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Welcome
to the Vol. 7, No. 1 January 2009Index (scroll down for stories)
1.
Looking to design a book cover? We rank five books that might help 1. Looking to design a book cover? We rank five books that might help If you’re looking to design a book cover – or hope to understand more about the creative process that cover designers use – you might consider the following books. We’ve rated them by their rankings on Amazon.com in late November. Keep in mind that Amazon.com rankings change hourly for the most popular titles. So if you check a ranking, it might be somewhat or even considerably different than the ranking that existed when we ran our checks. Remember also that just because a book is least or most popular in any table we run, it may not be the one that you would find the most helpful.
2. Breaking news from the book barons Reed Elsevier has terminated discussions with potential bidders for Reed Business Information ("RBI"), the magazine conglomerate that includes Publishers Weekly. Reed blamed the decision on “the recent deterioration in macro-economic outlook and poor credit market conditions, and after discussions with short listed bidders, the Board has judged it not possible to structure a transaction on acceptable terms at this time.” Keith Jones has been appointed chief executive officer of RBI. He was previously the CEO of RBI UK. The strategy of Reed Elsevier remains “to divest RBI in the medium term when conditions are more favorable.” The division includes Variety and Daily Variety, as well as the book publishing trade outlets Criticas, Library Journal and School Library Journal. For most of its history, Publishers Weekly, along with the Library Journal-related titles, were owned by R. R. Bowker. Reed Publishing purchased Bowker from the Xerox Corporation in 1985… Barack Obama's two books got a post-election bounce from his victory. USA Today's bestseller list, published on Nov. 13, showed The Audacity of Hope, his 2006 book on politics and faith, at No. 8, up from No. 43. Dreams From My Father, Obama's 1995 memoir, reissued in 2004, was No. 9, up from No. 56... J.K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard hit the shelves in the UK and elsewhere in early December. The Guardian dubbed Rowling's latest volume "the most eagerly anticipated title of the year, with a worldwide print run of almost eight million copies."… Malcolm Gladwell, the New Yorker writer who won acclaim with The Tipping Point and Blink, is back on the talk show circuit promoting his latest work. The new tome, Outliers: The Story of Success, has 640,000 copies in print and has been in Amazon.com's top 10 since it came out Nov. 18. An outlier is a person or thing that is way outside the statistical norm. Gladwell uses it to mean "men and women who do things that are out of the ordinary." One example of an outlier: MicroSoft’s Bill Gates.
3. Bookstores challenged by economic slump turn to remainders Net book sales decreased two percent in September 2008 to $1.062 billion, according to results reported by 80 publishers to the Association of American Publishers. Net sales for the nine months through September fell 1.5 percent to $7.718 billion. In a special series advising independent booksellers on how to survive in the slumping U.S. economy, the American Booksellers Association tells retailers that buying remainders can help them get through tough economic times. The advice appeared in the Oct. 30 issue of ABA’s online newsletter Bookselling This Week. Remaindered books are books that have had much of their run and whose remaining unsold copies are being liquidated by the publisher at greatly reduced prices. Because they’re often sold for as little as 10 percent of cover price, retailers can usually buy and then resell them for higher margins than they can new titles from the major publishing houses. “In both good times and bad, many booksellers turn to remainders as a way to supplement and complement their inventory without breaking the bank,” says Larry May of Bargain Book Bids, a Knoxville service that auctions remainders. According to May, remainders in the U.S. are sold year-round by 100 or so dealers. They are also sold at several major trade shows. The first major remainder show upcoming is the Spring Book Show, scheduled for Friday-Sunday, March 6-8, at the Cobb Galleria Centre in Atlanta. Information on the show is available at www.springbookshow.com. Educational seminars being held in conjunction with the show will be held in the Galleria’s salon area. Accommodations for the show are being offered by the Renaissance Waverly Hotel. 4. News about bookstores, publishing, marketing and promotion Joe the plumber, whose real name is Sam Joe Wurzelbacher, is co-authoring a memoir scheduled for release in December. Titled Joe the Plumber: Fighting for the American Dream, the book is being published by PearlGate Publishing, which has only one other title out so far. That one is by the publishing house’s owner/publisher/author, Thomas Tabback, who is co-authoring the story of Joe the Plumber. Joe, popularized by the failed McCain-Palin GOP election campaign, doesn’t have a plumber’s license and is late in paying his taxes… Books-A-Million has opened its first two-story superstore in the new Houston Pavilions downtown shopping mall. Houston Pavilions, which opened on Oct. 16, occupies four city blocks. Books-A-Million, originally founded in 1917, is the third largest book retailer in the nation. The Books-A-Million Superstore at the new center is the first two-story urban concept store for the company. It showcases its extensive selection of books, bargain books, magazines, gifts and cards in an industrial-designed space. The store also features a Joe Muggs Cafe, a coffee and espresso bar and deli… The first part of the Random House reorganization under new CEO Markus Dohle was announced Dec. 3. President and publisher of the Bantam Dell group Irwyn Applebaum is leaving the company immediately after 25 years there. The Bantam Dell group is being absorbed by the Random House group, under Gina Centrello, along with the Spiegel & Grau unit that had been part of Doubleday. It puts the company's two big mass-market lines together in the same division. Doubleday is also being eliminated as a freestanding group, which means president and publisher Steve Rubin's job no longer exists. Knopf will absorb the Doubleday and Nan A. Talese lines, while the Crown group will incorporate Broadway, Doubleday Business, Doubleday Religion and WaterBrook Multnomah. The new Random House organization has four divisions. The sizable Random House Children's remains a separate unit under Chip Gibson.
