The AP reports a variety of grim measures of decline in the audiobook market. The 14 publishers who report audio sales to the AAP cite a 47 percent drop in revenue so far in 2009, while those physical audiobook sales tracked via Nielsen BookScan (which does not include any downloadable audio) have declined 20 percent in units for the year to date.AP As for individuals, writer-filmmaker John Sayles’ sweeping new 1,000-page novel SOME TIME IN THE SUN has failed to find a publisher since first going on submission last fall. Agent Anothny Arnove tells the LAT, “When I went out […]
Deals
Things On the Market or Recently Sold
Over the weekend the NYT reported on former Vice President Dick Cheney’s campaign for a book deal, represented by Bob Barnett. “A person familiar with discussions Mr. Cheney has had with publishers said he was seeking more than $2 million for his advance.” But “Cheney’s friends say he does not need the money and has made clear in his talks that he is eager to give a full accounting of his life in politics that will debunk his many critics. According to a person familiar with a meeting that Mr. Cheney had with a publisher, the former vice president is […]
It's a Rights Fair
So it’s looking a lot more like the third day of BEA here in London as the hard-core continue their work (often with suitcases nearby for tonight’s getaway) and the rest have fallen away, lightening aisles and rights tables alike. Even many of the scouts aren’t crazed with appointments today, which should tell you something. But anecdotal reports continue to indicate that a smaller, less frenized show has still been a fine show for the basic renewing of relationships and presentation of books for translation and secondary sales, along with ancillary international business of all kinds. As always, actual deal […]
Dan Brown Ready to Save Fall
Knopf Doubleday has announced that Dan Brown’s THE LOST SYMBOL will publish September 15, with a first printing said to be five million copies. Featuring the protagonist from the Da Vinci Code, Brown’s editor Jason Kaufman says “this book’s narrative takes place in a twelve-hour period, and from the first page, Dan’s readers will feel the thrill of discovery as they follow Robert Langdon through a masterful and unexpected new landscape. The Lost Symbol is full of surprises.” Brown adds, “This novel has been a strange and wonderful journey. Weaving five years of research into the story’s twelve-hour timeframe was […]
Scott Turow Leaves FSG for Grand Central
Scott Turow is leaving behind his hardcover publisher since 1987 Farrar, Straus for his longtime paperback publisher Grand Central, starting with a sequel to PRESUMED INNOCENT for publication in May 2010. He told the NYT “in an interview that it no longer made sense to have one house publishing his books in hardcover and another releasing them in paperback. Such arrangements were common when he first sold the rights to Presumed Innocent in 1986 but are much rarer now, especially for a bestselling author.” Agent Gail Hochman says, “We’re not unhappy with anything we’ve gotten, but it stretches the boundaries […]
Partial DFW Novel Emerges
Agent Bonnie Nadell and David Foster Wallace’s widow Karen Green found a partial manuscript of THE PALE KING two months after the writer suicided. This week’s New Yorker carries a brief excerpt, and Little, Brown has what publisher Michael Piestch calls a tentative agreement to publish the work in 2010. “The characters are Internal Revenue Service agents working at an IRS facility in the Midwest. The intense tediousness of their jobs and their attempts to transcend boredom reflect Wallace’s preoccupation with the concept of ‘mindfulness’ — the idea, as he put it in a 2005 commencement speech, that you should […]