Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind (10 page)

Before
Gone With the Wind
caught its eye, Macmillan was famously conservative in the publishing industry for its approach to book promotion. On the theory that marketing campaigns could not transform just any title into a bestseller, the publisher spent advertising dollars only on those books that had some special quality suggesting that the investment would be worthwhile. Even then, the firm proceeded with caution. Splashy campaigns with blatant ballyhoo and extravagant superlatives were not the firm's style, except in rare cases.
²⁸

Mitchell's manuscript did not have any obvious earmarks of being one of those exceptions. Written by an unknown author, the story was long and took place during a thorny era of American history. The characters did not fall into neat categories; whether Scarlett and Rhett were to be admired or reviled was not clear. Perhaps most troubling, the story had an unresolved ending. Still, Latham and Blanton believed the book had terrific potential and had gone to bat for it at the December sales conference. They had convinced the sales team to give it a prime spot in Macmillan's spring catalog, a remarkable feat in and of itself. But did the book deserve more?

In February 1936, as the galleys finally circulated within the firm, Latham, Blanton, and Cole must have breathed a sigh of relief. The book was as good as they had predicted—maybe better. The pages passed from person to person with growing excitement. One of the first to read
Gone
With the Wind
was treasurer and business manager Richard Brett. His daughters recall their father bringing sections of the galleys with him in the evenings to read on the train ride home to Fairfield, Connecticut. He raved about it so much that they had to jockey with their mother over who got to read the pages next. The girls spent several nights stretched out on the floor or curled up on the couch poring over the long sheets of paper. On more than one occasion, Elizabeth Brett arrived late to pick up her daughters at the train station after school because she had been at home reading.
²⁹
In Atlanta, Norman Berg, trade manager of Macmillan's southeastern office, took portions of the novel along with him on a camping trip and stayed up reading by flashlight. At three o'clock in the morning, friends recall, he dashed out of his tent, proclaiming
Gone With the Wind
“the finest book ever written.”
³⁰

With reactions like this, Macmillan decided that Mitchell deserved some ballyhoo. Her book would be given a national marketing campaign; rumor had it that Macmillan was budgeting the most advertising dollars ever for a first-time author. Cole shared the exciting news with the Marshes in response to an inquiry from them on February 9 about how they should handle their many friends in the Southern press who were interested in running stories about the book.

A few days earlier,
Gone With the Wind
had generated its first headline in a piece by Yolande Gwin, society columnist for the
Atlanta Constitution
: “Margaret Mitchell's Novel Depicts Three Major Periods.” Gwin explained that the story covered the antebellum, war, and Reconstruction eras and was scheduled for publication that spring.
³¹
It was a watershed moment for Mitchell. “Until I read your article about me, I didn't really feel like an author,” she wrote Gwin. “I've worked so hard and been so tired and sick that the only emotion I could feel was one of numbed relief that the stuff was out of my hands and in the mail. And I wasn't thrilled or excited, as I've always heard authors are. And I felt irritably, that I was being cheated out of whatever fun there was in writing.” But, she said, seeing her name in the headline stopped Mitchell in her tracks: “My heart began to bump and I stopped feeling numb and suddenly, I felt like an author!” She thanked Gwin for her kind words and “bringing me back to life again.”
³²

Atlantans, pleased to read of Mitchell's success, inundated her with questions and congratulations. She joked of having a bad case of “author's feet,” an ailment caused by being forced to stand on the sidewalk and explain to everyone who stopped her that she had written a book and that it would be out soon.
³³
Realizing things were starting to heat up, the Marshes wanted Cole's guidance on how to handle the local press over the coming weeks. As Marsh explained, “The situation is that about 95 per cent of all of our friends—both Peggy's and mine—are newspaper people. They are scattered all over Georgia and they include both the high and the low, folks on the big dailies and on the little country weeklies.” Marsh anticipated that once the local papers got a head of steam going about Mitchell, there would be no stopping them. The Marshes wondered how to hold off press attention until the book's actual release and also worried about how to distribute information to the local papers in an evenhanded manner.
³⁴

Incredulous that the couple wanted to keep Mitchell's name out of the newspapers, Cole told Marsh to let his wife discuss the book as much as she wanted. In a situation like this, Cole said, she would not “dream of shushing anyone or anything.”
³⁵
As for keeping their friends in the Southern press happy, the editor told the Marshes not to bother. Macmillan planned to focus its promotion of
Gone With the Wind
on the major urban markets. She warned Marsh that Macmillan would not bother sending review copies to many of the Georgia papers. Promotional copies, she explained, would be directed to the major national newspapers, since Macmillan aimed to cover the entire country, and even then, only to places where a review would generate a volume of sales. The Marshes' newspaper friends, Cole said, would have to understand that the purpose of reviews was, after all, to sell books.