5. Forthcoming book sets straight the history of ‘I Like Ike’ slogan Douglas R. Price, who was a member of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s White House staff in the 1950s, is writing a book that, among other things, aims to set the record straight on the origins of the “I Like Ike” slogan and campaign song.
In a letter to newspaper columnist Frederick N. Rasmussen about the book,
tentatively titled They Liked Ike, Price says "The origin of the Irving
Berlin 'I Like Ike' song dates back to a Broadway musical titled Call Me Madam,
starring Ethel Merman with lyrics by Irving Berlin." 6. Wiley taking over Meredith’s backlist, distribution and publishing John Wiley will be the main agent aiding the withdrawal of Better Homes & Gardens publisher Meredith from the book publishing business.
Wiley has announced a five-year licensing agreement starting March 1, 2009, that
gives it the rights to publish books using all of Meredith's brand names,
including Better Homes and Gardens, as well as such marks as Family Circle,
American Patchwork and Quilting, and Diabetic Living. Wiley will also take over
as the exclusive distributor of Meredith's backlist of about 200 titles.
7. Catholic publisher purchases Tan Books assets out of bankruptcy A leading publisher of traditional Roman Catholic books has been acquired by Saint Benedict Press, LLC, a North Carolina-based publisher of Catholic Classics. Established in 1967, TAN Books and Publishers has published more than 600 books distinctive for their preservation of the traditional literature of the Roman Catholic Church. In recent years, TAN has struggled to survive financially and most recently has been operating under the protection of the United States Bankruptcy Court. The assets of TAN were purchased by the owners of Saint Benedict Press. TAN Books and Publishers will remain an independent imprint within Saint Benedict Press, maintaining its brand identity and publishing direction under Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Brent Klaske, who will assume General Management duties. He will be based at TAN's Rockford, Ill. offices. Among the books published by TAN are the Baltimore Catechism series, the Douay-Rheims Bible and dozens of biographical treatments by and about the Saints, including such favorites as St. Teresa of Avila's Conversation with Christ, St. John of the Cross's Dark Night of the Soul, The Secret of the Rosary by St. Louis de Montfort and The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena. 8. How bad is it? Latest on the economic slump and the book business Sales at Barnes & Noble in the third quarter ended Oct. 31 fell 4.4 percent to $1.1 billion. BN reported a net loss was $18.4 million for the quarter, compared to a net gain of $4.4 million in the same period in 2007. Sales at stores open at least a year fell 7.4 percent. However, online sales at B&N.com rose two percent to $109 million. The company lowered predictions for the fourth quarter, saying it expects comp-store sales to decline 6-9 percent and for the full year to drop 5-6 percent… The Book Basket of Wetumpka, Ala., and Windows a Bookstore in Monroe, La., have closed. Both blamed the closing on debt burden and decreased sales… Hastings reported third quarter sales of $114 million, down six percent from a year ago. Sales of merchandise were down 5.1 percent on a same-store sales basis. Revenues at Hastings Entertainment in the third quarter ended Oct. 31 fell 6.5 percent to $114.3 million and the net loss was $3.7 million compared to net income of $100,000 in the same period in 2007. During the quarter, sales of books at stores open at least a year rose one percent compared to a gain of 2.5 percent in the same period last year. By comparison, third quarter comp-store sales of electronics rose 12.7 percent, cafe sales rose 7.9 percent, movies dropped five percent, video games were down 14.8 percent and music fell 19.5 percent. The modest gain for books was attributed to strong sales of new trade paperbacks as well as used trade paperbacks and used hardbacks, partially offset by lower sales of periodicals. In a statement, CEO John Marmaduke said, "Beginning with September, changes in consumer spending have created the most difficult retail environment we have ever seen. Obviously we are concerned about the fourth quarter in light of the current economic climate.”