“No matter what it is, the betting is she’ll sign a deal by the end of the month,” a publishing source tells Page Six. The big talent and literary agencies are all courting, and publishers are ready to bid. Random House’s Stuart Applebaum says, “There are several of our imprints who are eager to talk to Governor Palin. She clearly has a constituency and we know books by conservatively-centered politicos usually sell very, very well.”
Deals
Can Senator Use Campaign Funds to Commission Book?
That’s the basic question Republican Senator Christopher “Kit” Bond put to the Federal Election Commission recently, as his campaign treasurer wrote, “because the issues present in the book are so important and because we believe the book would be an effective gift to potential donors, we wish to utilize either campaign or leadership PAC funds to compensate Senator Bond’s co-author.” The book, The Next Front: What Can America Do to Win over Asia’s Muslims, was originally signed by Simon & Schuster. Bond now has another publisher and apparently needs to repay his original $60,000 advance and compensate his co-author.The Hill
Koontz Memoir Coming
As often happens, one of the bigger deal announcements comes not from the book fair but from the US. USA Today got the first look at the official press release (a glimpse had leaked through our foreign deal reports last month) that Dean Koontz will write a memoir, A BIT LITTLE LIFE: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog, publishing next summer from Hyperion. It’s the first in a two-book nonfiction deal for world English rights at Hyperion with editor Brenda Copeland. Koontz says: “I wanted to write not just another dog story like Marley & Me — and, by the […]
Coretta Scott King Book in Family Feud
Penguin has notified King Inc., which controls the intellectual property of Martin Luther King’s estate, “of its intent to terminate the contract and demand repayment of a $300,000 advance if it doesn’t receive promised photos, personal writings and intimate letters within seven business days,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. The contract, signed in May, provided for a $1.2 million advance to King Inc. and another $200,000 for journalist-turned-minister Rev. Barbara Reynolds for an autobiography based on taped conversations with the late Coretta Scott King. The dispute is part of a much larger set of disagreements among the King heirs. Dexter King, […]
Director's Jesus Book a Dutch Bestseller
Dutch director Paul Verhoeven co-wrote JESUS OF NAZARETH with his own biographer Rob van Scheers and publisher Meulenhoff is on their fourth printing within weeks of release after a big promotional campaign in Holland. In the book, ” Verhoeven suggests that Jesus was the son of Mary and a Roman soldier who raped her,” the Hollywood Reporter says. Pendo has bought German rights; a US deal is reportedly in negotiations.HR
Keep Knitting
Putnam has announced that Kate Jacobs’ The Friday Night Knitting Club has over 1 million copies in print after 38 straight weeks on the NYT trade paperback fiction list, with a sequel volume KNIT TWO now setfor publication on November 25. It was just about a year ago that Jacobs’ former agent Barbara Zitwer announced that she would take over the series and write two sequels for Grand Central. At the time, Zitwer told us, “I wanted to create a series and to write the sequels and keep the series growing and Kate very much wanted to write something new […]