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Da Vinci Book Helps Drive Sales at Nelson Thomas Nelson reported first quarter sales of $49 million, up 17 percent from a year before, with income of $1.9 million, up from $1.1 million a year ago. CEO Sam Moore says that BREAKING THE DA VINCI CODE was one of two “top performers” for the quarter. Moore also notes that, “We believe there are signs that business is starting to rebound in the religious book store market after several years of pressure. Our share of this market has increased in recent years, and we expect to benefit from any sustained recovery […]

Their Plans Becomes Our Plan PublicAffairs was preparing to print a paperback book, KERRY/EDWARDS: Their Plans and Promises, promoted as “delineating issue-by-issue the promises and the plans of the Kerry/Edwards ticket,” for release at the end of August. But yesterday the publisher announced that they were dropping that book of “position papers” in favor of an arrangement to publish an “authorized version” trade version of the campaign’s own book, OUR PLAN FOR AMERICA: Stronger at Home, Respected in the World, landing right before Labor Day. The campaign itself announced the book’s publication on Monday, with a free PDF file of […]

CIA Asks Author/Agent to Tone Down the Talking The author of IMPERIAL HUBRIS — revealed to be Michael Scheuer, but still called anonymous by the NYT — has “been ordered to sharply curtail his interviews with news organizations in connection with the book, his publisher said on Wednesday.” Editor Christina Davidson tells the paper that the agent is now, “Prohibited from taking part in more interviews without prior written approval,” which must be sought at least five business days ahead of time. NYT piece VF Seeks Regan; Publisher Seeks Silence Vanity Fair writer Judith Newman is said to have told […]

Fall Book to Skewer Musical Greats Herbert Breslin, longtime publicity agent or manager to the likes of Plácido Domingo, Joan Sutherland, Marilyn Horne, Itzhak Perlman, Leonard Slatkin and Georg Solti, has an autobiography coming in October from Doubleday that the Washington Post is ready to call, “Likely [to] be one of the most talked-about musical books of the fall season; it will certainly be one of the nastiest.” Called THE KING AND I: The Uncensored Tale of Luciano Pavarotti’s Rise to Fame by His Manager, Friend and Sometime Adversary, the portrait of former client Pavarotti is judged “devastating.” The paper […]

Author Tommy Franks, Reporting for Duty General Tommy Franks gave a number of interviews for his just-released book AMERICAN SOLDIER, in which he indicates he expects the U.S. will need to maintain soldiers in Iraq for up to five years. Franks says that President Bush’s appearance on an aircraft carrier under a “Mission Accomplished” banner six weeks into the Iraq campaign started with a suggestion of his to thank the troops at a public event. “That was not so everyone could have a victory lap,” Franks tells an interviewer. “We’d been given to believe that once major hostilities were over, […]

Lagardere Gets Hodder Lagardere has indeed made the winning bid for Hodder Headline, paying $406.4 million (which includes the assumption of about $24 million in debt). The unit is Britain’s fourth largest trade publisher, and its second-largest educational publisher. With 2003 sales of $263 million, the multiple is about 1.5 times sales. Over half of the sale proceeds will be added to parent company WH Smith’s undercapitalized pension fund. Bloomberg story Also in the UK Profile Books celebrated a banner year, driven by EATS, SHOOTS & LEAVES, in which sales more than doubled to over $9 million. And Curtis Brown […]