Word: bantams
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...Ruskin in 1865, "the books of the hour, and the books of all time." He would have been surprised to find his declaration taken literally. Only eleven days after the ghastly events in Guyana had been disclosed to the world, two paperbacks with $2.50 price tags hit the stands: Bantam's The Suicide Cult and Berkley's Guyana Massacre. Produced by teams of journalists, the "instant" books, as they are known in the trade, feature photographs, background chapters on the Peoples Temple and firsthand accounts by reporters who had accompanied Representative Leo Ryan on his fatal journey...
...Bantam, the production of a paperback original in just over a week was nothing new; The Suicide Cult was its 64th extra (among others: The Pentagon Papers, 90 Minutes at Entebbe, The Pope's Journey to the United States). No sooner had a Bantam senior editor learned of the murderous assault on Ryan and his party, via a 2 a.m. phone call from Bantam's publicity representative in San Francisco, than the wheels were set in motion. By Monday, Bantam's Editor in Chief Marc Jaffe was on the phone with San Francisco Chronicle Managing Editor William...
Javers had filed his initial report to the Chronicle from San Juan, P.R. A day later, while he was recovering from surgery at the Andrews Air Force Base hospital outside Washington, a Bantam editor was on the phone proposing a deal. Within hours, the Chronicle had assembled a team of 15 reporters to work with Javers and Co-Author Marshall Kilduff, who had been investigating Peoples Temple activities in California for two years...
...like Georgetown," Krause recalled. "I was being held captive." At first dictating his recollections and later doing his own typing, Krause assembled his account in five days, while Post Editors Laurence Stern and Richard Harwood filled in the background. Their book went on sale the same day as Bantam...
...remains: Are these "quickies" merely commercial ventures for publishers, or do they represent responsible efforts to record and interpret dramatic world events? Profits, it so happens, are likely to be marginal, given the extra shipping, printing and overtime costs that result from speeding up production. In the case of Bantam's Guyana special, these costs amounted to a high five figures. A majority of instant books break even, but some-notably The President's Trip to China and The White House Transcripts-were financial failures, with returns as high as 60%. The Pentagon Papers was their biggest success...