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A Frog in Search of a
New Pond |
THE SHORT HOP TO A BEST-SELLER
Stuart Avery Gold has seen his Ping sell in leaps
and bounds overseas.
By Chauncey Mabe
Books Editor
Posted April 1 2007
Newmarket Press
published the business book Ping: A Frog in Search of
a New Pond in 2006 with cautious optimism.
The author, marketing
consultant and motivational speaker Stuart Avery Gold,
was a top executive with The Republic of Tea for 10
years, and his four earlier business books were still in
print.
What's more, animal
allegories have remained popular in the years since
Spencer Johnson's Who Moved My Cheese? showed how
the form could be used to convey lessons about business
and management.
"The greatest
motivational book in history is The Little Engine
That Could," Gold says. "I think I can, I think I
can. That's the encouragement we need throughout life. I
thought maybe Ping could find a place alongside
Who Moved My Cheese?"
Has it ever. In the
United States, Ping has been a moderate success,
but overseas the book was an instant smash.
In South Korea alone,
Ping has sold some 300,000 copies. City buses in
South America are rolling billboards for the book. The
Japanese love it. So do the Israelis.
"I had no idea Ping
would be a big international success," says Esther
Margolis, Newmarket's founder and publisher. "Then my
Korean agent said she had 11 publishers ready to bid on
the book."
Suddenly, Margolis had
foreign publishers begging for the rights. "They'd say,
`Give it to us, we'll make it a best-seller.'"
Not bad for a simple
fable of a champion jumping frog forced into a hostile
world when his pond dries up.
Neither Gold nor
Margolis, both marketing experts, can account for the
book's spectacular showing in Asia, South America and
Europe.
""What I do know is the
Ping story means different things to different
people,” Gold says. It's a motivational book, it's a
business book, it's a lifestyle book, it's even a young
adult book."
"In a funny way, this
is the magic and power of publishing," Margolis says.
"The message, adapting to change, is absolutely
current."
Gold has already
written a sequel to Ping, inspired not only by
the book's fabulous foreign sales, but also by affection
for the title character.
"People wrote me to say
the book had changed their lives," Gold says. "But they
also wrote to say they want to know what happens next. I
wanted to know what happens next, too, and the only way
to find out was to write the second book."
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