Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [157]
Dick had the guts to go for a major reprint when he thought it was the right moment and—far harder—to risk going out of stock rather than reprinting when he felt that the sales curve was descending. The latter strategy drove the Mansfields wild with rage, and they called at every hour of the day and night, threatening, cursing, begging, and demanding for more printings. The book was number one on the Times list, they saw it running out of the stores, and the possibility that we might run out of books petrified them. But Dick, a cooler player by far, could sense that sales had peaked and also understood that there were plenty of books in the pipeline, even if they were invisible to the Mansfields or to S&S’s own sales department. There were books at the jobbers, books in trucks and in transit all over the United States, and cartons of books in the storerooms of bookstores that could be moved to stores where the demand was stronger. Dick was determined not to give back the profit S&S had made by ending up with a warehouse full of returns or, worse still, of overprinted books.
When the Mansfields complained bitterly to Shimkin, Dick still refused to give in, with the dual result that we had very nearly a “clean sale” of The Love Machine and that the Mansfields never forgave him. “If I could say no to Jackie and Irving, I could say no to anyone,” he said later, summing up a crucial learning experience, but what in fact mattered even more was that Dick gained absolute faith in his own ability and the sense that he could control the process, as well as the loyalty of everybody at S&S who had been involved. He always argued that it was better to be lucky than smart, but for the moment he was lucky and smart—a hard combination to beat.
We had taken S&S from the shame and ignominy of defeat to a dazzling position of success. We were suddenly a hot house, with the number-one best-selling novel and, simultaneously, the number-one best-selling nonfiction book, The Last Battle, Cornelius Ryan’s account of the fall of Berlin in 1945. Many of the agents who only a few months previously had been doubtful about sending us manuscripts at all were now on the telephone offering us their major clients.
It was a curious time. In keeping with his familiar techniques of personnel management, Shimkin had not as yet rewarded us in any significant way for bringing S&S back from the brink. Apparently having failed to learn from Bob’s departure, he seemed to feel that the excitement of working long days and nights was all the reward we needed and would serve as an incentive to work harder still. In a sense, of course, he was right. Dick often said (though not to Shimkin) that he would have paid for the privilege of working at S&S in those days, and it was not much of an exaggeration. To be in one’s mid-thirties and suddenly successful is heady stuff—there is probably no other period in life when success means as much or when it is so much fun, before one’s lifestyle makes success mandatory, before one gets old enough to feel the hot breath of younger competitors, before the price of all those long hours and easy temptations has to be paid in failed marriages and broken promises. All that was still ahead, and in the meantime, for one glorious moment, we had grabbed the brass ring. Everything we did seemed to turn to gold, and if we did not have the big salaries or stock options or bonuses that were later to assume such importance (life expands inevitably to absorb income, however high), we were working hard, the office was full of pretty girls (at a time in which it was not yet a provocation to use the phrase), and every moment of the day seemed exciting and full of promise.
With what little could be pried from Shimkin in the form of raises, the Snyders moved to a large apartment on Central Park West, while Casey and I moved to an apartment near Sutton Place. Between the hours and the temptations of the workplace, the Snyders’ marriage