The new bestsellers: titles with ready-made audiences and mega-media support are delivering new challenges and rewards to publishers.

Sunday, April 23, 2006, was not just an unusual day. It was a historic one. What occurred didn't make the front page of newspapers, but more than seven million readers of the New York Times were witnesses to the event. They were, that is, if they read with scrutiny the paper's closely followed best-selling books lists.

There atop the entries listed beneath the category "Paperback Best Sellers," with its one and a half dozen nonfiction titles, was entry No, 1, The Covenant With Black America. Among those readers who did take notice was Haki Madhubuti, founder and publisher of Chicago--based Third World Press. He read the Book Review that day with a subdued sense of satisfaction, and his characteristically calm demeanor underplayed the historic occasion.

The Covenant With Black America had just become the first title by an African American book publisher to reach the No. 1 position in the 60-year history of the New York Times' lists of best-sellers.

Not that Madhubuti wasn't proud of the accomplishment, nor was he arrogant about the success. For four weeks proceeding April 23, he watched as this latest book released by his publishing enterprise climbed steadily up the chart. He had every reason to believe that capturing one of the most coveted prizes in publishing was well within the realm of possibility--even for a so-called "serious black book." When it finally happened, it vindicated all that he had worked towards for nearly four decades.

Then, just as the buzz of celebration was taking hold throughout the publishing industry, it happened again. Another "black book" claimed a historic first just one week after The Covenant made news. And the circumstances could not have been more different than the story behind Third World Press' achievement.

Don't Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings: Madea's Uninhibited Commentaries on Love and Life (Riverhead Books) by Tyler Perry, earned the distinction of becoming the first book by an African American author to enter the New York Times list at No. 1. The nonfiction hardback is a collection of shoot-from-the-lip homespun wisdom as told in the voice of his alter ego, Madea Simmons. Perry's portrayal of the grandmotherly Madea in blockbuster movies and theatrical runs has been the foundation of his rapidly growing entertainment empire.

What accounts for the unexpected success of these two books? Are they part of a publishing trend? While each title took a different path to reach the coveted spot, these two works may have more in common than readily meets the eye. And there may be a message within their popularity that says something about the current disposition of African American book buyers and how booksellers can be more effective in the marketplace.

What they dearly share in common is the backing of an uncommonly strong foundation of support that led to record-breaking sales. Perry's platform was entertainment, specifically movies that transitioned his loveable character Madea from the stage to the screen. For Tavis Smiley, The Covenant's editor, the base was news and information, crowned by his ability to bring together topics of concern to African Americans, black experts and audiences--all in a way that inspired mass action.

The Covenant and Don't Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings tap into a uniquely African American context, one taken from black family traditions, the other from the continuing legacy of black struggle. But most importantly, both books benefited from an asset that is becoming increasingly fundamental to successful black book publishing: extensive publicity and media coverage.

When commentator and media personality Tavis Smiley approached Haki Madhubuti about publishing The Covenant, there was already reason to be pessimistic as well as optimistic about the book's prospects. The project Smiley was pulling together was to be a document, a plan for the overall betterment of black America. "It was time to shift the conversation from talking about our 'pain' to talking about our 'plan': a plan that moves our critique of America, to construction of an America that is truly as good as its promise," says Smiley.

That plan would be published in a book that had to be in stores in time for the next televised town hall meeting in February 2006. Its title was the suggestion of the Reverend Joseph Lowery, which he felt captured the spirit of the historic dialogue of black leadership.

But it wasn't until five months after the 2005 State of the Black Union forum in Atlanta that the first meeting took place between Smiley and Third World Press in July. And there wasn't even a completed manuscript at that point.

"They had gone to other publishers prior to coming to Third World Press, but they all said it would take a year to get the book out," recalled Madhubuti. "We signed on and worked out a deal to get it done. I pulled everyone here off of everything that we were working on and put them on this. We had the book in-house the second week of January."

That meant there was only days left to get it in the stores across the country before the 2006 State of the Black Union program aired on C-SPAN February 25th. The only solution was for Madhubuti, a 38-year veteran of book publishing, to do some things, as a businessman, he hadn't done before. Ever.

"We signed on with a national distributor, Independent Publishers Group. They had been trying to get us for years. I called Curt Matthews, the CEO, to see if he would be interested in trying to distribute the book--even before it had a name. He said it would take four months to get a book into the chain stores and we only had four weeks.

