Kennedy: Over Eight from Twelve? Senator Ted Kennedy’s book sold to Jamie Raab at Grand Central and Jonathan Karp at Twelve (with Karp editing), for “more than $8 million” according to the NYT’s sources, “eclipsing the $8 million given to” Hillary Clinton according to sources at sister paper the Boston Globe. Attorney Bob Barnett tells the Globe, “My sense is he’s going to write his life as he lived it. You will hear the [accounts] of these momentous events in the voice of the man who lived them.” Hachette Book Group USA ceo David Young says in the announcement, “His […]
Lunch for Monday, November 26
Congressman Self-Publishes Attack on Iraq Policy Former Indiana congressman and “maverick” John Hostettler plans to self-publish NOTHING FOR THE NATION: Who Got What Out of Iraq, promising to reveal “why political leaders and their subordinates sought to remove Saddam Hussein from power.” The book is set for publication next month through his Publius House, named for the pseudonym used by some of the founding fathers. Hostettler tells the AP by e-mail the title is “the first of a series of books that will draw from my years of service in the United States House of Representatives.” Indy Star McClellanitella? Oh, […]
Lunch for Wednesday, November 21
Borders: Good News (Comp Sales Up), Bad News (Losses Ever Bigger) At least Borders is selling more books. Same-store superstore sales of $616 million were up 1.1 percent on a comp basis, while Walden store comps were up 3.6 percent at $110 million, and international comp sales rose 7.8 percent (thank you weak dollar/strong Asia). But they continue to lose more money than Wall Street dared to expect, dropping $39 million in net operating losses, or 66 cents a share, compared to $33 million a year ago. The total net loss is much more impressive at $161 million, though, including […]
Lunch for Monday, November 19
Snap Judgments, Kindled Perhaps it means something that, even as Amazon’s morning press conference to introduce the Kindle was unfolding slowly this morning, their online Kindle store was already live with all the specs, pictures, promotional videos and more that one could want. Having attended events like this for some seven-odd years now, there is a sameness to the proclamations and timelines. Today ceo Jeff Bezos noted at the beginning, “an interesting question to think about is, why are books the last bastion of analog?” Acknowledging the printed book as a near-perfect device, he said, “we forget this is a […]
Lunch Weekly for Monday, November 19
Newsweek Trades Puff for Kindle First Look Amazon wanted a reporter who would write a long gooey cover piece about how the Kindle will transform the reading and writing experience, a new gloss on the piece reporters have been getting wrong for at least a decade now, and they found their man easily in Newsweek’s Steve Levy. But inside the long article and its ethereal declarations — “This is the most important thing we’ve ever done,” says Jeff Bezos. “It’s so ambitious to take something as highly evolved as the book and improve on it. And maybe even change the […]
Lunch for Friday, November 16
“Last Lecture” with Randy? The NY Post reports on the auction for WSJ columnist Jeff Zaslow’s book based on Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch’s “last lecture,” delivered in September by the 46-year-old computer scientist who suffers from terminal pancreatic cancer. “I’m dying and having fun,” Pausch said in the lecture, “And I’m going to keep having fun every day because there is no other way to do it.” The Post says “the lecture became an instant hit on the Internet, with people calling and e-mailing Zaslow to say how Pausch’s inspirational words had helped them deal with their own problems, […]