Sometimes the Magic Works Read Free

up the book for a small print run in hardcover. The Literary Guild’s selection was assured.
    Twenty-eight months later, in April 1977,
The Sword of Shannara
was released in trade paperback and hardcover formats. My book, my dream. It did very well—better than very well. It became the first work of fiction ever to land on the
New York Times
Trade Paperback Best-Seller List, and it stayed there for over five months, most of the time in the top five. It was written up by Frank Herbert in the
New York Times Book Review
, an extraordinary event. The
New York Times
almost never bothers with fantasy and even when it does, allots no more than a paragraph. The review for
Sword
covered half a page. Neither overly enthusiastic nor unfairly critical, it was a balanced, fair assessment of a first-time author’s efforts.
    Thus my writing career was successfully launched.
    But, as Paul Harvey would say, here is the rest of the story.
    The writer Elizabeth Engstrom gives a talk in which she discusses the factors that most influence whether or not an aspiring writer will be published. At the top of her list, she places Luck. With a capital L. Let me tell you about Luck as it applies to the success of
The Sword of Shannara
.
    I did not find out what I am about to relate until many years after the book was in print. By then I was no longer quite so naÏve about the business, which made what I discovered all the more mind-boggling. Lester himself told me one day while we were visiting at his home in New York City. He did so in a matter-of-fact way, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I masked my astonishment mostly because I knew I would need time to think things over later.
    This is what he told me.
    When I submitted my manuscript in the spring of 1974, Ron Busch, then president of Ballantine Books, had just hired Judy-Lynn del Rey to run the science fiction division. He was negotiating, through her, to hire her husband, Lester, to work for the company, as well. When Judy-Lynn received my manuscript, all eight-hundred-plus pages, she was impressed enough by the letter from Don Wollheim not to dismiss it out of hand. But her publishing background was not in fantasy; it was in science fiction. So she gave the book to Lester to read.
    You have to understand Lester to appreciate what happened next. Lester was opinionated, argumentative, and a curmudgeon of the first rank. He prided himself on being able to argue any point of view and would switch sides in the middle of a debate without skipping a beat. He was also a brilliant editor. I would hear from those who worked with him over the next fifteen years that he was one of the great editors of the twentieth century. Together with Judy-Lynn, he launched successfully the careers of a dozen major fantasy and science fiction authors and resurrected or reinvented the careers of a dozen more. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, they turned Del Rey Books into the number one publisher of science fiction and fantasy.
    But in 1974, before he was even hired by Ballantine as an editor, he began this crusade with
The Sword of Shannara
.
    The perception in publishing at the time was that fantasy did not sell, that its readership was small and not broad based, and that the potential for expansion was limited. Yes, J. R. R. Tolkien had sold hundreds of thousands of copies of
The Lord of the Rings
and
The Hobbit
. But that was because he was J. R. R. Tolkien, and no one else was. Fantasy, as a form of category fiction, was too esoteric to be widely marketable.
    Lester believed that this was horse pucky. He believed the market was huge, the readership vast and hungry, and the potential for sales enormous.
    He decided to use
The Sword of Shannara
to prove his point.
    He did so by telling Ron Busch that he would take the editorial position being offered. He would work with Judy-Lynn at Ballantine Books, where they would launch a science fiction/fantasy imprint. But Ron must agree to