… The Raleigh News & Observer asked local merchants how they were coping. John Valentine, co-owner of the Regulator Bookshop, Durham, N.C., told the paper that clearance books, used books and remaindered books are selling well, adding, "Everybody wants a bargain, and it's even more true now. A book is a book in a lot of people's eyes. They know they want to give their mother-in-law a book, and they can peel the $5.99 sticker off, and there's a $12.95 list price in there."… Books-A-Million reported third-quarter comp-store sales dropped 9.9 percent. Net sales for the period ended Nov. 1 fell 5.7 percent to $111 million, and the net loss was $2.2 million compared to a net loss of $555,000 in the third quarter of 2007. Sales at stores open at least a year dropped 9.9 percent… Ann Patty told Galleycat that she had been "fired" along with "a lot" of other employees at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which also announced that it was suspending the acquisition of new trade books... Thomas Nelson CEO Michael Hyatt announced layoffs at the company. “We informed 54 of our friends and co-workers (about 10 percent of our workforce) that we have eliminated their jobs, effective Nov. 28, Hyatt said on Twitter. In April, Nelson eliminated "about 60" positions as it changed its business strategy. The new round of firings was purely a result of the slowdown in the economy," Hyatt said… Simon & Schuster has "enacted a reduction in staff in which 35 positions across the company were eliminated, from areas including our publishing divisions and international, operations and sales," according to a memo from CEO Carolyn Reidy. Reidy said "today's action is an unavoidable acknowledgment of the current bookselling marketplace and what may very well be a prolonged period of economic instability. In light of this uncertainty, we must responsibly position ourselves for challenges both near term and long."… HarperCollins "plans to delay pay increases until after July 1, 2009, a response to the U.S. recession, according to spokesperson Erin Crum. "HarperCollins hasn't decided whether to eliminate jobs, she said."… Pearson has a companywide freeze on nearly all raises, includes employees at its Penguin unit… Similar to moves at Pearson and HarperCollins, Macmillan CEO John Sargent announced a salary freeze starting Jan. 1 for employees making more than $50,000. "All bonus plans will stay in effect, but all are sensitive to individual company profitability and individual performance. Thus the impact on individual bonus plans will vary."… John Sargent, chief executive of Macmillan, whose publishing houses include Farrar, Straus and Giroux and St. Martin's Press, said in a companywide meeting that he could not guarantee that everyone would have a job going forward… Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has initiated a freeze on buying new trade books. HMH is owned by Education Media and Publishing Group, a private equity company that took on massive debt to swallow Houghton Mifflin and then Harcourt, back when credit was cheap and freely available. The owners now have "about $7 billion in debt" with annual debt service of "about $500 million." The freeze does not apply to all divisions, just trade books for now.
