harvey educated himself to learn about the system, and it's no insult to him to say that he knew something about how to manipulate that system."