"I asked him what could he do to guarantee that this book will be in Borders, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million and the large independent stores. He said, 'I can guarantee it if we distribute all of your books: So I took a chance. I signed a contract that gave IPG the right to distribute everything that we publish. And he came through. That's how we got it done."

The Chicago publisher also credits his long-standing relationship with street vendors across the country. "They come directly to us. They can't go to a major distributor, but they know me. Yes, we've lost some money doing that, but it worked out in the long run."

With printing and distribution addressed, the next challenge was getting The Covenant sold. Madhubuti said at that point the assets that were inherent in the project from the beginning took over. "You have Tavis Smiley, a nationally respected commentator/personality in television and radio," says Madhubuti, "and in addition he's doing the Tom Joyner radio show twice a week."

To keep the momentum going, Third World Press hired an African American-owned advertising agency, R.J. Dale Advertising and Public Relations in Chicago, to develop a marketing campaign. The effort included print ads and a radio spot featuring actor Danny Glover.

To make certain that price didn't discourage either regulars or uninitiated book buyers from picking up a copy of The Covenant, the price was discounted. "Tavis Smiley is not receiving any royalties from the book because he wanted to keep it at twelve dollars. That was his idea. So what ever money there is will eventually come to Third World Press," says Madhubuti. "And we had to borrow money to do this."

Even with the unprecedented media, marketing, and grassroots support, success was anything but a certainty.

"Did I think that the book would become number one in the New York Times' and Washington Post's best-sellers lists? No. Our first printing was fifty thousand and we'd never done a first printing of fifty thousand copies. But as soon as began to do our marketing, and Tavis started doing his thing, fifty became a hundred; the hundred became hundred and fifty. We were printing in lots of fifty thousand. So we have over three-hundred thousand copies out there now. But after that first fifty thousand, I knew we had a winner."

In addition to reaching and encouraging millions of book buyers on radio and TV, Smiley's company brought a battery of marketing resources to the project. Denise Pines, director of business development for The Smiley Group, created a marketing plan with Vanesse Lloyd-Sgambati of The Literary, a Philadelphia-based PR firm.

Lloyd-Sgambati says she knew that getting The Covenant's message to its target audience--the African American community--could not be done just through the traditional bookstore signings, daily newspaper and magazine reviews and interviews on National Public Radio.

A second round of appearances was layered onto the original 17-city tour that had Smiley speaking to packed audiences in black churches and panel discussions with community leaders. There were myriad interviews on black radio stations and even a contest that had black book dubs vying for a chance to have Smiley and Princeton University Professor Cornel West, who wrote The Covenant's "Call to Action," meet with their group.

While The Covenant had political and social capital to lend to its success, Tyler Perry's first book borrowed from his stellar track record in entertainment. Don't Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings was published by Putnam/Riverhead Books right after the release of Perry's second film, Madea's Family Reunion, in February. "We got momentum for the book right out of the gate because it came out on the heels of the movie," says Marilyn Ducksworth, senior vice-president, corporate communications for the Penguin Group.

With more than 301,000 copies in print after only one week on sale, "This tremendous market reaction to Tyler Perry's extraordinary new book comes as no surprise," says Geoffrey Kloske, Vice President and Publisher, Riverhead Books. [Its success] confirms our faith in Tyler's dynamic A talents and his ability to connect with his ever-expanding audience on every level."

Perry came to publishing with a loyal national fan base built over six years, two top-selling films, seven theatrical productions and hundreds of sold-out performances. Of late, he added to his resume a TV comedy running as a summer replacement on UPN with hopes of it being picked up for the fall.

In all of these media-laced scenarios is the opportunity for future books to be published and marketed into bestsellers. The unexpected success of Madhubuti's and Perry's titles suggest that given enough media and marketing support, most titles targeted to black readers can maximize their sales by finding and connecting with their natural audiences.

And as Alex Haley's Roots demonstrated three decades ago, sometimes those readers aren't just African Americans. "They've seen that the audience for this type of book is not as limited as they thought," says Denise Pines of The Smiley Group. "We found people who don't normally buy books, bought our book. They had to go into a bookstore to do it, so it opened up a new market for booksellers."

Haki Madhubuti believes that one of the factors contributing to the success of The Covenant is that black America is in a post-Katrina period, and that the frustration that was fueled by the horrors we witnessed in the Gulf has folks looking for answers. Maybe the unshakable images of that televised catastrophe also have us looking for anything that shows us in familiar, comforting, even humorous circumstances. In either case, it may signal a golden opportunity for black writers and publishers to give black readers what they want.

Additional reporting by Earni Young, a freelance writer and columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News.