IT WAS A MONDAY WHEN PUBLISHER Gordon Soules sent the Phil Donahue Show an unsolicited copy of UBC professor Stephen Sacks' The Truth About Herpes (Soules $11.95) by Federal Express courier.

By Tuesday he had received a phone call from CBS. And by Wednesday Dr. Sacks' May 27th appearance on the top-rated Donahue program was confirmed.

As founder/director of the UBC Herpes Clinic, Dr. Sacks is considered a world expert on herpes, a virus that appears in one out of every five people. The Truth About Herpes gives guidance to individuals and their partners as to how to cope with herpes.

"This is the ultimate, ultimate; ultimate," says Soules, who revised Sacks' previously self-published book, "Everybody in the book business keeps telling me you can get any better promotion than Donahue."

Soules says health professionals, institutions and drug companies throughout North America have quickly bought out the book's third edition of 11,000 copies. Prior to the Donahue appearance, some B.C. bookstores wouldn't order the book, saying it covered an unsavory topic that wouldn't be of interest to their customers.

[BCBW Summer 1988]