John Grisham on his First Novel, A Time to Kill
“It Wasn’t The First Fortune I Lost Practicing Law”
One of the best-known stories about John Grisham is how he got his start. But there’s another story not often talked about of how he lost a fortune.
The young lawyer was turned down by every publisher his agent approached until a startup, Wynwood Press, agreed to publish his first novel, A Time to Kill. The tiny New York publishing house printed 5,000 copies and Grisham bought a thousand. The book didn’t sell.
He had to do something with the books he’d bought. The boxes were swallowing up his house.
“Out of desperation, I went to my local library and said, ‘Hey buddy, I’ll take this show on the road.’” He visited thirty-five Mississippi libraries for book signing parties.
“The smaller the town the bigger the crowd,” he says, because, well, what else are you going to do in a small town?
The local Friends of the Library would make tea and cookies, and they’d have a party. For six weeks he sold A Time to Kill out of the trunk of his car.
“I was trying to unload the books. I finally sold nine hundred. I kept a hundred because I ran out of time. I’m now down to about sixty.”
When his second novel, The Firm, launched a few years later, whenever Grisham walked into a bookstore, he would still see unsold copies of A Time to Kill on the shelf. He’d buy every one of them. And it’s a good thing he did.
He never dreamed those original hardback books Wynwood Press published would today be worth about $3,000 each. “They’re well protected,” Grisham says with a grin.
“At one point I had a thousand copies in my office and Wynwood screwed up and sent me two thousand. I sent a thousand back…For a couple of weeks I had 2,000 copies, worth $6 million today. It wasn’t the first fortune I lost practicing law.”
I’m novelist Rick Pullen, former investigative reporter, magazine editor, and author of the best selling thriller Naked Ambition, its sequel Naked Truth, and a stand-alone thriller The Apprentice. I’m also a magazine columnist and feature writer.
Thanks for reading Idol Talk! Subscribe for free or support my work with a paid subscription. — Rick Pullen