Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind (13 page)

The prospect of delaying the book was cause for concern. Macmillan could not afford to throw away the ten thousand copies already produced bearing the May date but worried that having an inaccurate date on the copyright page might pose a problem when it came time to register the book's copyright. In addition, the firm had already spent a considerable amount of money and energy promoting the May release. Macmillan did not relish the idea of waiting indefinitely while the club made up its mind about which month to distribute the book. Despite these hurdles, the money and publicity associated with the club's offer were too good to pass up. The May release was canceled for both the American and Canadian editions of
Gone With the Wind
. As for the now incorrect copyright date in the first printing, Macmillan decided it should not matter as long as the actual book registered at the Library of Congress carried the correct date.
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This assumption would prove to be wrong, but for the time being all seemed well. The delay even came to be viewed as a blessing in disguise because it gave Macmillan additional time to ramp up its marketing and for reviewers to read the book.
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Mitchell's novel was now a guaranteed bestseller. Cole reveled in the success and wrote the author saying she had better be pleased.
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Mitchell replied, “Dearie, I was knocked flat when the news came.”
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Although the author's father expressed surprise that a “sensible” organization like the Book-of-the-Month Club would choose such a book
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and Marsh's family thought little of the club—“a few editors sitting around a table in New York were not going to select the books we would read,” his sister recalled—Mitchell could not help but be pleased.
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She would get half of the club's ten-thousand-dollar payment and half of any future royalties if the club sold more than fifty thousand copies. This was a remarkable sum of money, given that the average per capita income for a full-time worker in 1936 was $1,235.
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Gone With the Wind
appeared to be signaling the end of Mitchell and Marsh's financial worries.

After the book club announcement, the publishing industry chomped at the bit to read
Gone With the Wind
. The time had come to send out advance review copies, including the ones with Mitchell's signature bound inside. Contrary to Cole's earlier statement that Macmillan would distribute copies only in the major cities, it now prepared to send books to markets large and small, North and South. Publishers rarely invested advertising dollars so broadly, but Macmillan planned to take a chance on Mitchell, whose book was proving to have a unique appeal.

For the major urban areas, Macmillan had established relationships with the important newspapers and industry players. To pique their interest, George Brett sent personal appeals along with the books, encouraging the recipients to take a careful look at Mitchell's work, which he predicted would have a significant impact on the American literary scene.
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In the smaller markets, Macmillan relied on a new industry marketing tool to spread the word—the National Guild of Book Reviewers. The organization promoted book sales in small towns by bringing publishers and bookstores together to create word-of-mouth interest in new titles. Participating publishers selected books to be featured and sent review copies and promotional materials to participating stores. The store owners would then choose prominent persons in the area to review the books, display those reviews in their stores, and maybe pay to publish the reviews locally.
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More than three hundred small-town bookstores were scheduled to participate in a round of reviews to begin in the summer of 1936, and Macmillan probably had little trouble getting Mitchell's book selected as one of three featured titles.
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As soon as the publisher began shipping promotional copies, waves of enthusiastic responses began rolling in. Although formal reviews by book critics would not appear in newspapers and magazines until the release, the trade let Macmillan know it loved Mitchell's novel. A Midwestern bookseller had not been able to put it down and convinced seventy-eight friends to order copies, sight unseen. The fifteen-year-old daughter of Macmillan's Boston manager complained the book was not long enough.
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The head of a rental library appeared hollow-eyed and late to work on a Monday morning, saying she had started the book the previous afternoon and had been dragged away from it at 3:00 a.m. Her boss let her go home early to finish.
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A self-proclaimed “hard-boiled” bookseller from North Carolina described Mitchell as having all the attributes of a great writer—“a grasp of material, a sense of drama, and the most perfect faculty for choosing what is necessary in the enlargement of her narrative.” The woman felt Mitchell's satire was on par with Jane Austen's and predicted “immortality lies in store for our young lady.”
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A California bookseller called
Gone With the Wind
“the best novel on an American theme that has appeared in years and years” and upped his advance order from ten to one hundred copies. Another from Tennessee enthused, “Isn't it gorgeous? Was such a book ever written before? Not in America, I daresay.”
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This reaction was music to Macmillan's ears yet also cause for concern. The company wanted booksellers to be excited about the book but not go overboard in a way that could jeopardize the release. Specifically, Macmillan did not want any copies of the book to fall into the hands of the general public before the publication date. Review copies had to be distributed early, of course, but if copies of a new title reached the public prior to registration, the copyright could be jeopardized. In particular, if a book was released in the United States prior to distribution in Canada, even on a small scale, the publisher might not be able to invoke “backdoor” Berne coverage.

