Over Booked? : Culture: Do book parties really boost sales? Or are they just a way for publishers to stroke authors’ egos?

NEW YORK — Washington may have its interminable fund-raisers for candidates and causes, and Los Angeles its screenings structured as elaborately as the Catholic Church. But New York’s defining early evening ritual is book parties. They’re always 6 to 8 and their purpose is not necessarily literary.

The right book party can create a perfect Manhattan moment when the pecking order is clear, food and alcohol are free, and conversation roars along. So it was important to attend three splashy mid-town book parties on a damp fall night and scope the authors, the talk and the hors d’oeuvres. (Never mind that in a downtown loft a less noteworthy author was being feted with a single wheel of Brie.)

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The food triumphed at the Old World Russian Tea Room, where 200 people celebrated Lauren Bacall and her second shot at self-revelation called “Now.” There was enough shrimp, duck, smoked salmon and caviar to sate the ciphers. Bacall, in a black Armani pantsuit, made a dramatic entrance a little late and, of course, George Plimpton was there.

Only briefly did the social order break down when an admirer unsuccessfully tried to get Betty Bacall’s attention--everyone in-the-know calls her “Betty.” As the admirer anxiously waited for her to finish another conversation, he turned to a smallish man in a Nehru-style jacket at her side, and thinking him a waiter, demanded a drink. The man looked startled. He was Bacall’s publisher, Knopf czar Sonny Mehta. The admirer looked chagrined and quickly disappeared after a real waiter balancing a silver tray of drinks.

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Five blocks south at the “21” Club, Joe Heller--everyone in Manhattan calls him “Joe,” thank you very much--bounded past the line of statutes of jockeys out front to be in place before his guests arrived. Heller, author of “Closing Time: The Sequel to Catch-22,” had the extraordinary dignity to greet just about all of his 150 guests at the door.

“Didn’t go to Joe Heller’s,” Plimpton said. “Should have.”

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At a third party, this one at the historic Century Club, first-time author Ina Caro moved cheerily among longtime friends and famous people. Her new book, “The Road From the Past,” is a combination history, guidebook and personal account of traveling in France. Plimpton was on her list but was waylaid at Bacall’s. But Alan J. Pakula made it to both Bacall’s and Caro’s parties and somebody in this great metropolis probably hit the trifecta and made it to Heller’s too.

Caro has been a much celebrated author in recent weeks. She’s had seven book parties since late August, including a luncheon at Le Cirque for 10 and a luncheon at the Sag Harbor home of Betty Friedan for 140.

“My husband (Pulitzer-Prize winning biographer Robert Caro) has been first on the bestseller list and wins every prize around and he’s only had one book party,” Caro said.

Go figure.

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Again, these parties are about a lot of things, but not necessarily literary stature.

In Caro’s case, she is quite social and has many influential friends who are pleased about her accomplishment, which adds up to a lot of parties. Bacall, on the other hand, demanded star treatment from her publisher and only the Russian Tea Room would do.

And as for that kid in Soho, well, his cousin had an extra wheel of Brie.

In fact, book parties have long been declared useless. And it’s not quite clear what good the publisher gets out of the much-heralded “buzz” they create in New York’s gossip columns. Most publishers and editors insist that money spent on a party would be better applied to send an author to a few more cities on a publicity tour.

The book-party-as-stroking-of-an-author’s-ego plays the same role in New York publishing culture as massive Sunset Strip billboards play in Southern California’s rock ‘n’ roll culture: Neither really boosts sales, but they make the artist feel like more of a VIP.

“After sitting alone in a room for years, many authors simply need the social interaction,” explains one lowly editor who asks to remain nameless for obvious reasons. “If some of these people didn’t get a party, they would impale themselves on a pencil outside their editor’s or agent’s door. I’m not kidding.”

Peter Osnos, publisher of Times Books, puts a kinder spin on this need for attention by authors.

“In some cases somebody has worked for a very long time on a book and a celebration is in order,” he says. “A book party is kind of a finish line, a goal post.”

But publishers like the recognition too. It’s good for the image of the imprint with booksellers and other authors that the publishing house attracts big authors with lots of “fizz” or “buzz” or, best of all, bestsellers.

Diane Ekeblad, chief publicist for Warner Books, recalling the 1992 blowout in Soho for Madonna’s book “Sex,” says a memorable party can make a publisher hot for a long time.

“When I ask someone what they’re reading, they may not know the name of the book, but they’ll see a W on the spine and say I once went to a Warner party,” she says. “That may be one more little nugget to get someone to buy one of our books so the party was worth it.”

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And so despite all the groaning about waste and egos, parties persevere. Dozens of them. Night after night in chic restaurants, clubs and friends’ rambling apartments, hopefully on Fifth or Park Avenue, ideally with a majestic Manhattan view. These parties are particularly aplenty this time a year when the vast majority of the 50,000 titles published annually come out.

