Abu Dhabi’s long-planned “media zone” has enlisted participation from HarperCollins and Random House, along with the BBC, Financial Times and Thomson Reuters Foundation. The NYT notes, “the campus is intended to be an incubator that will mix Western media companies with billions in Middle Eastern oil money.” Harper “is establishing a presence in Abu Dhabi to capitalize on what the company says is growth in the sale of English-language books in the Middle East.” Spokesperson Eric Crum says they want to “explore the potential of the area and forge relationships.” The press release says that Random House “will be creating […]
Authors
New York DFW Memorial
Friends and fellow writers will speak in remembrance and appreciation of the life of David Foster Wallace in a memorial service held by Little, Brown and open to the public, scheduled for Thursday, October 23rd, at 4pm at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at NYU.
Some Author Profiles: Lippman, Funke, Vowell, and Spillane's Last Book
Laura Lippman is living her secret dream. It started in earnest when “an editor she describes as ‘a cold-blooded professional assassin.’ He told her she needed to work on her writing.” She says, “the secret, secret, almost never-stated endgame was … ‘I’m going to quit my day job and be a novelist.'” The first time she told her husband, “I told him I thought I could write full time. And I also told him that I thought I would be a New York Times best seller. I was really drunk, sitting at my kitchen table.” Last year, 10 years after […]
Authors' Earnings
Forbes has updated their annual guesses on the earnings of the most successful authors. This year’s list, covering June 1, 2007 to June 1, 2008, estimates the top 10 authors “pulled in a combined $563 million.” 1. J.K. Rowling, $300 million2. James Patterson, $50 million 3. Stephen King, $45 million4. Tom Clancy, $35 million5. Danielle Steel, $30 million6. John Grisham, $25 million6. Dean Koontz, $25 million8. Ken Follett, $20 million9. Janet Evanovich, $17 million10. Nicholas Sparks, $16 millionForbes
How Godin Leads His Tribe
With the release of his latest marketing book, TRIBES, “a 147-page, anecdote-filled call to readers to become leaders of a movement,” BusinessWeek profiles the energetic author and the tribe of readers who follow him–even when academicians “tut tut” at his work. “Godin’s secret to resonating with such diverse readers: He has mastered marketing in the Digital Age. His blog and books invite readers to join his e-mail list, through which he lets them know about new publications or workshops. He offers free e-books–Unleashing the Ideavirus was downloaded 2 million times before it was published. Between books, he also spreads his […]
"The Next Generation of Fiction Writers"
The National Book Foundation announced their 5 Under 35 list of young fiction writers “selected by a previous National Book Award Finalist or Winner as someone whose work is particularly promising and exciting and is among the best of a new generation of writers”: Matthew Eck, The Farther Shore (Milkweed Editions, 2007)Selected by Joshua Ferris Keith Gessen, All the Sad Young Literary Men (Viking Press, 2008)Selected by Jonathan Franzen Sana Krasikov, One More Year: Stories (Spiegel & Grau, 2008)Selected by Francine Prose Nam Le, The Boat (Knopf, 2008)Selected by Mary Gaitskill Fiona Maazel, Last Last Chance (FSG, 2008)Selected by Jim […]