Basinger Tries to Stop Baldwin’s Book Kim Basinger has filed suit to try to block former husband Alec Baldwin’s forthcoming book sharing his divorce experiences A PROMISE TO OURSELVES. Basinger asserts that the book violates a court order preventing Baldwin from talking to the press about their divorce. Wire story New Book Sense The picks for July are posted. 1. BETWEEN, GEORGIA: A Novel, by Joshilyn Jackson TWO TIME, by Chris Knopf TOMORROW THEY WILL KISS: A Novel, by Eduardo Santiago THE DRESSMAKER: A Novel, by Elizabeth Birkelund Oberbeck ROCK OF AGES, by Howard Owen FIRMIN: Adventures of a Metropolitan […]

No Deal for Plame at Crown The NYT reports that Valerie Plame’s seven-figure deal with Crown will not be consummated following “a difference of opinion on some of the contract terms” according to spokesperson Tina Constable. Former CIA director George Tenet walked away from a multi-million dollar deal at Crown in early 2005 (and sold a book to Harper in early 2006), and Advance Magazine Group executive Steve Florio quietly dropped a six-figure deal made with Crown last summer. Plame is negotiating exclusively with underbidder Simon & Schuster now, and publisher David Rosenthal tells the paper, “We are optimistic about […]

Ottakar’s Accepts Low Bid Having rejected a bid thought to be around 285p a share a couple of weeks ago (when its stock was trading at about 330p), the desparate board of Ottakar’s has now accepted a bid of precisely 285p from HMV. Since rejecting the first bid, Ottakar’s stock had plunged, spurred by another bad earnings report, but was still at 287p yesterday before the offer was accepted. Worth just under 63 million pounds overall, the bid is about a third less than HMV was prepared to pay last September. As Publishing News notes, however, shareholders will have until […]

Price of Business in the UK The high price of coop fees for prime display during the holiday selling season in the UK has sparked a wave of articles in London’s Times (which claims to have first “exposed” coop payments five years ago). The paper says that WH Smith is charging about $94,000 a week to participate in the “adult gold” level of its “recommended reads” program in the weeks before Christmas. A spokesman for Smith’s says that the adult gold program is “oversubscribed.” Regular “read of the week” slots reportedly cost $28,000 a week at Smith’s, while Waterstone’s charges […]

Tuesday, May 30 Our Usual Reminder If for some reason this has reached you even though you are not a paying member of PublishersMarketplace, please visit the link below to join us all the time for complete deal reports and more. Click to register http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/register.shtml Deal Reports Just e-mail to deals@PublishersMarketplace if you aren’t using the online form linked below. Report a deal using the online form The Key As usual, the handy key to our Lunch deal categories. While all reports are always welcome, those that include a category will generally receive a higher listing when it comes time […]

Solid Attendance at BEA Show organizers report that 31,971 people registered for the convention, while 22,366 verified attendees were counted. (The verified number represents people whose badges were scanned at the badge-holder pick-up counter and upon entering the show floors. The actual number of participants is somewhere in between the two figures.) This year’s numbers are closer to last year’s NYC show (34,966 registered/27,421 verified) than the 2004 show in Chicago (25,261 registered/18,213 verified). Book buyers registered declined slightly, however, to 7,324 — down from 7,701 a year ago and 7,492 in 2004. (BEA did not have a count for […]