While pleased her book merited a national campaign, Mitchell felt Macmillan was shortsighted to neglect the Southern papers. In the author's mind, the novel would have little chance of success if it were not accepted below the Mason-Dixon Line. Although today
Gone With the Wind
is considered the quintessential Southern American novel, before its release Mitchell feared fellow Southerners would not appreciate her depiction of the Old South. She descended from Confederates and respected the memory of their suffering but was no unreconstructed rebel. Her book did not celebrate the Lost Cause or take pride in the institutions of slavery and the Ku Klux Klan.

In
Gone With the Wind
, Mitchell presented four distinct Southern viewpoints on the Civil War and the Confederacy. Scarlett, the main female character, is a self-centered belle who pines for the Confederacy when it suits her but just as readily associates with carpetbaggers. As Mitchell described her, she “does practically every thing that a lady of the old school should not do.”
³⁶
Rhett, the lead male character, is cynical about the South and scoffs at its hypocrisy. Ashley, landed gentry, slave owner, and Confederate soldier, fights for the ways of the past but crumbles when faced with adjusting to the realities of life off the plantation. Steel magnolia Melanie, who represents the Old South, dies after much suffering. Only Scarlett and Rhett, the two ill-mannered characters who refuse to cling to the past, thrive and carry on to help build the New South. Mitchell worried that influential groups such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans would balk at her portrayals. As she explained, “I was a little frightened because, while I had written nothing that was not true, nothing that I could not prove and much that I heard, as a child, from eyewitnesses of that era, I feared some of it might not set well upon Southerners. I suppose Southerners have been lambasted so often and so hard, in print, that they have become unduly sensitive.”
³⁷
She also wondered whether Confederate veterans and their descendants would resent that the story focused on Scarlett, a strong female character. Mitchell feared that any negative reaction in her home state would cast a pall on the book's integrity and impede its acceptance elsewhere.

As a former newspaperwoman, she felt the best way to generate enthusiasm for the book in the South would be through the Southern press. If Macmillan could not see that, it would fall upon her to advance the book among the home team. Mitchell did not debate the issue with Cole but provided her a list of key editors and publishers at Southern newspapers that she felt must receive a review copy. Of special importance to Mitchell were John Paschall, her former boss at the
Atlanta Journal
; Clark Howell of the
Atlanta Constitution
and a director of the Associated Press; and Bill Howland of the Nashville
Banner
, who, Mitchell joked, would write a glowing review “regardless of how rotten” the novel was and “cram it down” his book editor's throat.
³⁸
She identified editors of several smaller papers as well and sent Macmillan a detailed explanation why each merited the investment of a promotional copy. Beyond that, Mitchell and Marsh would work behind the scenes to court the favor of the regional papers whose support they thought essential. This lady author's life was sorely lacking in leisure.

Gone With the Wind
was good—damn good—but it would not sell itself. Although the generous advertising budget would help, that was not enough to satisfy the ambitions of Macmillan's editorial department. To create a bestseller, a publisher needs word-of-mouth excitement or, in modern terms, buzz. Without it, a publisher can run full-page ads in the
New York
Times
and offer free copies of a book in Times Square and find no takers.
³⁹
While the Macmillan travelers were doing their part by spreading the word to the industry rank and file, Latham and Cole were doing yeoman's work to get the word out on a national and international scale.

On a scouting trip to England that February, Latham spent time promoting
Gone With the Wind
to British publishers, hoping to find one willing to release its own edition of the book. Having a British edition would lend Mitchell an air of import and credibility and add a few dollars to the bottom line. The editor focused on Macmillan's London affiliate, Macmillan & Company, Ltd., the former parent company of the American publishing house and its current majority stockholder. Although the two firms were independent organizations, they remained allies. The Bretts' father and grandfather had worked closely with the Macmillan family who controlled the London house, and the Brett brothers enjoyed a good working relationship with the younger generation of Macmillans. The New York office normally gave London first chance to obtain British rights on its books, and the London office returned the favor on its titles. Giving preferential treatment to an affiliated overseas publisher—known as “courtesy of the trade”—was a regular practice in those days. It was an efficient system that allowed large firms with British and American counterparts ready access to a supply of new books. At the same time, the good ol' boy aspect of the practice stifled competition among publishers, artificially dampening the market. Adversely affected were the authors, who lost the opportunity for their work to be sold to the highest overseas bidder. Although she never knew it, Mitchell would become one of many victims of this antiquated system.

During his visit, Latham spoke with both Harold and Daniel Macmillan, the two brothers who ran the London house, and described
Gone With
the Wind
as a major novel worthy of special attention. Despite the editor's best efforts though, the London house could not be sold on the book sight unseen. The brothers would wait to see the galleys. Sensing the Macmillans were reluctant to back an unknown housewife-turned-author, Latham hedged his bets and touted the book to other British publishers. His main target was the Glasgow firm of William Collins and Sons, which had recently acquired other titles that Macmillan London had turned down. Latham must have done his work well because, by the end of February, several British firms, including Collins, were queuing up for a chance to bid, all waiting for the Macmillan brothers to make up their minds.