The WSJ highlights a few big releases, including the announced 2.8 million-copy first printing for John Grisham’s The Associate, publishing January 27. Others mentioned include Jodi Picoult’s Handle with Care, James Patterson’s nonfiction book The Murder of King Tut, Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones, Sara Gruen’s Ape House, and Emmanuel Jal’s War Child: A Child Soldier’s Story.WSJ
New Releases/Forthcoming
New Releases Aim for Post-Holiday Sales
Gotham publisher Bill Shinker explains to the WSJ that “the week after Christmas is a great time to put out books,” in part due to the rise in gift-card sales. Barnes & Noble says gift card purchases have doubled over the past five years. Highlighted newly-releasing titles in this short piece are: Josh Bazell’s Beat the ReaperAnn Coulter’s Guilty: Liberal ‘Victims’ and Their Assault on AmericaAzar Nafisi’s Things I’ve Been Silent About: MemoriesHarry S. Dent’s The Great Depression Ahead: How to Prosper in the Crash Following the Greatest Boom in History WSJ
Revised HP Lexicon Comes to Market
When Judge Robert Patterson barred publication of RDR Books’ THE HARRY POTTER LEXICON, his ruling made it clear that the biggest problem was the lifting of JK Rowling’s words and the “almost wholesale” incorporation of information in the two minor charity companion books, Fantastic Beasts and Quidditch Through the Ages. The publisher and author have done the sensible thing–rewrite the book, using Judge Patterson’s decision as “rule book.” They will issue the revised Lexicon in January, with the new subtitle, An Unauthorized Guide to Harry Potter Fiction and Related Materials. RDR has withdrawn its appeal of the court’s ruling, a […]
Vintage Has Government Book on WMDs & Terrorism
Tomorrow the bipartisan Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, chaired by Senator Bob Graham, will report its findings to President Bush and Congress and Vintage will release the authorized version as a trade paperback, WORLD AT RISK: The Report of the Commission of the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism. The report is designed as “a measure for the next Administration’s national security strategy,” analyzing the current threat of WMD’s and our government’s ability to respond to them. Graham says “my own assessment at this point is the more likely form of attack is going to be […]
Buckely's Forthcoming Family Memoir
Christopher Buckley discusses his forthcoming book LOSING MOM AND POP, due for release in May. Discussing it in VF’s January issue, Buckley says: “I honestly had no intention of writing about them [his parents]. But I’m a writer, and when the universe hands you material like this, it would seem an act of conscious omission not to do something about it. It spilled out of me. I wrote it in 40 days – no biblical associations intended.” He notes, “This book is going to land hard in some quarters . . . It’s a book about two very complex people. […]
More on Nabokov's LAURA
Dmitri Nabokov “has finally broken his silence about the contents” of the late Vladimir Nabokov’s unfinished THE ORIGINAL OF LAURA, which is set for publication rather than the burning originally called for by the author. And he shows the index cards on which it has written–which have been stored in a Swiss bank vault–to the BBC’s cameras. He told the BBC, “My father told me what his most important books were. He named Laura as one of them. One doesn’t name a book one intends to destroy. He would have reacted in a sober and less dramatic way if he […]