9. Update journalism: Latest skinny on past Southern Review stories Remember our coverage of the firing of Judith Regan at ReganBooks? She was canned from the News Corp. HarperCollins imprint bearing her name in 2006. Now, we learn, she settled the lawsuit she filed against the publisher over her dismissal for $10.75 million. That confidential figure was revealed in a court filing by the law firm that represented her. According to Bloomberg, the amount appears in a filing in New York state court in Manhattan by Dreier LLP, a New York law firm that sued Regan for legal fees. The namesake of the law firm, Marc Dreier, has been charged by New York federal prosecutors with directing an unrelated $100 million fraud. In March, Regan was sued by her former lawyers who accused her of firing them to avoid paying fees from the settlement with News Corp. Regan’s lawyers declined to confirm or deny the settlement amount in Dreier’s court filing. In its complaint filed in New York Supreme Court in Manhattan, the Dreier law firm alleged Regan retained it to represent her in February 2007 and agreed to pay 25 percent of any money she recovered as a result of a judgment or settlement. “Regan terminated petitioners for the single purpose of attempting to avoid the contingency fee,” Dreier alleged in its complaint. “Upon finalizing the settlement, Regan terminated” the law firm “and has since failed and refused to pay them the fees and disbursements to which they are entitled.” Dreier sued News Corp. on Regan’s behalf. Regan and the firm’s first agreement called for her lawyers to receive 25 percent of any funds Regan got as part of a settlement. Both sides discussed modifying their agreement so that Dreier would get $125,000 plus 20 percent of any amount Regan received in excess of $6.5 million, the firm said. Regan never signed that agreement, according to the complaint. The law firm accused Regan in the suit of breach of contract and seeks to enforce a lien against her for any funds she’s collected in connection with the settlement. Bertram Fields, a lawyer who represented Regan in her settlement, was also named as a defendant in the suit. Dreier said in its complaint that its attorneys spent 1,240 hours on Regan’s case and learned through her new lawyers on Dec. 14 that the firm had been terminated by Regan. Regan settled the case for an undisclosed sum in January and was represented by Fields, according to the complaint. Marc Dreier, managing partner and founder of the 250-lawyer New York firm Dreier LLP, has been charged in an unrelated case with cheating hedge funds out of more than $100 million. 10. Whatever happened to the pulp magazines? In past issues of the Southern Review of Books, we’ve run articles about pulp magazines, about the writers they helped to make famous and about their cover art, which now commands much higher prices than were ever paid to the artists who created them. In one article, we saluted the late August Derleth of Sauk City, Wisconsin, one of the most prolific of the pulp writers. Arkham House, which Augie created, is still very much in existence, run by his daughter. Some of the early works published by the house, such as stories by H.P. Lovecraft, a master of the macabre, are now collector items commanding high prices. So what happened to the pulps? Do they still exist? They do, but only as a ghostly shadow of the prominence they once commanded. As Simon Owens recently noted in his excellent online blog about the pulps, Locus Magazine every year publishes a review of the genre. In their heyday there were dozens of pulps, ranging from the mystery to science fiction genres, with circulations of 100,000 or more. This is where Dashielle Hammett and Mickey Spillane, for example, got their starts. But the medium steeply declined through the '80s and '90s, with magazine circulations for all the publications plummeting to well below six figures. By the 21st century and the advent of the Web, most of these once-great magazines - Amazing Stories, Argosy, SF Age - had died off, leaving only three speculative fiction magazines struggling to survive. The three sci-fi magazines still left are Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Asimov's Science Fiction, and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Analog, the best performing of the three, has fallen to a paid circulation of 27,399, while Asimov's dropped to 17,581. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has declined to a paid circulation of 16,489.
11. Thinking of repulping? Forget it – the market has tanked! If you’re thinking about repulping that overstock rather than selling it as remainders, you might be wiser to just haul the books to the nearest landfill. Only six months ago, we at Anvil were getting offers from countries like China and India (for 550,000 books we had for sale for repulping) of up to $85 per ton for the waste paper – for mass market and trade paperbacks. Hardbacks were bringing in less because they require more handling to repulp. The nice thing about repulping is that the paper produced requires only 10 percent of the energy needed to make paper from trees. Further, repulping reduces material going into landfills. The problem is that the bottom has dropped out from under the market. On the West Coast, for example, mixed paper is currently selling for $20 to $25 a ton, down from $105 in October, according to Official Board Markets, a newsletter that tracks waste paper prices. One reason prices slid so rapidly is that demand from China, the biggest export market for recyclables from the United States, quickly dried up as the global economy slowed. China’s influence is so great that in recent years recyclables have been worth much less in areas of the United States that lack easy access to ports that can ship there. In New York, the city is getting paid $10 for a ton of paper, down from $50 or more before October. In Boston, one of the hardest-hit markets, prices are down to $5 a ton, and the city expects it will soon have to pay to unload its paper. But city officials said that would still be better than paying $80 a ton to put it in a landfill. Harvard, for instance, sends mixed recyclables - including soda bottles and student newspapers to a nearby recycling center that used to pay $10 a ton. In November, Harvard received two letters from the recycler, the first saying it would begin charging $10 a ton and the second saying the price had risen to $20. Rob Gogan, the recycling and waste manager for the university’s facilities division, said he did not mind paying as long as the price was less than $87 a ton, the cost for trash disposal. Paper mills in China and the United States that have signed contracts requiring them to buy recycled paper are seeking wiggle room, invoking clauses that cover extraordinary circumstances. Mills are also starting to become pickier about what they take in, rejecting cardboard and other products that they say are “contaminated” by plastic ties or other material. 12. Monitoring the ebook, graphic novel and etailing markets
As one more example of the declining importance of listserv forums, Jon Noring,
founder of The eBook Community, a Yahoo group, informed members on Nov. 14 that
he’s considering closing the list down.
