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 […]
Deals
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 […]
Who Will Crash the Crash Books?
The Observer looks at book proposals about the financial meltdown. Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean have one out for a “definitive chronicle of the stunning financial crisis” through Darhansoff, Verrill and Feldman, and the asking price “is said to be more than $1 million.” Nocera says, “We want to write the big book, and I’m not afraid of saying that. It will be a book for the ages and–I know this is going to sound egomaniacal, but–between our contacts and our reporting skills and our writing skills, I think we’ll be pretty tough to beat.” Newsweek’s Daniel Gross is aiming […]
Sparks Writes for Both Grand Central and Miley Cyrus
Nicholas Sparks’s new novel, for publication in fall 2009, is being written simultaneously with the author’s own adaptation of that story as a starring vehicle for Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus (Offspring Entertainment is producing, for Walt Disney Pictures). Sparks had pitched “a premise for a novel that intrigued Cyrus, her family and the producers,” Variety says, though no details are being shared. Sparks says, “This is similar to the way it’s gone with movies based on my novels; it’s just out of order. Certain opportunities garner your interest, and this was one of those.”Variety