“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.”
Proposals/auctions
A Bush Memoir? Best to Wait
The consensus of publishers interviewed by the AP’s Hillel Italie is the President Bush should not be in any hurry to look for a book deal after leaving office. Knopf’s Paul Bogaards says, “Given how the public feels about him right now, I think patience would probably be something that I would encourage.” Jon Karp at Twelve points out that, even if there is a hardy domestic market for a Bush book, foreign publishers will not rush to buy rights the way they did for Bill Clinton’s memoir. “I don’t think Bush can get the kind of money Clinton did […]
Carson Proposal
David Vigliano is shopping a proposal from Johnny Carson’s attorney/agent/manager Henry Bushkin, “painting him as a sad, depressed man who cheated on his wives, was tormented by his mom and refused to visit his son in a mental hospital.” So much for client-attorney privilege. Bushkin’s lament: “At one time we did everything together. At the end, he treated me like everybody else – like I didn’t exist. At the end, it was like I was an irritant. In many respects, he was the saddest guy I ever knew.”NY Post, of course
Bin Laden Has a Book?
If he’s still alive, Osama Bin Laden may be working on a book called Nidal (or Struggle), according to news services in India and Pakistan. One Arab daily is quoted as saying the book “looks at the atrocities committed against Muslims by the West and how the Crusaders have harmed world development with their objective of boosting the West’s global influence that ultimately helped the United States to seize the Muslim world’s oil reserves.” Bin Laden is said to be writing in Arabic with the assistance of a young man who will translate the manuscript into English. So far, however, […]
Wylie Takes Over Bolaño, and "Finds" Another Novel
Andrew Wylie at The Wylie Agency has taken over representation of Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño’s literary estate from Spanish agent Carmen Balcells and is offering publishers the manuscript of THE THIRD REICH. The unpublished novel was unknown to Balcells and Bolaño’s Spanish publisher, Jorge Herralde. The Guardian says it “is said to have been written in the early 1990s before Bolaño began to work on a computer. The Wylie agency was touting the book at Frankfurt as ‘a type-written, completed novel that is meticulously corrected by hand.'”Guardian
Fey Proposal
The NY Post says that a “sounding out” of interest in a book by Tina Fey by Richard Abate at Endeavor has elicited offers of over $5 million. There is no proposal, and Fey has not met with publishers.Post