Word: bantam
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LILA by Robert M. Pirsig; Bantam; 409 pages...
...from 65 million in 1986 to about 48 million currently. Many weight-loss clinics across the nation have closed or are failing. People are also losing their appetite for diet books. "The past couple of years have been relatively light on diet best sellers," says Stuart Applebaum of Bantam Books. Another reflection of the changing standards: makers of liquid and powder diets are avoiding bone-thin models and choosing heftier people to hawk their products. TV host Cristina Ferrare, Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda and ex-New York City mayor Ed Koch hardly qualify as sylphs...
...cheers along parade routes and pleas to run for office. What more is left for General Norman Schwarzkopf than that final ratification of modern-day success, the best-selling autobiography? For months publishers have been salivating at the prospect of putting Schwarzkopf's life and thoughts between covers. Now Bantam Books has won the right to publish his memoirs, for a hefty price: more than $5 million for worldwide rights, probably the most ever paid for a nonfiction work...
...story is going to have a very, very broad popular appeal," says Linda Grey, Bantam's president and publisher. "He exemplifies a lot of things that we are looking for in this country: moral centeredness, traditional values, courage and also a kind of competence and leadership." Bantam has a track record with such inspirational life stories. In 1984 it scored a success with Lee Iacocca's autobiography (2.6 million hard-cover sales in the U.S. and Canada), and it had another in 1985 with Chuck Yeager's right-stuff memoirs (1.2 million...
...that measure, Bantam is the latest big winner. Whether its victory turns out to be Pyrrhic, however, will depend on what General Schwarzkopf has to say -- and whether the American public, with its fleeting attention span for celebrities, still wants to hear...