Noring started the group in January 1996. It became the premier mailing list for
discussion of e-books. “The last couple of years we've seen discussion in this
group trickle off to essentially nothing,” Noring said in his notice. A poll of
the group had disappointing results. While Yahoo shows the group with about
3,400 members, Noring’s poll found that the actual number of people who actively
and eagerly follow the group is quite small, less than a hundred. “In addition,
the number of notables in the digital publishing industry who follow this group
is even smaller - most of the notables now follow and contribute articles and
comments to various blogs
13. On Demand Books introducing new Espresso Book Machine 2.0
New York-based On Demand Books' newest version of its Espresso Book Machine is
set to roll out early next year for initial testing.
All publishers need to do to have their titles available on the Espresso Book
Machine is to provide a PDF of the titles to be printed. 14. Useful information and free services for writers Can’t afford a lawyer to review the contract for your book offered to you by a publisher? Contracts can be riddled with traps for unwary writers. One inexpensive way to get a review is to join the Authors Guild. Guild attorneys will review your book contract before you sign, let you know whether it meets industry standards and tell you how it can be improved. Contract reviews are free for members. Dues are $90 for the first year - after that, dues vary according to writing income, but most authors continue to pay $90. Visit www.authorsguild.org to apply.
15. Amazon and Penguin announce second annual novel award competition Amazon.com, Inc. and Penguin Group (USA) on Nov. 13 announced the second annual Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, the international novel-writing competition. Writers around the world are encouraged to begin preparing their manuscripts for entry into the competition, which is scheduled to launch on Feb. 2, 2009. Last year's inaugural Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition was won by Bill Loehfelm from a pool of 5,000 entrants. G. P. Putnam's Sons, a division of Penguin Group (USA), published his novel, Fresh Kills, in August 2008 to critical acclaim. The Associated Press hailed the novel as "the finest crime fiction debut since Dennis Lehane burst on the scene ... not just a crime novel but a psychological novel of impressive subtlety and complexity." Between Feb. 2 and Feb. 8, 2009, writers with an unpublished English-language novel manuscript can submit their work at www.amazon.com/abna. Up to 10,000 initial entries will be accepted, from which Amazon editors will select 2,000 to advance to the next round. Expert reviewers from Amazon will then review excerpts of these 2,000 entries and narrow the pool to 500 quarter-finalists. Reviewers from Publishers Weekly will then read, rate and review the full manuscripts, and 100 semi-finalists will be selected. Penguin editors will evaluate the manuscripts from this group of 100 and choose three finalists. A panel of esteemed publishing professionals - including mega-bestselling authors Sue Grafton and Sue Monk Kidd, literary agent Barney Karpfinger and Penguin Press Editor-in-Chief Eamon Dolan - will read and post their critiques of the top three manuscripts on www.amazon.com. Amazon customers will then have seven days to vote for the Grand Prize Winner. The winner will be announced on May 22, 2009, and will receive a publishing contract with Penguin, which includes a $25,000 advance. Message boards will again be available on www.amazon.com for Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award author participants to connect with one another and discuss the contest. CreateSpace.com, part of the Amazon group of companies will again host the contest entry platform, which includes a community for authors that will help them get their entries ready by staying up to date on the contest, soliciting feedback from the community and accessing online content that may be helpful in preparing their entries. More than 5,000 registrations were received for the 2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest, representing approximately 2,000 cities around the world and every state in the United States. Due to the tremendous response in 2008, up to 10,000 entries will be accepted for the 2009 contest. The contest will also take place over a shorter period of three and a half months, as opposed to six months last year. The high caliber of the 2008 contest submissions resulted in the discovery of fresh new voices from among the Top 10 Finalists. Penguin Group (USA) has acquired four more Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contestants' novels: Bad Things Happen by Harry Dolan (Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam, July 2009); The Wet Nurse's Tale by Erica Eisdorfer (G.P. Putnam's Sons, August 2009); The Butterflies of Grand Canyon by Margaret Erhard (Plume, January 2010); and Casting Off by Nicole Dickson (NAL, August 2009). For complete terms and conditions for the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award as well as more information about the contest, visit www.amazon.com/abna. 16. ‘Books=Gifts’ becomes central slogan of industry holiday campaign A number of groups and people in the book publishing industry have signed on to a public relations campaign based around the slogan “books = gifts” in an effort to hype a holiday selling season that promises to be dismal at best.
