Khaled Hosseini’s bestselling A THOUSAND SPLENDING SUNS will be published in trade paperback on November 25. So far Riverhead says they have shipped more than 2.3 million copies of the hardcover. Their trade paperback edition of Hosseini’s first novel THE KITE RUNNER has been on the NYT paperback fiction bestseller list “for 175 weeks and counting, with more than 6.3 million copies shipped to date.”
New Releases/Forthcoming
Pre-Pub Hopes for The Gargoyle
USA Today focuses on predictions of success for Andrew Davidson’s novel THE GARGOYLE, which releases on August 5. BN’s Bob Wietrak says, “We feel that after the first week it will be on the best-seller lists, and it will continue to sell well into the holiday season.” Borders’ Jennifer Northcutt adds: “For every 10 people I talk to who love it, there are a few who say they can’t get past the first 100 pages, which is a shame. Because once you hit the love story, it’s absolutely beautiful and breathtaking.” And Sheryl Cotleur of Book Passage in Corte Madera, […]
Robert Downey Jr. Cancels Memoir
Robert Downey Jr. can’t handle the truth written on paper–or at least he prefers not do so at 2006 prices now that Iron Man was hit. The AP reports that the actor has returned his advance to Harper after having signed to provide a “candid look at the highs and lows of his life and career.” The wire notes that spokeseperson Britney Ross of Rogers & Cowan “declined to say why Downey wouldn’t be writing the book.”AP
Candidates as Comics?
IDW Publishing has announced they will issue two comic-book biographies of the major presidential candidates in early October, along with a trade paperback “flip-book” with both comics in one edition.
Full Version of Solzhenitsyn's First Circle in English
Harper has announced that next year they will issue “an uncut edition of Aleksander Solzhenitsyn’s THE FIRST CIRCLE a highly praised and controversial novel published 40 years ago and heavily edited because of its story of a Soviet prison camp,” the AP reports. A shortened version had been published in English in 1968 “despite objections by the author, who believed his work was being exploited for profit, and by scholars who feared that the book’s release could jeopardize his safety.”AP