On radio call-in shows, "My fear was someone calling up and saying, 'Hi, Mr. Mackay. I read your book and I think it's terrible,' " he says. It never happened. In fact, his two hours on Larry King's nationally broadcast radio show proved so popular -- listeners besieged the network for tapes -- that King invited Mackay to appear on his TV show. And his performance on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in August 1988, which easily could have turned disastrous, sold an additional 75,000 books (see "The Selling of Harvey Mackay: Chapter 2," page 8).
Authors usually tour in 3-, 4-, or 5-day stints for 30 days around the book's publication. Mackay hit the major markets during that time, then staggered the smaller markets for the next three months. He was back at Mackay Envelope one day a week, playing an active role in hiring, which he believes is a CEO's most important function. The national reviews of Sharks were biting -- no pun intended, of course. The reviewer from Fortune, the magazine that once called Mackay "Mr. Make-Things-Happen" in a different context, apparently found very little going on. " Sharks," wrote the reviewer, "is a bunch of platitudes dressed up in see-through anecdotes." The most charitable major critic summoned the compassion to call the book's observations "short."
Not that the reviewers had any palpable effect. Mackay had already taken his case to the people, and they couldn't get to the bookstores fast enough. Sharks arrived on the Publishers Weekly best-seller list on April 1, debuting in the 13th slot. Nine days later, it won the number-3 spot on the New York Times list, under the odd category of "Advice, How-to and Miscellaneous," where it competed with cholesterol cures and eventually nudged out Elizabeth Taylor. "I'm on top of Elizabeth," became Mackay's favorite joke. When the hardbound edition fell off on February 26, 1989, the paperback showed up at number 5.
Success as an author translated into popularity as a speaker. During one nine-day period, Mackay gave 13 speeches. "Usually a hot book lasts a year," says Joe Cosby, chief executive of Cosby Bureau International Inc., Mackay's scheduler. "But Harvey has been going for a full two years. He doesn't need a second book." He estimates Mackay could bring in $3 million a year in speeches, if he wanted to. "The book has pushed me onto the national stage," Mackay says, "and I don't mind it at all."
Of course, the book didn't push him anywhere. He pushed himself onto that stage, using the book as his battering ram. Nevertheless, it's not an easy place to stay; it's filled with trapdoors. The fickle public can turn away at any moment. Just ask Kenneth Blanchard about the books he wrote after his best-seller. "When you are unknown, nobody is trying to knock you down, but now they want to take shots," he says. "The second book was nice, but it wasn't as important to me. I had other things going on. I wasn't as focused." Few successful business authors repeat themselves. John Naisbitt, of Megatrends fame, could not reinvent a best-seller, and Mark H. McCormack, author of What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School, discovered the terrible truth with his follow-up.
As after any killer product, there is immediate pressure from everyone who benefited -- in Mackay's case, the publisher, the agent, the readers. Before making any decisions, he talked to authors and publishers. He isolated the three reasons that second books tended to fail: the author has nothing to say, can't be as committed, and has trouble getting exposure. "All the talk shows say, 'Oh, we just had him,' " Mackay notes.
But Mackay felt he could overcome these problems. He could come up with plenty to say, based on the 15,000 letters he'd received and the questions he was asked during appearances and on 150 talk shows. He loved promoting Sharks. Plus, he believed his prominence was helping boost envelope sales. In Minnesota, where he had become a celebrity, company sales grew 13% in 1988, compared with 7% the year before.
Over the spring and summer of 1989, he wrote Beware the Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt mostly on airplanes. "All I wanted to do was put out the best possible product -- call it a book -- that I could," he says. Having already created a very successful product, he simply enhanced it a bit. Instead of focusing on relationships between companies and customers, he turned his gaze inward, toward employee-employer relations. But the format changed not one whit: slick, colorful, humorous, and fast -- very, very fast. Something that could be read, to be sure. More to the point, he hoped, it was something that could be sold.
* * *
Despite his indisputable success, Harvey Mackay is still treated as an outsider in the clubby publishing business. He gets little respect, grouses his agent.
Jonathon Lazear has read the scathing reviews, heard the snide comments about Mackay's addiction to hype. "Harvey has taken a beating," says Lazear, who works in Nikes and a sweat suit, a counterpoint to his hyperkinetic client. "It surprised me because all he did was do his homework. It was calculated, and maybe he was too gleeful about it. But you feel protected when you know the facts. Harvey knew the facts, and he was damned for that. Publishing is a business. He took it for what it is."
It is also, he might add, a consumer-driven business, hence as unpredictable as toys or clothes. Back-to-back successes are rare. Granted, this time Mackay has greater resources; his advance from Morrow is "astoundingly larger," according to Lazear. Some put it as high as $2.5 million. Instead of 26 cities, he will visit at least 35 -- but pay for none. There were no disagreements over the size of the 400,000-book first printing, or the unusual title, which Mackay says he adapted from an African proverb. But most of his moves will be exactly the same. He has designed a pin, a naked man (from the back, to avoid anatomical offense) wearing running shoes and carrying a briefcase. He has held focus groups on the title (he rejected a favorite, There's No Off Switch on a Tiger) and he's planning a return trip to Ingram because the telemarketing staff may have turned over. And not just his face, but his whole body -- clothed, mind you -- appears on the cover of Beware the Naked Man.