Random House launched the "books=gifts" campaign that will run in a range of
consumer publications such as the New York Times Book Review and the
New Yorker as well as on its own websites and in ads on Facebook and YouTube
and in e-mail blasts to various lists, including Random House's Special Offers
list, among other vehicles.
As promoter and author M.J. Rose puts it on her blog, "We need to shout that
books are still reasonably priced as gifts rather than whisper it. We can't just
hope consumers get the message."
17. Zondervan’s Bible Across America Tour gains media attention. Christian publisher Zondervan has launched a Bible Across America tour to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the best-selling NIV Bible. The central focus of the public relations effort is to get 31,173 people to write by hand one verse of the 31,173 in the NIV Bible. The tour launched Sept. 30 from Zondervan’s headquarters in Grand Rapids, Mich., with a special event for employees and the community. At the launch, former Zondervan CEO Bruce Ryskamp personally penned Genesis 1:1 to kick off the four-month tour that is traveling across the country in a 42-foot RV donated by Michigan-based Spartan Motors. One month after the launch in Grand Rapids, the BAA tour was on a roll, literally. Over the first month, the BAA team, comprised of a young twenty-something married couple, has traveled more than 7,000 miles to 33 cities in 22 states to host writing events at churches, retail stores, community events, conventions, colleges, on a busy street corner in the heart of Midtown Manhattan and at a NASCAR race in Charlotte, N.C. Through that month, the BAA team gathered more than 6,000 handwritten verses from people of all ages and walks of life. In addition to capturing the local community’s attention at each stop, the BAA campaign has captured the attention of media across the country. USA Today, CNN, Time Magazine and the Associated Press are just some of the national media outlets that have covered the tour, in addition to hundreds of local newspapers, television and radio stations across the country. “Going into this campaign, I expected to hear many amazing stories from the road, but I have been overwhelmed at how touched and blessed thousands of people have been by this project,” said Zondervan President and CEO Moe Girkins. The BAA Tour has completed stops in the Northeast and the upper Midwest and is currently in the nation’s heartland with events n St. Louis, Kansas City, Topeka, and other cities before heading South and then out West. The BAA team is maintaining a blog from the road featuring stories, videos and photos at www.BibleAcrossAmerica.com. Those interested in hosting a writing event can also make requests to rvteam@bibleacrossamerica.com. 18. Memoir by media mogul Ted Turner garners massive media hype In case you didn’t notice the coverage, Grand Central has published a new memoir by Ted Turner. The publishing house spent more than $5 million on Call Me Ted. It printed 625,000 copies and shipped more than 500,000 as the media blitz hit, starting with the debut on “CBS 60 Minutes,” followed by Turner appearance on most of the major TV book venues. Hillel Italie, who covers the book beat for the Associated Press, ran his story on the book on Nov. 8, giving him a day’s beat on the “60 Minutes” story. The AP said it had obtained an “early copy” of the book. “ It wasn't religion that broke up his marriage to Jane Fonda,” Italie reported in his review of the book. Rather, Turner was upset when he learned of his wife's conversion to Christianity because she had not talked to him about it first, not because she had become Christian, the 69-year-old Turner says in the book. The 433-page book, co-authored with former Turner Broadcasting executive Bill Burke, reviews the “Mouth of the South’s” loquacious, multi-pronged rise as yachtsman, baseball team owner, cable visionary and philanthropist. Turner was collaborator Burke’s boss earlier in life. Three years ago, after leaving Turner’s enterprises, Burke wrote a 20-page article called “Leadership Lessons I Learned From Ted Turner.” Burke, a former president of TBS, e-mailed a copy to Turner’s assistant in Atlanta, who printed it out for Turner to read. Turner was on the phone with Burke within an hour. “I didn’t know you could write,” Turner said. “I want you to write my biography.” Burke had never written a book, much less one in which the publisher, Grand Central Publishing, a unit of Hachette, had paid an advance of more than $5 million to Turner. But he comes from a line of media notables. His father, Daniel B. Burke, was president and chief executive of Capital Cities/ABC before it was sold to