1986-1989. When her first novel, Mama, was published in 1987, McMillan reportedly wrote more than 3,000 letters to bookstores, colleges, African-American groups, etc., promoting her book; she also arranged her own 39-city book tour. Her efforts worked: Mama was re-printed twice in the first six weeks. This archive shows both the author's diligence and her enthusiasm, beginning with a May, 1986 author questionnaire, in which she has thoroughly answered all 27 questions, adding two appendices for extra space. A third appendix is included (of apparently 7, although #4-7 are absent here), in which McMillan provides a 4-page list of people who may provide blurbs, more than half of whom are asterisked as those she will ask herself. She follows this with her own 7-point plan for promotion; and then follows this with 23 detailed and pointed questions for the sales department (#10: "How can I find out who the HM sales representative for my book is and how he/she feels about my book, if they've read it or will read it before the sales meeting, and if they like it or are excited about it?"). In the first of five typed letters signed that are included here, McMillan posits an additional ten questions. At this point Nan Talese sends a reassuring letter, a copy of which is retained. On the same day, McMillan writes a letter disclosing that she has personally contacted 900-1000 places (libraries and book buyers and English Departments of Black colleges and major universities) and has plans to contact bookstores. The following month, she pens a letter apologizing to her publicist, apparently reacting to having been told that sending letters to bookstores had crossed into the sales department's territory; a copy of a second note offers an apology directly to the sales department. Also included: McMillan's CV, ca. 1987; a promotional brochure for Mama; a 1987 typed letter signed, written while on vacation; and a typed letter signed from 1989, after the first reviews of Disappearing Acts have come in and TriStar Pictures has optioned the movie rights (the film was eventually released by HBO in 2000). Largely as a result of her own promotion of her books -- and the fact that they dealt with an underrepresented demographic: middle class Black women, on their own -- McMillan's books became huge bestsellers -- one of them commanding what was thought to be the second largest sale of paperback rights at the time, with at least four of them being made into films. This archive shows her unending willingness to work on the nuts and bolts of publishing and promoting her work, in addition to doing the work itself: much of Mama was written at Yaddo and MacDowell and revised for Houghton Mifflin. Publisher's notations/responses across several of McMillan's documents; the lot is near fine. [#036718] $5,000