One evening, out of curiosity, he began to read it. He finished it an hour later, in tears. He told his wife that she too needed to read the book. A few days later she woke him at two-thirty in the morning. She was crying hysterically.
“Is it true?” she asked.
He had no idea what she was talking about.
“That Christmas book. Is it true?”
The next day John came by the house. He said that he had noticed the copyright notice on the book but asked if I had taken the time to register it.
“No. It’s just for my daughters.”
“I think you better register this. I’ll tell you what. I’ll do it for you for free. There’s a twenty-dollar federal fee that you can pay, but if not, I’ll pay it myself.”
•
A few days later I received another phone call about the book. “You don’t know me,” the woman started, “but I’ve just finished reading your book and I thought it was wonderful. I just wanted to tell you how much your story meant to me.”“Thank you,” I said. “Where did you get a copy of my book?”
“A friend of mine lent it to me.” She told me her friend’s name, which I also did not recognize. I realized that my book had been passed beyond my circle of family and friends. Out of curiosity I took a notepad and called all those I had given copies to and asked them with whom they had shared the book. Then I called them, and so on. I learned that in the four weeks since Christmas, those twenty copies had been read more than a hundred and sixty times.
Dear Richard,
I was deeply moved by your book,The Christmas Box.It is a beautiful story and I cried while reading it.The Christmas Boxwas a connection to my recent tragedy only a mere three months ago, right before Christmas.
On December 16, 1994, I labored and delivered a beautiful baby girl whom we named Belle. She was a stillborn. This experience has been and continues to be one of the most painful, intense, and lonely experiences I have ever gone through. In my incredible shock, pain, and grief I somehow survived the Christmas holidays with my children, my husband, and his family. Hearing certain Christmas carols brought me to tears. The pain was overwhelming. Your book helped me with one of my biggest fears. I wondered, will I ever enjoy Christmas again? I will always miss Belle, and Christmas will always remind me of her but I will see joy in Christmas again. Your message helped me to see that. Thank you.
About four days after Belle’s birth, I had a very profound dream. A beautiful angel with a flowing white gown came into my bedroom and reached over me. She picked up baby Belle and then floated out of the room with her. She was very reassuring. The dream was very real and felt very right.
I look forward to visiting the Angel Monument in Salt Lake City and laying a white flower at its base. Thank you for sharing your story,The Christmas Box.
Sincerely,
Bege Reynolds
15
•
I have learned a great truth of life. We do not succeed in spite of our challenges and difficulties, but rather, precisely because of them.
THELOOKINGGLASS
MORE THAN A MONTHafter Christmas, I received a phone call from a local bookstore. The clerk at the store had been going through the Salt Lake City white pages calling all the Richard Evanses. There are more than a dozen such entries in the Salt Lake phone book and by the time she got to me, she had already called half of them.
“Hello, Mr. Evans?”
“Yes.”
“Did you write a Christmas book?”
“Yes . . .”
“The Christmas Box?”
“Yes,” I again replied.
There was an audible sigh of relief. “Oh, good.”
“Who is this?”
She said she was calling from a local bookstore. “We’d like to know where we can order your book,” she said.
“You can’t order it. It’s never been published.”
There was momentary silence, then she said, “But we’vehad ten orders for your book this week. Ten orders is pretty good for any book,” she continued, “but for a Christmas book in February, well, that’s unheard of. Maybe you should get your book published.”
As I hung up the phone, I considered her suggestion.Why not?I thought.
•
All I knew about getting a book published was that it’s nearly impossible. In the next few days I sent my few remaining copies of the book to local publishers. They wasted little time in returning them along with a rejection letter. Thanks but no thanks. A book like this would never sell.Still, the phone calls continued from people wanting to talk about how “the book,” as it became known in our family, had affected them and asking where they could get copies of their own. By the time I received the last publisher’s rejection letter, I had already decided that I would publish my book myself—as soon as I figured out how to do it.
Around this time I had a peculiar experience. I was at the public library when, out of curiosity, I typedThe Christmas Boxinto the library’s computer. Three different selections emerged. The title was already taken.
Disappointed, I began working on other titles for mybook but always came back toThe Christmas Box.A few days later we had some friends over and were playing the game Trivial Pursuit when the question was asked of me, “Can the title of a book be copyrighted?”
Peculiar timing,I thought. “Of course it can,” I replied.
“No, it cannot.”
I kept the title.
