My First Time: Lee Zacharias

My First Lesson Learned
If book tours were a thing when Houghton Mifflin published my first novel in 1981, I’m sure I would have had one. My publisher had big expectations: ads in the Washington Post and New York Times, an auction for paperback rights with a minimum bid of six figures, a first press run of 30,000 copies. That the novel didn't sell anywhere near 30,000 copies, that the one company offering the minimum six figures was immediately sold to another that was iffy about my novel—let’...