Cover your ears, MFA rejects, conceptual poets and other miserable literary types. Yesterday, Publishers Marketplace (subscription required) yielded two new blog-to-book deals. Three if we count Hairpin domestic goddess Jolie Kerr’s My Boyfriend Barfed in My Handbag.
Meet the newest bloggers-turned-authors: Read More
This time last year, Glenn Beck made former Air Force pilot and Mormon congressional candidate Chris Stewart’s history book, The Miracle of Freedom, a bestseller by promoting it on his radio show. Now the Tea Party media mogul hopes to repeat history with Mr. Stewart’s series of thrillers, The Great and Terrible. Read More
At 6:39 on Thursday night, as the North Korean military was desperately watching a long-range Taepodong-2 missile disintegrate shortly after lift off, its remnants tumbling harmlessly into the Yellow Sea, a group of the regime’s opponents were crowded into the Korea Society’s Midtown East headquarters.
But weapons proliferation wasn’t even on the Read More
On Monday Farrar, Straus and Giroux acquired a biography of Blanche Knopf—the wife of Alfred A. Knopf, founder and namesake of Random House’s rival literary imprint—by Laura Claridge.
“What’s fascinating about it is this writer has access to a tremendous cache of papers,” FSG executive editor Ileene Smith told The Observer yesterday.
Although she was Read More
Acquiring Academy Award-winning screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s debut novel was a long time coming for Grand Central executive editor Ben Greenberg. But with the closing of the deal, reported on Publishers Marketplace today, his patience paid off.
Mr. Greenberg, a fan of Mr. Kaufman, has been angling to publish his writing since he saw 1999′s Being John Malkovich.
“I’ve been chasing after Charlie for years,” Mr. Greenberg told The Observer. “Without ever having spoken to him. It was just an idea.”
Read More
Federal agents intercepted eleven pounds of marijuana bound for St. Martins Press’s Flatiron headquarters earlier this month, reports The Smoking Gun. The two parcels, addressed to a fictitious St. Martins employee named Karen Wright, were seized at a post office in California after they were sniffed out by a drug detection dog.
A company operator told The Smoking Gun no one by that name works at the company.
Because the Feds did not attempt to smoke out “Karen Wright” with a controlled delivery, the excitement is pretty much over for the moment, except on Twitter, where someone with the handle @KarenWright_SMP has been asking if anyone has seen the day’s mail and soliciting tips for coming up with $70,000 fast. Hypothetically speaking. Read More
Tim Harrington, the charismatic frontman of New York indie fixture Les Savy Fav, is publishing a children’s book.
The book is a “humorous, fresh take on the nursery rhyme ‘This Little Piggy,’ featuring drumming, dancing, and superhero toes,” according to the deal report on Publisher’s Marketplace. William Morris Endeavor’s Andy McNicol sold it to Alessandra Balzer at Balzer & Bray, a children’s imprint at HarperCollins. Read More
The Americas division of Cambridge University Press has a new managing director: Michael Peluse comes to New York from managing Cambridge University Press’s Iberia office. He replaces the most recent president of the Americas division, Dr. Richard Ziemacki, who worked at the Press for 37 years. Read More
Barnes & Noble has owned a book publisher, Sterling Publishing, since 2003. Now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that B&N wants to sell Sterling, an interesting move as B&N competitor Amazon ramps up its own publishing business. Read More
Jill Schwartzman has been named executive editor at Dutton, an imprint of Penguin, reports Publishers Marketplace. Ms. Schwartzman’s most recent job was senior editor at Hyperion, where she acquired such titles as White Girl Problems, by David Oliver Cohen, Tanner Cohen, & Lara Schoenhals, and Whiter Shades of Pale: The Stuff White People Like Read More