•
The first run of my book took nearly all of our savings. Eight thousand copies. I wasn’t really sure how many books I should print. The fact that I chose to print eight thousand copies illustrates my complete naïveté regarding the publishing world. I chose eight thousand because I could think of eight bookstores that I thought would carry my book and I guessed that the average book title probably sold a thousand copies per store. I would later learn that the actual figure is closer to two and a half.The first printing came off the press in late September of 1993. Those copies do not read “First Printing” anywhere on them for the simple reason that I never considered that there might be a second.
•
There is something exhilarating about seeing your book in print for the first time. I suppose it’s like witnessing the birth of a child, with all the joy of creation and the inherent wonder of the future.With a book in hand I began making calls to bookstores. It did not go well. The bookstores did not share my enthusiasm. I learned that the retail book business does not take self-published books seriously. “Vanity publishing,” they call it, conclusive indication of a book’s lack of merit. In addition, it was simply too much of a bother for most bookstores to open an account for a publisher with only one book.
I was stuck with a mountain of books sitting in my printer’s warehouse. I believe that my printer felt sorry for me after taking all of my money (and wanted my books out of the warehouse) and so she gave me a list of book distributors in the West. I called a small distributorship in Salt Lake City called Publishers Distribution Center. The president of the company, Bill Beutler, happened to answer the phone. I introduced myself, told him that I had recently written a book and was now looking for a distributor. I asked if he would be interested.
“We reject about ninety percent of what the publishers bring to us,” he said. “Who’s your publisher?”
I reluctantly admitted that I was self-published, but then told him about how the book was being passed onand about the call from the bookstore. He agreed to read it and I delivered it to him that very afternoon. I called back the following Monday and asked if he had had a chance to look at my book.
“I read it,” he said.
“What did you think?”
He was slightly hesitant and I braced for bad news. “I hate to admit it,” he said, “being a man, but it made me cry. Then my wife read it and she cried. She wants to give it to all of her friends this Christmas. We’d like to distribute your book. We think that you’re going to do well with it.”
I was elated. “How many copies do you think we’ll sell?” I asked.
“We might sell as many as three thousand copies.”
My heart sank. “Three thousand. Is that good?”
“Three thousand isverygood. That’s what the popular local authors sell over a holiday season, and no one knows who you are.”
As I hung up the phone I thought,I’ll have Christmas presents for the rest of my life.
16
•
ABOUT TWO MONTHSafter the release of my book, I was browsing in a Barnes & Noble bookstore when the store manager walked by. I stopped him.
“Excuse me. You sell my book here,” I said. “I was wondering if you could tell me how it’s doing?”
The busy manager looked at me with a dull expression. “What did you write?”
“It’s calledThe Christmas Box.”
His eyes widened. “That’s your book? It’s actually doing very well.”
“How many have you sold?”
“At least seven hundred.”
“Is that good?”
He smiled at my question. “Yeah, that’s good. That’s as good as a new Grisham paperback release.”
I was still too naïve about the industry to be impressed. “Yeah, but that’s just a thriller. How’s it doing compared to the rest of your Christmas books?”
“Christmas books? We’ve sold three times more copies of your book than the rest of our Christmas titles combined.”
I smiled. “Pretty good.”
“Pretty good,” he repeated.
17
•
THE SECOND WEEK OFNovember, I received a phone call from Scott Beutler, the general manager of Publishers Distribution.
“I just wanted to tell you that we’ve already sold more than three thousand copies of your book and orders are increasing. You may have to print more books.”
“How many should I print?” I asked.
Scott wasn’t sure how to answer. After a moment he said, “Well, there’s really no way of knowing.”
I did the math. The warehouse still had five thousand copies and there were about six weeks left until Christmas. In order to sell out of my book we would have to sell almost twice the amount, in half the time. I didn’t think it likely. And I was pretty much out of money. It seemed to me that if I printed a couple thousand more copies I would make enough to cover my debts and would still have books left over for the next season.
After struggling with what to do for several days, I decided to pray about it. As I prayed I had a very strong feeling to print twenty thousand more copies.
Bad inspiration,I thought. No one in Salt Lake City sells twenty-eight thousand copies of a book in twelve weeks. Not even John Grisham. Common sense told me that two thousand copies would be enough. But the message had been clear. I had even recorded it in my journal. In the end, I compromised between inspiration and common sense and settled on ten thousand more copies.
On December 9 my distributor shipped out the last of my first printing. The next day the new printing of ten thousand books was complete. Three days later I received another phone call from my distributor.
“We were wondering where the rest of your books are,” Scott asked.
“What do you mean, ‘the rest of my books’? The printer said that they had shipped all ten thousand to your warehouse.”
“You only did ten thousand, then,” he said, his voice laced with disappointment.
“Only?”
“Well, we’ve already sold them.”
