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 < back to authors list Greg Clark:
It took Greg Clark 12 years to complete his first book, and when he did, it reached No. 17 on the Amazon best-seller list. A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World debuted in August 2008. Published by Princeton University Press, the book evolved from Clark's 20 years of teaching world economic history at the University of California-Davis. "The title consciously echoes the Stephen Hawkins book on physics, A Brief History of Time," Clark said. "For it is an attempt to write history in the style of physics where there is a beginning, a dynamic to the system, and a final outcome." Clark started out teaching European History, from 1700 to 1914, "but it soon became clear that all the interesting issues pertained to all societies and to even longer time periods, including hunters-gatherers," he said. He spent 12 years writing the book, because he could not form the interesting elements of history into a coherent framework. "That was what eluded me for so long," Clark said. "A further problem is that in academic economics, little credit is given for books. Instead, everyone writes articles." So the book became a "labor of love" for Clark that he worked on in his spare time, in between producing the quota of articles that earned him promotions from assistant to associate to full professor. During that time, his students - about 2,000 Davis undergraduates - helped him shape the book. Teaching world economic history at least twice a year for 20 years gave him the equivalent of "40 focus groups" where he could present his ideas and assess the response, he said. "The main thing I got from the students was an appreciation of what proved interesting and what was dull," Clark said. "There was a huge amount of 'dull' that they heartily expressed their distaste for that got excised from the book manuscript." The result of his persistence was "one shining hour (before the modest initial print run sold out)" at No. 17 on the Amazon best-seller list, Clark said. The book also has been featured in dozens of reviews, interviews, blogs, and excerpts throughout the world. Clark had a link to the publisher early on through a friendship with the series editor. "The publisher, Peter Docherty of Princeton University Press, very early saw the potential in the topic and the approach," Clark said. "He was very encouraging, though he did actually urge me to take more time to work on the book. This was a surprise coming from a publisher, whom you would expect to have a short time horizon and a long, sad experience with authors taking far too much time." As a book proposal, Clark sent in several early chapters. "What really sold Peter Docherty on the book was actually the first figure, which summarized the entire economic history of the world in one picture," Clark said. "I think the strong underlying structure of the book was early on a strong selling point." Clark said he received a $3,000 advance to write the book. He will earn the standard 15 percent royalty on hardbacks and 10 percent on paperbacks. "Since no one expected the book to sell as well as it did, the size of the advance was never an issue," he said. Along with the success of the book, another surprise for Clark was the promotion activity and how much time it took. "As a first time author, I thought you labored to finish the manuscript, and then you were done," he said. Yet even by the time the manuscript was finished, the publisher knew it had some potential to sell well. One sign was that the book was favorably reviewed "in the rough" in the New York Times. Clark had put the manuscript on his web page. Therefore, Princeton University Press organized a six-month promotion campaign, including asking him to write several opinion editorial pieces on some ideas from the book. The publisher also arranged six to eight talks on the book. "Once the book came out and was wildly controversial, various other invitations flowed in for talks as far away as Chengdu, China, and Australia," Clark said. "I am still doing a few book-related talks even this year, 18 months after it came out." Clark has spent a huge amount of time on promoting his book, much of it spent crammed into airplanes. "People who make their living from writing books do a lot more work in promotion than I had ever imagined," he said. In spite of his surprises, Clark is considering writing another book on the history of "order." "There was a lot of interesting history which had to be pruned from the earlier book to try to justify the 'brief' in the title," Clark said. Clark and his family reside in Davis, Calif., home of the University of California, Davis, and America's most bike-friendly town. "I like that because by riding my bike to work I can combine commuting with exercise," he said. He lives with his wife Mary McComb and the youngest of their three children. Their two older children attend college. "My wife's job is much more interesting than mine," he said. "She's an attorney who files the appeal for people awaiting execution on California's Death Row at San Quentin." Kim Seidel is a freelance writer based in Onalaska, Wis.
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