After one of the strangest paths to publication we’ve seen, British musician Morrissey’s memoir AUTOBIOGRAPHY sold 20,000 trade paperback units in its first day on sale, Penguin UK reported. A spokesman for Waterstones Jon Howells explained to the AP, “In Britain, he is one of our icons. His is the great untold story from the ’80s generation of music heroes.” The author launched the book at a signing…in Sweden. Reviews in the UK newspapers have ranged from high to low. For a quick overview, the Daily Beast has already culled the “juiciest bits.” Though rights had not been sold previously […]
Deals
Dealmaking Jumps Ahead of Frankfurt
As usual it’s time for our preliminary report on deal activity ahead of the Frankfurt Book Fair (with our final tallies coming in a week), and it’s clear that September was a booming month for US dealmaking, across the board. We recorded our highest-ever September deal totals in all three major categories — nonfiction, fiction and children’s — with children’s deals rebounding the most after lagging this time last year. Overall, the 593 US deals reported this September was 26 percent higher than the same month a year ago (when the market was down 4 percent overall, and even more […]
Musicians’ On-Again Off-Again Stories
Billy Joel‘s one-time co-author Fred Schruers is reportedly writing a biography of Joel for Crown. Newsday reports Joel saying in a statement, “Fred Schruers is free to write whatever kind of book he wants based on the firsthand information he gathered during the time he spent with me.” Crown did not reply to a query for confirmation yet. In 2011 Billy Joel cancelled his planned memoir with HarperCollins THE BOOK OF JOEL about two months before publication, saying, “It took working on writing a book to make me realize that I’m not all that interested in talking about the past, […]
Briefs: More Funding for Open Road; Commonwealth Book Prize Discontinued; And More
Open Road Integrated Media announced it has received $11 million in Series C funding led by private equity group NewSpring Capital (whose technology fund NewSpring Growth Capital III supplied $8 million) with existing investors Kohlberg Ventures, Azure Capital, and Golden Seeds joining NewSpring in the financing, bringing the total amount Open Road has raised to $24 million. On Open Road’s blog ceo Jane Friedman said the new funding will be used for new technology, additional revenue streams, expand their International Publishing Partners Translation Program (which includes 8 partners to date) and further investment in “appropriate content and technology companies.” Andrea […]
Miller’s New Division Gets A Name
The new nonfiction division at Macmillan that Bob Miller is building and running has a name: Flatiron Books. He notes, “It’s a name that carries a lot of history, both for Macmillan and for New York City.” Former group publisher at Workman (and before that founding publisher at Hyperion and then Harper Studio), Miller started at Macmillan on July 8. He announced his first three acquisitions at the same time, for publication beginning in 2015. (All three are noted in Deals.)
Hogarth Enlists Well-Known Authors to Retell Shakespeare’s Plays In Prose; Random Resurrects Tastebook
Hogarth is commissioning new versions of Shakespeare’s plays “reimagined for a twenty-first century audience,” set to launch in 2016. They have already enlisted Anne Tyler to write a prose “retelling” of The Taming of the Shrew, and Jeanette Winterston for a new version of The Winter’s Tale. Winterston says in the announcement, “All of us have talismanic texts that we have carried around and that carry us around. I have worked with The Winter’s Tale in many disguises for many years. This is a brilliant opportunity to work with it in its own right. And I love cover versions.” Hogarth […]