I have learned a great truth of life. We do not succeed in spite of our challenges and difficulties, but rather, precisely because of them.
THE LOOKING GLASS
MORE THAN A MONTH after Christmas, I received a phone call from a local bookstore. The clerk at the store had been going through the Salt Lake City white pages calling all the Richard Evanses. There are more than a dozen such entries in the Salt Lake phone book and by the time she got to me, she had already called half of them.
“Hello, Mr. Evans?”
“Yes.”
“Did you write a Christmas book?”
“Yes . . .”
“The Christmas Box?”
“Yes,” I again replied.
There was an audible sigh of relief. “Oh, good.”
“Who is this?”
She said she was calling from a local bookstore. “We’d like to know where we can order your book,” she said.
“You can’t order it. It’s never been published.”
There was momentary silence, then she said, “But we’ve had ten orders for your book this week. Ten orders is pretty good for any book,” she continued, “but for a Christmas book in February, well, that’s unheard of. Maybe you should get your book published.”
As I hung up the phone, I considered her suggestion. Why not? I thought.
•
All I knew about getting a book published was that it’s nearly impossible. In the next few days I sent my few remaining copies of the book to local publishers. They wasted little time in returning them along with a rejection letter. Thanks but no thanks. A book like this would never sell.
Still, the phone calls continued from people wanting to talk about how “the book,” as it became known in our family, had affected them and asking where they could get copies of their own. By the time I received the last publisher’s rejection letter, I had already decided that I would publish my book myself—as soon as I figured out how to do it.
Around this time I had a peculiar experience. I was at the public library when, out of curiosity, I typed The Christmas Box into the library’s computer. Three different selections emerged. The title was already taken.
Disappointed, I began working on other titles for my book but always came back to The Christmas Box. A few days later we had some friends over and were playing the game Trivial Pursuit when the question was asked of me, “Can the title of a book be copyrighted?”
Peculiar timing, I thought. “Of course it can,” I replied.
“No, it cannot.”
I kept the title.
•
The first run of my book took nearly all of our savings. Eight thousand copies. I wasn’t really sure how many books I should print. The fact that I chose to print eight thousand copies illustrates my complete naïveté regarding the publishing world. I chose eight thousand because I could think of eight bookstores that I thought would carry my book and I guessed that the average book title probably sold a thousand copies per store. I would later learn that the actual figure is closer to two and a half.
The first printing came off the press in late September of 1993. Those copies do not read “First Printing” anywhere on them for the simple reason that I never considered that there might be a second.
•
There is something exhilarating about seeing your book in print for the first time. I suppose it’s like witnessing the birth of a child, with all the joy of creation and the inherent wonder of the future.
With a book in hand I began making calls to bookstores. It did not go well. The bookstores did not share my enthusiasm. I learned that the retail book business does not take self-published books seriously. “Vanity publishing,” they call it, conclusive indication of a book’s lack of merit. In addition, it was simply too much of a bother for most bookstores to open an account for a publisher with only one book.
I was stuck with a mountain of books sitting in my printer’s warehouse. I believe that my printer felt sorry for me after taking all of my money (and wanted my books out of the warehouse) and so she gave me a list of book distributors in the West. I called a small distributorship in Salt Lake City called Publishers Distribution Center. The president of the company, Bill Beutler, happened to answer the phone. I introduced myself, told him that I had recently written a book and was now looking for a distributor. I asked if he would be interested.
“We reject about ninety percent of what the publishers bring to us,” he said. “Who’s your publisher?”
I reluctantly admitted that I was self-published, but then told him about how the book was being passed on and about the call from the bookstore. He agreed to read it and I delivered it to him that very afternoon. I called back the following Monday and asked if he had had a chance to look at my book.
“I read it,” he said.
“What did you think?”
He was slightly hesitant and I braced for bad news. “I hate to admit it,” he said, “being a man, but it made me cry. Then my wife read it and she cried. She wants to give it to all of her friends this Christmas. We’d like to distribute your book. We think that you’re going to do well with it.”
I was elated. “How many copies do you think we’ll sell?” I asked.
“We might sell as many as three thousand copies.”
My heart sank. “Three thousand. Is that good?”
“Three thousand is very good. That’s what the popular local authors sell over a holiday season, and no one knows who you are.”
As I hung up the phone I thought, I’ll have Christmas presents for the rest of my life.
