Date: 4.15.2002
Few people have ever gone broke underestimating the taste of the book-buying public. Certainly not Judith Regan.
Judith Regan, 48, orders a double espresso while commenting that she can't sleep. "I am hyperalert and highly sensitive to any stimulation," she says, gesticulating nervously. She is talking about her hypersensitivities as a way of explaining her instinct for picking bestselling books.
"Gut feeling is what I go on," she says at a fast clip. "I could tell my husband cheated on me by the way he walked in the front door."
The instinct is working, at least for book picking. In the last two years Regan's imprint, ReganBooks, a unit of News Corp.'s HarperCollins, has put 18 titles on the New York Times bestseller list, a feat no other small publishing house comes close to matching. In recent weeks she's had four on the list: The Lost Son, by Bernard Kerik; In the Line of Duty, a collection of 9/11 photos; Family, by Mario Puzo, and most recently, Stupid White Men and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation, by Michael Moore.
ReganBooks has had a remarkable run in the seven years it has been part of News Corp. In the fiscal year ended June 30, Regan's unit earned 22% pretax on its $100 million in sales. This in an industry where a 6% return is the norm--and where a slump sent retail book sales down 2.6% last year from a miserable 2000.
Regan's critics say it's no big deal to sell lots of books when you're selling--as they put it--exploitation, opportunism and pandering to the lowest common denominator. She's been called a "pop vulture," a "tabloid-trained carpetbagger," and once, "the demise of Western civilization." Last year half of her bestselling authors were professional wrestlers.
Regan comes up with most of her ideas herself and often signs unknown authors, thereby avoiding the killing advances that better-known writers command. Insanity is what she calls the $8 million advance Warner Books paid for Jack Welch's autobiography. Publishers usually sell to stores at about half the book's cover price, so Warner gets about $15 for each Welch book. With 720,000 copies sold so far, an impressive amount, Warner would gross $10.8 million. But because of the huge advance and marketing costs, that still doesn't guarantee a profit to the publisher. "All I can think is that the publisher wanted to have lunch with Welch," says Regan.
Her series on "The Zone" diet was written by Barry Sears, a medical researcher, not a medical doctor, whom she personally had used to treat her premenstrual syndrome. After her condition improved, she talked Sears into writing a book and paid a $75,000 advance. Ten Zone books and 4 million copies later, they've reached a total of $52 million in retail sales.
What about her slam-down with the stars of World Wrestling Federation? "Nobody else wanted them. The wrestlers had a huge franchise, loyal fans and growing stardom." The nine WWF books she's published cost her a few hundred thousand in licensing fees--mere popcorn in publishing. They have sold 3.5 million copies, accounting for $40 million in retail sales.
Regan was the first publisher to turn out books pegged to the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. In a matter of weeks she was selling In the Line of Duty and The Anti-Terror Checklist, which she commissioned when she couldn't reach her daughter on Sept. 11.
Regan got heat. The New York Times published a critical article in which David Rosenthal, publisher at Viacom's Simon & Schuster, likened the selling of these books to "setting up a lemonade stand at a nuclear blast site." Since then S&S' Free Press unit rushed out Holy War, Inc., by Peter Bergan, and others of a similar ilk. Snaps Regan, "They're hypocrites."
She began her publishing career at the National Enquirer, then worked as a TV producer at Entertainment Tonight and Geraldo--not exactly conventional training for literati. But there's another side, she argues fiercely. "Yes, I worked for a tabloid, but I also have a degree in literature from Vassar and did my thesis on Shakespeare."
Her colorful personal life, including a divorce and custody battle, are well chronicled in the tabloids. Regan can pick a fight as quickly as she picks an author. She's had several scuffles with the police: "My ex-husband hit me, and I get arrested," she says.
She should have been arrested for assigning an autobiography by Jenny McCarthy called Jen-X. This MTV hostess, who started her career posing for Playboy, refused to work at promoting the book. Regan's lesson: "Never deal with airhead blondes!" Weeks ago Regan canceled another potential blonde bomb--a tell-all book by Donald Trump's former wife Marla Maples. Revelations about wild deals don't hurt; in mass-market publishing there is no such thing as bad publicity.
Regan's gut instinct hasn't worked quite as brilliantly in other media. She says four movies are still in development. Her two TV specials and a miniseries were well received. Her own TV show, Judith Regan Tonight, is on Saturday and Sunday nights at midnight on Fox, drawing a modest 350,000 viewers recently.
Maybe not the next Jay Leno, but she's not cowering before her critics. Summing up, she says, "They're snobs."
Bad Ending
Publishing is hit-driven; most books lose money. Here's a Hardcover priced at $25 ($11.75 goes to the publisher) with Initial sales of 24,000, of which retailers send back 36%.
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