Dec. 8 – The merchandising of Helter Skelter is neither haphazard nor helter-skelter.

It is costing W. W. Norton & Co. $50,000. On the theory that crime pays and pays well if enough people buy a $10 book, the co-authors of Helter Skelter are out trying to make their 502-page book, subtitled “The True Story of the Manson Murders,” a best seller.

They’re out for 55 days. They’re trying in 27 cities.

“We cut a 900-page manuscript to 700 pages and used smaller type and lesser margins to keep the price down,” said Curt Gentry.

Gentry, 43, is a bearded 13-book San Francisco writer who takes credit for the California-is-going-to-fall-off-the-continent scare of 1968. (“At least it stopped the population growth.”)

Prior to his corroboration with Vincent Bugliosi, the tightly-wound prosecutor of the case, Gentry wrote books with U-2 spy Francis Powers and the exec of the U.S.S. Pueblo.

Gentry and Bugliosi began a 50-50 partnership in 1970, prior to the time the trial judge issued a gag rule and they had to work secretly late at night in motel rooms. The initial publisher was G. P. Putnam & Sons. The advance was $30,000.

But the book took four years to produce. The contract expired and the authors had to cough up the up-front money.

“Things got tight; very tight.

“One year I made less than $4,000, another year less than $5,000. Putnam wanted a quickie.”

“They dropped us because they thought it was no longer topical,” said Bugliosi.

So now, in their role of congenial literary hucksters, they are out to prove Putnam wrong. Among those convinced are the editors of the Book-of-the-Month Club. The book is the November selection.

“That will mean anywhere from 150,000 to 300,000 copies,” said Bugliosi.

Before they hit a town, the Norton PR machine bombards prospective interviewers with releases and clips about the crime and book.

Time Magazine: “Thanks to massive publicity, everyone knows all too well that on Aug. 9, 1969, Actress Sharon Tate and four others were savagely murdered in a Los Angeles home leased by Tate and her husband, Director Roman Polanski. The killings produced a mudslide of speculative explanations: drugs, kinky sex, human sacrifice. When suspects were arrested four months later, reality proved even more bizarre. No one had dreamed up Charles Manson and his marauding band of zombies.”

Newsweek Magazine: “In a manner worthy of the Keystone Cops, the police who arrived at the Tate home clumsily wiped out a bloody fingerprint on a gate-control button, tracked their own gory footprints through the house, and dismissed the connection when, 24 hours later, the groupies killed Leno LaBianca, a wealthy grocer, and his wife, Rosemary.

“It took a TV news team, re-enacting the Tate crime, to discover the blood-stained clothing that the murderers discarded after they left. Most ludicrous of all, implies Bugliosi, was the search for the .22 caliber revolver used on three of the victims. L.A. police cast a net across the continent but overlooked a local division to which just such a revolver had been turned in. It took three months before police realized they had the murder weapon.”

Gentry and Bugliosi arrive in town under a heavy schedule for as much media exposure as possible. For television, they take along 4 1/2 minutes of videotape, edited from a 90-minute documentary which was good enough to lose an Academy Award.

Obligingly, they tolerate all questions: the crime, the book, themselves, their past, their future.

Bugliosi once attended the University of Miami on a tennis scholarship. He discovered that Gardner Mulloy was pretty tough competition in 1937.

Bugliosi is now in private practice in Los Angeles. During the 9 1/2 month trial, which was the longest murder trial in the history of the nation, he made a good impression on the jurors. Two have since hired him for their own problems.

Gentry’s next book, he hopes, will be a serious biography of John Steinbeck.

The merchandising seems to be paying off.

Helter Skelter has made the Today Show, the Tomorrow Show, and Mike Douglas has 90 minutes for January 7 and 8. The producer of the TV Waltons, Bugliosi said, want to do a three hour movie.

“We’re holding out on the paperback rights until we see if we hit the best seller list,” said Gentry.

At the Four Ambassadors, where they had ensconced themselves in a $52 suite the other day, the two men kept waiting for a telephone call from New York.

The best-seller list, they said, now comes through a computer. They didn’t make it that week. This week they’re waiting again in another hotel room.

By GENE MILLER