by Andy Shapiro
‘Get That Caddy Outa Here’
To distribute Super Tenant, the book I self-published with coauthor John Striker in 1973, we had to trespass on the uncharted territory of New York City book wholesalers. There were three of them who distributed to bookstores citywide: Bookazine, Golden Lee, and G.I. Distributors. The first two ordered 800 copies. The third turned into a troubling adventure. John visited G.I. in Long Island City on a sales call. The owner, Alvin Druss, impressed him. He subscribed to the New York Times Book Review and the publishing trade journal, Publishers Weekly. Best of all, he ordered 5,000 copies. Gad, 5,000 copies! At that rate, we’d sell out our first printing of 30,000 books in no time.
John was, however, slightly suspicious of Alvin Druss’s operation, so I went out to check up on G.I. Alvin Druss seemed befuddled at a second visit from the publisher of a single title. He was jovial, jowly, with a voice like #10 sandpaper. He wore a beige gabardine suit, and had a big Windsor knot in his pulled-down maroon tie. “Big Al”—that was how I came to think of him—was interrupted by a phone call from his lawyer about some restraining order just being slapped on G.I. Strewn across his cluttered desk, were a slew of hard-core porno paperbacks, with titles like “Slash Lust,” “The Man Who Wore Tutus,” and “Stalag 14 Bondage.” Okay, our book was named after the blacksploitation movie Super Fly, but, I mean, was G.I. the home for our prim little baby?
But then, I thought, Big Al had his own sales force—three reps who sell the city. That was a big deal. He would not only fill orders, I thought; he would go out and get them. Despite the porno, I left G.I. convinced that we had made a sound distribution decision. That is, until later in the week, when I read in the New York Law Journal about People vs. Alvin Druss. Big Al, it turned out, was facing trial on a 69-count indictment (no doubt, a little tongue-in-cheek by the D.A.) for wholesaling hard-core pornography. G.I. had been raided, and the cops seized 19,000 obscene publications, not to mention all of Big Al’s records. Yikes, what kind of business had we wandered into?
About a month later, on the front page of the Village Voice, was a big expose about the Mafia crime family headed by Anthony (“Tony Ducks”) Corallo—so nicknamed because of his skill at ducking subpoenas and convictions. Tony Ducks was a reputed capo in the Carmine Tramunti mob family. The Voice displayed a vertical chart of the family going all the way down to the bottom, where a vector landed on—you guessed it—G.I. Distributors.
“Jesus,” I said to John, “when Big Al’s bill from us comes due, we’re gonna send you out to Long Island City to collect.” That never became necessary. Big Al paid up in full without any pressure on our part—thank goodness. Indeed, he became a stalwart in the sales of Super Tenant. (Who knew, maybe he forced his porn outlets to stock Super Tenant in order to get their copies of “Stalag 14 Bondage.”)
Whichever distributor we were dealing with, we, of course, had to transport the books to their warehouses from storage in our Upper-West-Side basement. Easier said than done. We don’t got no stinkin’ money for no truck rentals! That left us to resort to the blue two-tone 1970 Cadillac owned by John’s family. Yep. When Bookazine ordered, say, 500 books, we would load ten cartons into that Caddy’s capacious trunk and drive downtown to its warehouse. We’d spot a line of idling 16-wheeled vans, engines gunning, air brakes ch-chh’ng, cabs jackknifing to insert the trailer into the loading dock. We’d get in the truck line and, in a short while, back the Caddy into the loading dock.
“Get that fuckin’ Caddy outa here!” yelled the dockmaster. “Move it!” “Oh, we’re just delivering the books you ordered,” we’d reply, jumping out with ingratiating smiles. We’d flip open the trunk—our answer to the trailer on a big rig—and lift up—remember, the loading dock swallowed our car down below—ten cartons. Then to the amazement—or amusement—of the waiting truckers, we’d jump back into our two-tone four-wheeled delivery limousine and be gone.
What a lark—the author delivering his own book to a distributor’s loading dock! But then I’d quickly be stymied by doubts: I was, after all, 30 years old—no longer a teenager or even a 20-something. What was I doing playing around amidst these hard-working truck drivers and warehouse crew? Yes, I reminded myself, this was the path I had chosen when I said no in law school to a job offer from a Wall Street law firm. I had opted to do what I wanted to do, instead, an alternative vocation—writing—which led me still further afield, to launching my own publishing company, so to speak. Maybe this choice would lead to failure. If so, was that so terrible? I, at least, had the blind hope that I would learn from any failure and adjust. Maybe failure was ultimately as important and instructive as success in living one’s life.
* * * *
Black Metal Trap Door
“Who do you have to fuck around here to get a typewriter?” I heard someone bellow. It turned out to be the woman I was looking for in the offices of New York magazine: Leonore Fleischer. As I’d been told, she was a jolly woman, portly and curly-headed, who wrote novelizations of movies (like “Benji”) and —more paramount for our purposes—the “Sales & Bargains” page for New York. It was through Leonore’s intervention and rousing support that Super Tenant earned a “Best Bets” selection in the magazine.
