Java native worked on 'Water for Elephants'

What do the little community of Java and the bestseller, now a movie, “Water for Elephants” have in common?

Charles “Chuck” Adams.

Adams, a Pittsylvania County native, is the executive editor of Algonquin Books in Chapel Hill, N.C., the publishing company that published “Water for Elephants.” He edited the manuscript and has watched along with other staff members as the book became a bestseller then the movie that premiered April 22 and stars Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson.

So how did Adams get from Java, which he described as a “nice farming community, but kind of in the middle of nowhere” to being invited to the movie premiere of the much-anticipated movie?

Here’s how:

“I was alone a lot as a kid and began reading books from my mother’s little library,” Adams recalled. “I was exposed to what was basically commercial fiction, often historical and romantic.”

A teacher also figured into the story — Mrs. Reese McCormick, who was his teacher for three years in grade school.

“She challenged me to read as much as possible, so I read just about everything in the school’s small library — I remember mostly mysteries and adventure stories,” he said. “She also urged me to write, and I tried my hand at essays and stories. I found that while I wrote well, I really did not have the kind of imagination that successful creative writers need, so I never did much writing beyond what was required in school.”

Then off he went to Duke University where he earned extra money typing papers for friends and couldn’t pass up editing some of the poorly written ones. He also worked during the summers at The Bee, Danville’s afternoon paper before The Danville Register and The Bee merged in 1989.

“I filled in for anyone on vacation, but gradually began taking on assignments to write feature articles, or to rewrite stories from the morning paper so that they would feel ‘fresh’ when rerun in The Bee,” he said. “It was good experience, and I learned a lot about economy of words and how to organize thoughts.”

On to college

Duke law school was next, then a job in the corporate trust department of a New York City bank. But when his plans to join the Navy as a lawyer fell through, he decided to reassess his career path.

“Since books, reading and writing were important to me — and I was destined to be a lousy and unhappy lawyer — I quit the bank and took an entry-level job at a publishing house in New York at Holt, Rinehart, & Winston,” he said. “I found I loved working in publishing, and gradually I worked my way into an editorial job and have never looked back.

“From Holt, I went to Macmillan, then to Dell (now a part of Random House), then to Simon & Schuster, and finally to Algonquin, working out of the Chapel Hill office, where I was hired as executive editor. Being here feels a lot like coming home.”

Discovering a bestseller

It was during his first year at Algonquin in 2004 that Emma Sweeney, a New York-based literary agent, sent him a manuscript copy of “Water for Elephants” by Sara Gruen.

Earlier at Simon & Schuster, he had bid on Sara’s first novel — “Riding Lessons” — but it went to another publisher who offered a slightly larger advance.

Both Adams and an associate publisher, Ina Stern, read the novel over the weekend, and arrived at the office Monday morning excited to publish the novel.

“It reminded me a lot of the kinds of novels I had read growing up, novels with big, sweeping stories and an almost ‘epic’ feel. I loved the circus setting, and I especially loved the fact that it had not just one, but two happy endings,” Adams said. “I thought the novel could sell well, and I felt that Sara Gruen could be developed into a bestselling author. I did not, however, envision the level of success the novel has achieved.”

Adams remembers that the first person on the staff who said “Water for Elephants” and “bestseller” in the same sentence was Algonquin’s marketing director, Craig Popelars, who appeared in his office brandishing the manuscript and said, “This book can be a bestseller. I could give this to my mother, I could give this to my father, I could give this to my wife, I could give this to my college roommate — they’d all love it! Bestseller!”

Adams told him to “go with God.”

The publishing process

Adams said that the time frame of publishing a book varies from one publishing house to another. Algonquin opts to take their time and do their best to get everything right, sometimes a year or more, which is about what “Water for Elephants” took to publish.

 A week after the manuscript was submitted, everyone agreed at an editorial meeting — “a rare thing,” according to Adams — that they should try to publish the novel. 

An offer was made to the agent, who suggested a slightly higher one, and negotiations produced an agreement. The contract was signed early in 2005.

“The original manuscript for ‘Water for Elephants’ was unusually ‘clean,’ meaning that it required only light editing,” Adams said. “This work was completed by early spring 2005 and the manuscript was put into production — meaning that it was given to a copyeditor who checked for grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc., and who also checked the facts in the story, to be sure, for example, that all the circus terms used were accurate.”

Once it was copyedited, it was given to a designer, then to a typesetter who delivered pages that looked like they would in the final book. Simultaneously, an art director was working on the jacket for the hardcover book, a marketing director was sending out copies of the manuscript to bookstore owners and a publicity director was contacting book reviewers and members of the media.

“Algonquin announced a first printing of 15,000 copies, a modest printing but not uncommon. Enough publicity had been generated by the publication date in April 2006 and enough “buzz” had developed among booksellers that the initial print run was increased to 50,000 copies,” Adams said. “The author began a multi-city tour, more than 30 cities, all across America.”

To the top

The belief in the book and the hard work paid off. The hardcover became a national bestseller, appearing on all the bestseller lists, most notably, Adams said, on the New York Times list. 

“A year later, a paperback edition of the novel was published by Algonquin; it became an immediate bestseller, rising to the No. 1 position on the New York Times list, and staying on the list for more than two full years,” he said.

To date, the book has sold almost 4.5 million copies in both hardcover and paperback in the U.S. alone and approximately 100,000 e-book copies, according to Adams. It has also been a bestseller in many of the more than 40 countries in which rights have been sold. Algonquin expects it will sell well again when the film is released in those countries.

“Although I don’t know for sure, I suspect that this is the most successful book Algonquin has ever published, (although) the imprint has had a couple of ‘Oprah Picks’ that sold very well also, and there have been a number of other books that became bestsellers,” Adams said.

The film rights, which are controlled by the agent, not the publisher, were sold to 20^th Century Fox, which developed the script. Casting and filming began the spring of 2010.

Because of the publicity surrounding the film, the book returned to the New York Times trade paperback bestseller list and rose to No. 1 again.

“When the movie tie-in art became available, Algonquin issued a repackaged version of the book in both trade paperback (large size) and mass market (small size) editions, with cover art taken from the film,” Adams said. “At one point, ‘Water for Elephants’ was the No. 1 book on five different New York Times bestseller lists.”

He said the “eureka” moment for the staff came just before the paperback edition was published in 2007 when they realized the book could easily sell more than a million copies. It has.

The staff was hopeful when they heard Fox bought the novel, then began to get excited when they heard who the cast was. Then they got “very excited” when they saw the movie trailer.

“Definitely excited”

Adams was invited to the premiere of the film on April 17 at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York City with a party following at Le Cirque but chose not to go because of scheduling conflicts. There was a special screening for Algonquin employees and friends in Chapel Hill on the 21^st, the night before the film opened nationally.

“I am definitely excited about seeing the movie,” Adams said. “I have heard from both the agent for the novel and from Algonquin’s publisher, who works out of our New York office, that the film was wonderful and was a very faithful adaptation of the novel.

“I spoke to Sara Gruen after she first saw it …  and she was thrilled with the film. Hopefully, the movie will get good reviews and will lure people to the (theaters). And, hopefully, anyone who has not read the novel will want to read it soon.

Finally, he said that Gruen “is a consummate professional, a delightful person and very easy to work with.” He and she remain friends.

Elzey is a freelance writer for the Register & Bee.