Crown Publishing Group might have given Deepak Chopra his very own imprint this past spring as a reward for having produced so many bestsellers, but Mr. Chopra’s Seven Spiritual Laws for Success do not apparently include a binding clause to tie him to his longtime publisher. Over the weekend, it was announced that Dr. Chopra and his brother Sanjiv Chopra have signed a “major” deal to publish a memoir with Amazon (AMZN), which seems to concord with Deepak Chopra’s “Law of Detachment.”
The memoir will be called Brotherhood, “the inspiring story of two brothers who arrived penniless in America in 1972 and their journey to realizing their dreams.”
Last spring, Mr. Chopra said, “I have long enjoyed a felicitous relationship with Crown as the publisher of many of my own bestselling books, and I am excited by this natural extension of our partnership. I look forward to collaborating with Tina Constable and her team to publish books I believe in with the same spirit of creativity and enthusiasm that has animated the publication of my own works.”
Over the weekend, he said he was thrilled that “Amazon, who reaches the world directly, is our publisher.”
UPDATE: David Drake, a publicist with Random House, has e-mailed us this comment:
Dr. Chopra is an enormously productive and prolific author who has had several publishers simultaneously throughout his career, but who publishes the majority of his books with Crown’s Harmony Books imprint. Presently, Harmony has multiple future books of his under contract. In addition, this year Crown established with Dr. Chopra the eponymously-named Deepak Chopra Books imprint, which will annually publish 4-6 books by authors selected by him, with the first title scheduled to be issued in spring 2013. We look forward to continuing our productive and flexible publishing partnership with Deepak Chopra.