the Walt Disney Co. in 1996. His older brother, Stephen B. Burke, is president of Comcast. After Harvard Business School, Burke was hired by the Turner Entertainment Group, where he developed the cable network Turner Classic Movies, which in turn propelled him, at age 29, to the position of president of TBS. A high-level digital job at Time Warner followed after Mr. Turner sold his company to Time Warner in 1996. He left Time Warner just before its ill-fated deal with America Online, and after a stint running the Weather Channel, Burke moved to Maine, where Turner recruited him to write his memoir. Turner’s agent, Morton Janklow, of Janklow & Nesbit Associates, had considered a big-time author to do the writing. But Janklow came to believe Turner would be more likely to open up to someone he knew, so Burke landed the job. Much of the book centers on Turner’s relationships with his wives, Jane Fonda in particular. Fonda wrote at length about her marriage to Turner in her memoir My Life So Far, and Turner adds a similar take without referring to the infidelities alleged against him by Fonda. The two say they remain good friends. Turner writes about their impulsive courtship, beginning in 1990 with his learning of her divorce from activist Tom Hayden. He immediately called her, a virtual stranger, for a date. She declined. He persisted. Six months later she accepted. They married in 1991. Ex-President Jimmy Carter recalls in the book that he was in a boat fishing on Ted's 100-acre lake shortly after Turner read in the newspaper that Fonda was divorcing activist husband Tom Hayden. "Ted said to me, 'I think I'm going to call that woman up and ask her for a date,'" Carter remembers. Turner recounts going back to their Montana ranch for the first time after their split and seeing that Fonda had taken all her belongings. "Our closets faced each other's, and when I saw her empty space I sat down on the floor between them and cried," writes Turner, who had two previous wives. Billionaire Turner, who is America’s largest landowner and now the man behind the Ted’s Montana Grill restaurant chain that specializes in buffalo dishes from his ranches, admits in the new autobiography, that he's always been "better in business and sailing than I was in marriage... Monogamy for me has always been a struggle... My dad told me 'real men run around.'" That advice, which Turner says he's since abandoned, helped kill his marriages to his first two wives, Julia and Janie. Turner says in the book that he has "very few regrets," vows to live long and well enough to fill a second book and wonders what should be inscribed on his tombstone. As a young celebrity, he wanted "You Can't Interview Me Here." In middle age, he liked "Here Lies Ted Turner. He Never Owned a Broadcast Network." As an older man and published author: "I Have Nothing More to Say."
19. Milestones: Records and news of note in book publishing Pen USA has announced their literary award winners for 2008, including: Fiction, Daniel Alarcon, Lost City Radio; Creative Nonfiction, Julia Whitty, The Fragile Edge; Research Nonfiction, William Vollman, Poor People; Poetry, Juan Felipe Herrera, 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can't Cross the Border; Children's Literature, Ron Koertge, Strays; and Translation, Donald Revell, A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud… Joseph Boyden won Canada's Giller Prize for his second novel Through Black Spruce, after having been favored to win the award three years ago for his debut, Three Day Road. Viking has the book scheduled for March 2009 release in the U.S. 20. Company offers authors opportunity to sell into iPhones eBookApp.com in November announced that it was launching a new service designed to provide authors with worldwide exposure and readers with content that can be read on their iPhones. The application allows authors access to millions of readers via iPhones.
The service converts existing books into iPhone-friendly reading material, which
can then be purchased and downloaded from the iTunes store. 21. News of chicanery, litigation and tort-feasing in the book business
While the proposed settlement of two lawsuits against Google related to their
Book Search library project have met with far from universal acclaim,
the judge in the matter has tentatively approved the deal. Judge John Sprizzo
set a June 11 date for a fairness hearing to "decide if the deal is fair,
reasonable and adequate."
The developer of a controversial marina project in Freeport, Texas, has filed a
lawsuit against the author of a book about the city’s use of imminent domain,
Southern Newspapers and a former book reviewer for the Galveston County Daily
News.
