2002 Pulitzer Winners Announced -- Publishers and Booksellers Work to Market Winning Titles

On Monday, April 8, winners of the Pulitzer Prize in literature were announced, recognizing work in fiction, drama, history, biography, poetry, and general nonfiction. The news sent booksellers and publishers to the computers and the phones -- as stores scrambled to fill orders and publishers pulled out the stops to shorten the production cycle of reprints and get additional copies of the winning titles into the inventory pipeline.

Among those honored were Richard Russo, whose novel, Empire Falls (Knopf), a poignant story about a "decent man encircled by history and dreams" in a down-and-out town in Maine, was recognized for distinguished fiction by an American author. Also winning was David McCullough, for his epic biography of the second president of the U.S., John Adams (S&S). It was McCullough's second presidential-related Pulitzer; previously, he had won for Truman in 1993.

The other book winners for this year's prizes were Topdog/Underdog (Theatre Communications Group), by Susan-Lori Parks, for drama; The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (FSG), by Louis Menand, for history; Practical Gods (Penguin Books), by Carl Dennis, for poetry; and Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution (S&S/Touchstone), by Diane McWhorter, for general nonfiction.

Booksellers contacted by BTW said that they expected to see a spike in the sales of the winning titles in the coming days. In anticipation, publishers were heading back to press.

Adam Rothberg, S&S VP and director of corporate communication, said the house had seen "significant activity around our Pulitzer-winning titles." While there were already 1.5 million copies of John Adams in print, S&S has gone back to press for an additional 15,000 copies of Carry Me Home, and Rothberg said that "we will be repackaging to reflect its Pulitzer-winning status."

Meanwhile, Random House was rushing to get the new, Vintage trade paperback edition of Empire Falls to stores on April 12. The title had originally been given a May 7 on-sale date, but Random House decided to expedite the schedule after the Pulitzer news was announced. At Farrar, Straus, Spenser Lee, VP, director of sales, said that the publisher was putting a rush on a 50,000-copy print run of The Metaphysical Club, which he hoped would be shipping in approximately two weeks.

At Chaucer’s Books in Santa Barbara, California, Diann Sullivan, a buyer, worked to order copies of the winning titles and to update title information in the computerized inventory control system. "We definitely scramble for these titles, and we always assume that the Pulitzer translates into sales," she said. -- Dan Cullen