(The revised 1978 edition of Super Tenant was dedicated “To our good friend, Leonore Fleischer.” For years afterwards, Leonore victoriously brandished that dedication in defense of her rights as a rent-controlled tenant on Riverside Drive: “Won’t let me remodel this flat, eh?” she’d challenge her landlord. “See this book! See this dedication! The authors are my pals. Just say the word, man, and you’ll have two of the smartest L & T lawyers in the city on your ass. They’ll tie you up in L & T court for years, man!” Needless to say, Leonore almost always got her way.)
At this stage in the publishing process, we changed hats again—this time into publicists who made up press kits for the media. Our press release began, “The authors of Super Tenant can answer 1,388 questions. Here are ten of them.” Local radio and TV stations loved the idea of a live call-in segment on tenants’ rights in New York City. I adopted an alias—”William Darrah”—and played Super Tenant’s PR agent calling stations and booking dates for us.
For two or three months, we were on just about every radio or TV show in the city. We were even on local newscasts. I recall one, in particular, “The Six O’Clock News,” on WCBS-TV. We did a three- or four-part series with reporter Jerry Wilson. With Jerry’s crew, we taped a tour through an apartment building, using it as a prop for our running commentary on tenants’ rights. Whatever we were shooting—an apartment door, a window AC, a fire escape—Jerry who, frankly, seemed hopped up to me, would flash a gleaming smile at one of us and say, “Gimme a burst on door locks…,” “Gimme a burst on peepholes…,” “Gimme a burst on fire escapes….” A “burst,” we found out, was like a 30- to 45-second spiel. Stitch all those together, and you have a three-part series. After this series, we had, excuse me, a burst of sales.
We also sold Super Tenant directly to certain choice book stores, in addition to the three book wholesalers. To do so, I changed hats yet again from publicist and morphed into a book-sales rep. I’d walk in the store’s front door, almost always without an appointment. I’d introduce myself (“Hi, Bill Darrah!”) and ask for the new book buyer. “Do you have an appointment?” “Uh, no.” “Well, let me see if he’s free.” I’d stand there shifting my weight from foot to foot, rehearsing my pitch. “Alright, he’ll see you now.”
“Where you from?” the book buyer barked.
“Brownstone.”
“Brownstone? What’s Brownstone?”
“We’re a New York publisher, and we have this book—”
“What! This book! A book? One book?”
“Yes, it’s called—”
“Ferget it. We don’t deal with one-book publishers. G’bye.”
There were, however, as many sales as there were brush-offs. When we sold a store directly—like Doubleday’s flagship store, then at Fifth Avenue and 53rd—we had to transport the books ourselves right to Doubleday. So, we loaded up the trusty sedan deville again. John double-parked on Fifth Avenue, and I walked inside Doubleday, in a windbreaker and cap, ballpoint sprouting from my ear—playing a delivery man (my fourth or fifth publishing impersonation). I dropped the carton of books onto the front register desk and announced offhandedly, “I’m delivering yer Super Tenants.”
“Oh no, no, no,” exclaimed an officious-looking manager, swooping down on me. “Absolutely no deliveries inside the store! Only through the lift!” I backed away from the front register dazed. I retreated toward the front door, looking around for some clue—a chute or even a dumb waiter. Soon, the manager was back, anxious to get me the hell out of the store—this is Doubleday, doncha know. He told me that the lift was outside, around the corner, on East 53rd Street (read: get the hell out of here).
So out the front door I skedaddled. I rounded Fifth Avenue onto 53rd, feeling ridiculous, anxious to duck out of sight from the big Fifth Avenue show windows, so Doubleday shoppers wouldn’t witness whatever my next debacle would be. Then I saw it: a black metal trap door flush with the sidewalk. It sat mute, without a clasp or clamp to open it. I plopped the carton on the sidewalk and knelt down. That’s when it hit me: “Here I am kneeling on a sidewalk in midtown Manhattan, in the middle of the busy business day, with a carton of 50 books that I wrote, edited, got typeset, and printed, trying to figure out how to open a trapdoor in the sidewalk, over which throngs of New Yorkers rush. I’m a lawyer, fer chrissakes! How did I get here…?”
Finally, I spied a small inconspicuous metal plate on the bookshop building’s exterior wall. I touched it gingerly and whir-r-r, the trap door gaped open, revealing a long black conveyor belt. I put the carton on the belt and down it went. Suddenly, I realized that I had not gotten my signed receipt for delivery. Obliviously, I reentered Doubleday’s. The manager plunged down on me and signed my receipt blindly, furiously—anything to get rid of me. I wheeled toward the door and, for my finale, skimmed a half-dozen copies of The Joy of Sex off a best-seller table. Gingerly, I restacked them and headed for the door, afraid to look back into the baleful stare of the manager burning through the back of my neck.
Andy Shapiro published seven books before starting Brownstone Publishers, Inc., where he was editor-in-chief. The two chapters here are from an unpublished memoir he wrote during Covid.