And while New York also has its season for opera and ballet openings and charity balls, there’s nothing like a book party to make this city feel smart and above it all.

George Plimpton, peripatetic as he is, is the quintessential book party guest.

First of all, Plimpton, an author himself, reads.

“But it’s really not necessary to have read the book before you go to a publishing party--most people haven’t,” says Plimpton, sounding very much the Brahman that he is.

There is, in fact, an entire etiquette surrounding book parties.

If there has been a bad review, never mention it to the author unless everybody at the party is discussing it, Plimpton advises.

And if the review comes up? Loudly say something like “What does he know about biography?” or “She couldn’t write her way out of a paper bag if she tried, never mind writing a novel like yours.”

Plimpton, who frequently throws book parties at his East Side townhouse, where he edits the Paris Review, adds: If you have nothing better to say to an author, it is safest to make a comment like, “Look forward to reading it.”

“It’s the big cry,” he says dryly.

He is also quite insistent about what is most important at book parties.

“You go to one or two of these things and hope they just don’t serve white wine like they do at all those awful art openings in New York,” Plimpton says. “Good hors d’oeuvres and whiskey are very important.”

Also, never expect to buy a book at a Manhattan book party. In fact, it’s considered in poor taste to peddle them. Then again, most people who come to these events are on the publishers’ freebie lists because they’re in the media or are friends who expect a free copy.

(In Washington, where people read mostly federal regs and PAC disclosures, books are always sold at book parties, which is why most are held at book stores rather than in friends’ homes.)

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On the book party timeline, Random House founder Bennett Cerf built a reputation in the ‘50s for elegantly celebrating authors. Even in the more recent good-old days--as far back as the 1980s--publishers put up big money to flatter their authors without questioning the expense. History is full examples of parties at Tavern on the Green and the Rainbow Room and in homes of people with expensive art and pricey caterers.

Nowadays the biggest parties are not for the public but are held at the conventions for booksellers, who if they’ve had a good time might order an extra few dozen of a yet-to-be-reviewed book to put on their shelves.

But for Manhattan parties, publishers have become shameless about getting others to pay. Many are “co-hosted” by the publisher, which means the publishing house split the tab with a wealthy friend of the author or simply offered the services of its publicity department, made up of legions of overworked and poorly paid graduates of elite colleges who must juggle dozens of book tours at the same time they’re ordering canapes when all they want to do is read manuscripts and lunch with famous authors.

“You can’t imagine what a nightmare these parties are,” says one young publicist. “You keep trying to get someone like Lee Radziwill or Diane von Furstenburg to RSVP and all you get is an assistant who says she may or may not come. Ugh.”

Kickoff night for this fall’s book party season was Sept. 13, the only available time after Labor Day and Rosh Hashanah and before Yom Kippur. That night there were parties for Anna Quindlen, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Mary Matalin and James Carville. Howard Stringer, president/CBS Broadcast Group, also had a fund-raiser that night, which drew many from the same publishing lists. By the end of the evening, power-agent Amanda (Binky) Urban had gathered a caravan of book party-goers and was ferrying them from party to party in a hired car. (Plimpton says he avoids roving bands and usually gets around more efficiently on his bike.)

Walter Isaacson, another practiced partyer, says life would be a lot easier if somebody somewhere tried to coordinate the parties. In fact, Random House has tried to keep a calendar for all its imprints, but invariably there are overlapping events.

“Do they all have to be 6 to 8?” asks Isaacson, head of new media for Time Inc. and author of a biography of Henry Kissinger--for which there were many book parties. “It would be nice if they were all in one line of restaurants on the same block.”

Isaacson, who says he’s never attended more than three book parties in a night, regretted missing Bacall’s. “I should have gone to that one.”

Betty’s party was typical of as-good-as-it-gets in terms of “buzz.” She was the subject of stories in both New York magazine and on ABC’s “Prime Time Live,” and her party made both Page Six of the New York Post and Liz Smith’s column.

“The President was in town Monday night, but the people who really matter were all at the Russian Tearoom celebrating with New York’s First Broad, Lauren Bacall,” began the Page Six item.

But does this mean that Knopf will move all 250,000 copies of “Now” and that it will be as wildly successful as her first memoir, “By Myself,” which was published in 1979 and sold hundreds of thousands of copies?

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” says a Knopf source. “The reviews have been lousy.”

Smith said in her column that “Now” “verges on self-pity when probably what Miss Bacall needs is simply more self-regard,” but later noted that Bacall was one of the “few authentically glamorous, real stars left to us.”

Which also relates to why a party for a star author in New York is perhaps more exciting than a party for a movie star in Hollywood.

“At a book party you have an actual fighting chance to get near a person who wrote the book and have a conversation,” says Smith, an avid reader who often plugs books in her column even if she can’t read all of them. “At those Hollywood screening parties, everybody gets roped off and you never get close to the stars. New York book parties are just more real.”

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Times staff writer Josh Getlin contributed to this story.