NEW YORK | They seem to happen every year, those paperback sensations.
Like Sue Monk Kidd's "The Secret Life of Bees," or Khaled Hosseini's "The Kite Runner." Kim Edwards' "The Memory Keeper's Daughter." Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love." Greg Mortenson's and David Oliver Relin's "Three Cups of Tea."
Some are fiction, others travel or adventure. Edwards' book is set in Kentucky, Hosseini's is in California and Afghanistan, while Gilbert's book is in Italy, India and Indonesia. They don't appear to have a lot in common except that none has won major awards or sold brilliantly in hardcover or was written by anyone famous.
It could be explained as coincidence but for one important connection -- the publisher: Penguin Group (USA).
"They (Penguin) saw these books as brand new books, reaching a customer that had not been reached," says a vice president of merchandising at Barnes & Noble, Inc., Bob Wietrak, who calls the Penguin record phenomenal and unmatched by other publishers.
"They really are off the charts, as far as their trade paperbacks," says Cathy Langer, lead buyer for the Tattered Cover bookstore, in Denver, Colo. "They market the books really well. They package the books really well, and the books are really good."
Relying on luck, instinct and determination, Penguin has mastered the paperback blockbuster, taking a book already out in hardcover and giving it the kind of promotion once reserved for a new release: prominent store placement, author tours, online marketing, appeals to book clubs and community reading organizations.
The key, says Penguin paperback sales head Norman Lidofsky, is identifying a book that could become a "word-of-mouth" seller, a conversation starter, a reading group favorite, such as "Eat, Pray, Love," Gilbert's physical and spiritual journey after divorce, or "The Kite Runner," Hosseini's timely novel about two Afghan boys and the betrayal that destroys their friendship.
"There's no magic, no crystal balls," Lidofsky says, "the books grow organically and then we focus on it and never stop. We've coined a phrase, `These books should be brought up during every sales call, every account, every time."'
Combined paperback sales for five Penguin hits, from "Secret Life of Bees" to "Three Cups of Tea," top 13 million, according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 70 percent of industry sales. Booksellers say the latest in the Penguin line is Kate Jacobs' "The Friday Night Knitting Club." It was published in February 2007 and sold 40,000 copies in hardcover. The paperback, issued at the beginning of 2008, already has sold around 300,000 copies.
A debut novel, "Knitting Club" has an ideal setting for reading groups -- a New York knitting shop and the women who meet there. Jacobs, a resident of Thousand Oaks, Calif., toured throughout January for the paperback and says she receives requests daily from book clubs asking her to speak with them.
"I have three clubs to call today and two clubs to call tomorrow," Jacobs, who has a new novel coming out in May, said during a recent interview.
Because they're cheaper, paperbacks almost always outsell hardcovers, but virtually all the books on The New York Times trade paperback list have obvious advantages: major success in hardcover (Sara Gruen's "Water for Elephants"), a brand-name author (Jodi Picoult's "Nineteen Minutes"), a movie tie-in (Cormac McCarthy's "No Country for Old Men") an Oprah Winfrey pick (Ken Follett's "The Pillars of the Earth").