Most publishers, Macmillan included, followed a strict rule that, other than review copies, new books were not to be circulated before publication, even to family and friends of the author or of book retailers. Everyone in the industry knew there would be hell to pay if a copyright was jeopardized by early distribution. If a bookstore released a title early, the seller would be blacklisted from receiving new releases in the future. Mitchell's book would test the limits of this honor system, even within Macmillan itself. The temptation to share the book proved irresistible to Cole, whose enthusiasm got the better of her that April when she sent a copy of
Gone With the Wind
to National Broadcasting Corporation executive Lewis Titterton, a mutual friend of the Taylors and Marshes. Titterton's wife, Nancy, had been recently murdered and Cole thought the book might help take his mind off matters. In a letter that would make any lawyer defending Macmillan's copyright cringe, Cole admitted to Mitchell that doing so was in violation of company rules.
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It appears Macmillan's Atlanta office may have broken the rule as well. On April 27, Mitchell signed and dated several books to be sent as review copies to Southern newspapers. In the process, she seems to have gotten her hands on at least two copies of the book. A first printing of
Gone With the
Wind
inscribed by her to Margaret Baugh “with thanks for her patience with a new author” contains in Mitchell's handwriting the date May 1, 1936.
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And the author had at least one other early copy, as indicated in a letter to Cole on May 5 in which Mitchell describes reviewing the first printing for errors. It was slow going, she told Cole. “I can't even endure to look at the book because I nearly throw up at the sight of it. One shouldn't feel that way about one's first and only child and I hope I'll recover but the sight of it reminds me of the nightmare of getting it ready.” She forced herself to go through it again and identified several typographical errors that she sent on to Macmillan for correction in future printings.
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Later that month, at Mitchell's request, Cole again broke the rule against early distribution and sent the author six copies of
Gone With the
Wind
to share with family. In her transmittal letter, Cole acknowledged that having these extra copies floating around before publication day could “very seriously jeopardize” the copyright but said the company was willing to make an exception with the understanding that Mitchell did not distribute them beyond members of her immediate family.
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The book club decision brought a sense of urgency to the movie rights issue. If Mitchell was going to hire an agent, now was the time. Although she had expressed an interest in Latham selling the rights for her in California, no formal arrangement had been made designating Macmillan her representative. Outside agents continued to plead their cases as well. One tried to harangue Cole into arranging an introduction to Mitchell, admitting that “agents are something like vultures, I suppose, and one is considered a poor business person unless one does most anything to get good material.”
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Williams also remained hopeful. She had a business trip to the South coming up and wanted to stop in Atlanta to talk things over with the author. Still hoping Macmillan could get its cut by acting as Mitchell's agent, this is the last thing Cole wanted, so she wrote Mitchell on April 21 telling her that, if she met with Williams, not to believe a word the agent said. Cole told the author that Williams was acting as if Mitchell had already hired her; Cole had had to correct the agent twice on the matter.
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On April 25, Williams telephoned Mitchell, hoping to set up a meeting. The agent caught the author at the end of a bad day when she was on her way out the door and in no mood to talk about the nagging question of the movie rights. Things went from bad to worse when Williams suggested that she had begun talking to studios on Mitchell's behalf. As the author later admitted to Cole, “I blew up” and told the agent that no such authority had been granted. It was “just the last straw of a day full of straws,” she said of her bad manners.
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The only inroad Williams made with the author was that Mitchell agreed to let the agent have a copy of the galleys.
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Thrilled to hear Mitchell had set the agent straight, Cole assured the author she had done the right thing. Williams, the editor said, had “a vicious tongue and isn't the sort of person a publisher can row with.”
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For reasons not specified in the Macmillan files, Latham apparently did not pursue the movie rights issue while on the West Coast and was already on his way back from California. However, the firm had no qualms about handling the job from New York and wanted to obtain Mitchell's official designation as her agent. Latham arranged to visit the author in Atlanta on April 29 to discuss, among other things, Macmillan's role in helping her sell the movie rights.
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Latham used his time in Atlanta wisely. He reassured Mitchell that the release would go well and tried to smooth over the rough edges that had cropped up in her relationship with Macmillan over the previous year on issues such as the copyediting and the reduction in royalties. He promised great things were in store for her and predicted that within six months she would have half the population of North America at her doorstep.
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Mitchell told Cole afterward that it was lucky he did not visit more often because “my head swelled enormously under his words and I spread my tail feathers like a peacock.”
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The editor and author also discussed the languishing issue of the role Mitchell would play in promoting
Gone With the Wind
. As a personal favor to Norman Berg of Macmillan's Atlanta office, Mitchell had promised to attend a celebration, either a tea or a cocktail party, to be hosted by the local office during release week.
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She also agreed to sign additional promotional copies for Berg to distribute among regional booksellers and had spent a day at his desk while Baugh wheeled in wooden crates full of books and placed them before her one at a time. She had even allowed herself to be talked into attending book signings at local department stores. Although she disliked the idea of appearing in front of a crowd, Mitchell felt she could not say no to Berg without appearing peculiar and ungracious.
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She also wanted to show her appreciation to the local stores that had expressed an interest in her.