Random Notes

■ Ripley’S Believe-It-or-Not. At every spring’s ABA Convention (see Random Notes, July 8) certain fall books begin gathering momentum. That’s the point, really. And if there’s no formal handicapping of best-seller candidates, there’s plenty of speculation about the coming season’s surprises. Of course, the broader the expectation, the less “surprise,” but there you are.

Beyond the obvious (new novels by Stephen King, Danielle Steele, Frederick Forsyth, Dick Francis, Sidney Sheldon, etc., etc.) the big fiction winner will probably be Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley (Warner Books). Subtitled, “The Sequel to Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind,” the novel has already made more than $10 million in sales to foreign publishers, and will have a first American printing of something like 500,000 copies. (For perspective: many successful novels begin with printings of 50,000 or even 25,000; King’s Needful Things will go out at 1.5 million.) Oxford University Press will doubtless benefit from the attention Warner will orchestrate for Scarlett; a month later OUP will publish Southern Daughter: The Life of Margaret Mitchell. But no matter how well the Ripley rip-off does, it will still pale in comparison to the original. Published at the height of the Depression, GWTW sold an amazing million copies in its first six months. That would have to be, what?, five or ten million today. Miss Mitchell never wrote anything else, and spent her last years gleefully suing everyone in sight. Watch for reports of the haunting of Miss Ripley’s home and Warner’s corporate headquarters.

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■ Ripley’S Believe-It-or-Not. At every spring’s ABA Convention (see Random Notes, July 8) certain fall books begin gathering momentum. That’s the point, really. And if there’s no formal handicapping of best-seller candidates, there’s plenty of speculation about the coming season’s surprises. Of course, the broader the expectation, the less “surprise,” but there you are.

Beyond the obvious (new novels by Stephen King, Danielle Steele, Frederick Forsyth, Dick Francis, Sidney Sheldon, etc., etc.) the big fiction winner will probably be Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley (Warner Books). Subtitled, “The Sequel to Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind,” the novel has already made more than $10 million in sales to foreign publishers, and will have a first American printing of something like 500,000 copies. (For perspective: many successful novels begin with printings of 50,000 or even 25,000; King’s Needful Things will go out at 1.5 million.) Oxford University Press will doubtless benefit from the attention Warner will orchestrate for Scarlett; a month later OUP will publish Southern Daughter: The Life of Margaret Mitchell. But no matter how well the Ripley rip-off does, it will still pale in comparison to the original. Published at the height of the Depression, GWTW sold an amazing million copies in its first six months. That would have to be, what?, five or ten million today. Miss Mitchell never wrote anything else, and spent her last years gleefully suing everyone in sight. Watch for reports of the haunting of Miss Ripley’s home and Warner’s corporate headquarters.