In court documents, Royall argues Encounter Books knowingly published libelous
material, and Epstein described the developer as being involved in the
“machinations of an unholy alliance between city politicians and avaricious
developers.” A British lawyer who wrote a popular book recounting a childhood of emotional and physical abuse is being sued for libel by her mother, who says the claims are fantasy. Constance Briscoe, the author of Ugly, says the book title is based on the nickname she alleges her mother threw at her as a child. Briscoe’s lawyer told London's High Court in November that the book contained some errors but was "quite properly put in the biography section of the bookshop, not the fiction section." Ugly, of the “misery memoir” genre, has sold more than half a million copies in Britain since it was published in 2006. It was followed by a sequel, Beyond Ugly. The child of Jamaican immigrants, Briscoe, 51, grew up in a poor part of London. She went on to become a lawyer and one of the first black women in Britain to be appointed a recorder, or part-time judge. In Ugly, Briscoe alleges that her mother regularly beat and starved her before abandoning her when she was 13. The book claims Briscoe's stepfather once stubbed a cigarette out on her hand, and says that as a teenager Briscoe needed surgery on her breasts because of trauma caused by her mother's assaults. Her mother, Carmen Briscoe-Mitchell, 74, says these and other harrowing incidents are fiction. She is seeking damages from Briscoe and her publisher, Hodder and Stoughton. Briscoe-Mitchell's lawyer, William Panton, told the court the allegations of abuse were "nonsense" and said that as a child Briscoe had not complained to police, social services or teachers. Briscoe-Mitchell wept on the witness stand as she refuted her daughter's account. "It was a happy family, a very happy family," she said. "My children were my pride and joy." 24. Graphic novels, comics important part of Miami Book Fair
Comics and graphic novels are now an important part of the Miami Book Fair
International, and are expected to be a big draw, the Miami Herald
reported during the show.
''The thing that was important to me was that I didn't want it to be just a few
people on the weekend,'' said Lissette Mendez, program director for Florida
Center for the Literary Arts and "a passionate comics fan." ''I wanted a whole
program that showed the breadth and depth of comics. I wanted it to be
multidimensional and educational. So we have superhero stuff, indie people,
literary people, people who write on the history of comics, the stuff at the
street fair.'' 25. 21st Annual Independent and Small Press Book Fair held in NYC The 21st annual Independent & Small Press Book Fair took place on Dec. 6-7 at the New York Center for Independent Publishing in New York City. More than 100 presses exhibited.
Programming included a session on the future of independent publishing, a
literary trivia smackdown, how-to advice on memoirs and finding a literary
agent, a read-a-thon, and conversations with authors and publishers. For more information on next year’s event, contact the Center at indiebookfair@gmail.com or go to nycip.org/bookfair. 26. Major upcoming trade shows, book fairs and book festivals
2009 Trade Shows January
Atlanta International Gift & Home Furnishings Market (Jan. 9-13) at Americasmart. ALA Midwinter 2009 in Denver, Colo., January 23 – 26, www.ala.org March
Spring Book Show - March 6-8, Atlanta, GA. Cobb Galleria/Renaissance-Waverly
Hotel. SBS is one of the largest remainder and bargain book shows in the world.
www.springbookshow.com April London Book Fair - www.lbf-virtual.com May BookExpo America - May 28-31, 2009, New York - www.bookexpoamerica.com June BookExpo Canada - June - Toronto, Ontario. www.bookexpo.ca The Australian Booksellers Association's - Melbourne. The American Library Association - Anaheim, CA. July The National Association of College Stores Conference. www.nacs.org CBA/The International Christian Retail Show. www.christianretailshow.com ALA Annual Conference 2009, Chicago, Ill. July 9-15, McCormick Place Chicago, Ill. Committee and business meetings take place July 9-15, 2009 and Council Meetings run to July 15. Education programs take place primarily July 10-13. Exhibits held July 11-14 at McCormick Place West. Programs and meetings take place at McCormick Place West and nearby hotels. August The Great American Bargain Book Show (GABBS) – August www.gabbs.net The New York International Gift Fair – www.nyigf.com The Beijing International Book Fair – Beijing, China. www.bibf.net/bibf New Orleans-Gulf South Booksellers Association. betbooks@aol.com September
CIANA – September 14-15, London.
www.ciana.co.uk
New England Independent Booksellers Association - Sept.
www.newenglandbooks.org October
Oct. 14–18, 61st annual Frankfurt Book Fair, Germany.
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Southern Review is edited by Noel Griese. The author of 17 books and
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