Ten thousand copies in three days. They were now shipping more copieseveryday than they thought I would sell in a year. I called the printer for more books and was told it would be impossible to have them printed before Christmas. I wished I had followed the inspiration I had received.
18
•
EVEN THOUGH THE BOOKSTORES’supplies of my books were diminishing, word of the book was still growing. Local bookstores began to complain to my distributor about the avalanche of phone calls they were getting for a book they couldn’t get. Some said their phone lines were being jammed with calls, and asked us to do something about it.
What are we supposed to do?I thought. Then I had an idea. I had already paid for some radio commercials, which were now of no use to me. I wrote a new radio commercial that thanked all those who had purchased my book and told people that the book was sold out.
From this I learned a powerful marketing lesson: if you really want to sell a book, tell people they can’t have it. It was like throwing gasoline on a fire. One bookstore manager told me that a fistfight had broken out between two women over the last copy ofThe Christmas Boxin his store.
By Christmas day every copy I had printed was sold. Ihad even depleted most of my own private stash of first editions, giving them to my advertising clients, with whom I would be back in business as soon as this author thing was over.
The Christmas Boxhad sold everywhere I had put it. And I had put it everywhere. Pharmacies, copy shops, doctors’ offices, even hair salons. My hairstylist, as a favor to me, had started selling my book from her counter to her other clients. She said that she was making almost as much selling my book as she was doing hair.
One independent bookstore called to tell us that they had the last remaining stash of my books in the Salt Lake valley (they had forgotten to bring them out of their back room) and had doubled the price of my book and limited purchases to two per person. They had a long line outside their store until the books were gone. Years later another bookseller told me thatThe Christmas Boxhad saved her bookstore from bankruptcy.
I was receiving calls about my book every day. One of them was from Keri’s friend.
She was getting her hair cut, she told Keri, when her stylist began talking about her father. She said that he had called her and asked if she would come see him. It was a strange request because she hadn’t seen him for years. He was a difficult man and all his children had pretty much cut off contact with him. Then she called her brother and sister to see if he had called them as well. He had. None ofthem could figure out what he was up to. Finally they speculated that he must be dying.
A few days later, when they had all assembled at his house, he said humbly, “I’ve asked you here to see if you could ever forgive me for the father I haven’t been to you. And if you could somehow allow me a second chance.”
The children were stunned. After a tearful reunion one of the children asked him what had happened to bring about such a change. He told them that a few days earlier some people in the neighborhood had brought him a Christmas gift, a little book. He knew the people were religious and thought the book probably was as well, so he had no desire to read it. He put it aside. But he could not stop thinking about it. It bothered him so much that he threw the book away. But still it wouldn’t leave his mind. In fact it got worse. It was as if the book was calling him. Finally he couldn’t stand it any longer. Late at night he retrieved the book and read it cover to cover. Somehow it healed him. The strange thing, she said, is that it was just some little Christmas book calledThe Christmas Box.
•
A few days after Christmas I received a call from a woman I didn’t know.“Are you the author ofThe Christmas Box?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I wanted to know if I could reprint a portion of your book. Our grandson died over the holidays and we would like to use a paragraph from your book on his funeral program. We found your book very comforting.”
“Of course,” I said.
These calls were the first trickle from the river to come.
Dear Mr. Evans,
As a producer of stage productions for Kansai Telecasting Corporation in Japan, I lead a very busy life. Awaiting the birth of my first son, I was not totally sure of how I felt about becoming a father.
My first son was born on January 1, 1994. This was also the same day I became aware of the book,The Christmas Box.Upon reading the book I was deeply moved by the
message in it. I could not hold back the tears that rolled down my cheeks.
From then, your book became my Bible as far as being a father. Still now, I am not the perfect father but your story withinThe Christmas Boxhas greatly helped me in becoming a better father. I have intentionally kept my wife from reading this book for the express reason that I want her to think my changing into a more loving father has come from within myself, not from you and your book.
I hope that more people in Japan can read and feel the message I have come to know and love.
Akihito Kimura
Kansai Telecasting Corporation
Osaka, Japan
19
•
It is oftentimes a blessing to not know our limitations.
It’s the only way to accomplish the impossible.
RICHARDPAULEVANS
IREALIZED THAT IFICOULDrepeat the Salt Lake phenomenon on a national scale, my book would be the number-one-selling book in America. Maybe even the world. Again, my naïveté was a blessing. I did not understand how the national publishing machine operated—the power of chains, distributors and publishers and the deals that are made at New York publishing lunches. Salt Lake City was still sufficiently provincial that a small book could make it on its own merit. But competing with the “big boys,” the large publishers and authors, was an entirely different matter.
The Christmas Box Miracle Page 6
