Britain’s surprising medal haul at the Beijing Olympics has prompted a flurry of interest in potential book projects, with agents sounding out publishers for deals for the likes of double-gold swimming champion Rebecca Adlington, medal-winning cyclist Victoria Pendleton and teenage diver Tom Daley. Giles Elliott, sports editor at Transworld, said that since Ben Ainslie’s gold medal win in sailing last Sunday, there have been agents trying to tout tie-in sports titles. “They have been going around trying to see what kind of interest there is,” he said. Tom Whiting, editorial director at Harper non-fiction, added: “There are a lot of […]
What Publishing Can Learn from Social Media
At Business Week, Sarah Lacy writes about a topic “near and dear” to her: how publishing can adapt and “stay everywhere” in the wake of changing social media and Web 2.0 applications: “A way to do that is to ensure that publishing learns how to exploit the full benefits of the social media tools now taking hold of the Web. Newspapers dragged their heels and look what’s happening to them. As great as the Kindle is, publishing has a long way to go.” Her five lessons for the industry include looking to Yelp, Digg and Twitter for ways to “make […]
Penguin Launches Dating Website
Penguin is launching a dating website aimed at book readers as “a place to meet and indulge in the age-old art of writing love letters”. in conjunction with online dating giant Match.com.The Bookseller
Announcements
Sarah Durand joins Atria Books as a Senior Editor, effective September 2. She was previously with HarperCollins, where she most recently headed up the HarperEntertainment licensing program. Anna Baijars has been appointed Publishing Director at WSOY General Literature, reporting to president Veli-Pekka Elonen, effective next month. Baijars has previously worked for Gummerus Publishers as Publishing Director.
Goodkind e-book a Kindle Exclusive
NYT Bestseller and fantasy novelist Terry Goodkind’s first novel, Wizard’s First Rule, originally published in 1994, is released today in e-book exclusively on Kindle from Rosetta Books. This is Goodkind’s first appearance of in e-book format. His agent, Russell Galen, said: “Terry believes deeply that the power of novels is connected in part to the physical experience of reading a printed book, and so for years he refused to permit electronic editions of his work. A hands-on demonstration of the Kindle convinced him that here at last was a technology which provided that powerful reading experience.”
Faulks Bond Novel Won't Be on Screens Anytime Soon
Eon Productions, the UK-based company behind the 22 James Bond movies, has passed on adapting Sebastian Faulks’ new Bond novel Devil May Care for film. “We love the book, but because it is set in the 1960s, we haven’t considered making it in the near future,” said Eon heads Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson. But, as Variety reports, Eon’s move doesn’t suddenly leave one of the film world’s most profitable characters available to Hollywood’s franchise-seekers because its parent company Danjaq has controlled the copyrights and trademarks to the franchise for films since the 1950s, locking out anyone else from […]