Showing posts with label Publishing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Publishing. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

A reputation made

Once popular, an author has a built-in audience. Witness Dan Brown, whose Da Vinci Code made his name: his new book, The Lost Symbol, has 231 holds in the large print version, and 688 on the regular-type version.

Equally, Pat Conroy's new book, South of Broad, has 569 holds on first copy returned of 203 copies. Nicholas Sparks is also an established favorite; his latest, The Last Song, has 390 holds on first copy returned of 57 copies.

Publishing thrives, perhaps even survives, on this phenomenon: guaranteed readers.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Cheney to Publish His Memoir

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is working on a book.


The deal was negotiated by Robert Barnett, a Washington lawyer who also represents Mr. Bush, former President Bill Clinton and President Obama.




Is there any better proof of what C. Wright Mills called the Power Elite?

June 24, 2009
Cheney to Publish His Memoir
By MOTOKO RICH

As widely expected, Vice President Dick Cheney has signed a deal with an imprint of Simon & Schuster to write a memoir about his life in politics and his service in four presidential administrations

A spokesman for Simon & Schuster said Mr. Cheney would write a book for Threshold Editions, where Mary Matalin, his close friend and adviser, is editor in chief.

Mr. Cheney, who had been looking for a publisher for about two months, joins a roster of Bush administration figures writing memoirs, including President George W. Bush; his wife, Laura; former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.; former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld; and Karl Rove, the former presidential political adviser. Mr. Rove’s book will also be published by Threshold.

Mr. Cheney’s memoir, which will focus on the past 40 years of his life, mostly in Washington, will be published in the spring of 2011. The deal was negotiated by Robert Barnett, a Washington lawyer who also represents Mr. Bush, former President Bill Clinton and President Obama.

The former vice president is working with his eldest daughter, Liz Cheney, on the memoir. Ms. Cheney is helping with research and “filling in the gaps.”

“He’s a student of history, and I think he never really planned to write a book,” Ms. Cheney said. “But I think because the job he just finished is obviously his last job he’ll ever have in government and because he cares about history and has been part of so many consequential events over the last 40 years, he wants to make sure that his story is told, and told in a way that his grandchildren will be able to understand and appreciate even 20 or 30 years from now.”

She said Mr. Cheney had been writing out his thoughts in longhand but had also begun writing on a laptop, working in homes on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, in Virginia and in Wyoming.

In addition to covering his roles in the administrations of Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, George Bush and George W. Bush, Mr. Cheney will write about his private-sector experience, including his time as chief executive of the Halliburton Company, the oil field services provider.

A person familiar with the negotiations said Mr. Cheney would receive around $2 million for his book. The spokesman for Simon & Schuster declined to comment.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Alfred A. Knopf Jr., Influential Publisher, Dies at 90

Alfred A. Knopf Jr., who left the noted publishing house run by his parents to become one of the founders of Atheneum Publishers in 1959, died on Saturday. He was 90, the last of the surviving founders, and lived in New York City.

With Simon Michael Bessie and Hiram Haydn, an editor at Bobbs-Merrill, founded Atheneum.

Atheneum got lucky fast. Its first three lists produced three No. 1 best sellers: “The Last of the Just” (1960), a novel about the Holocaust by AndrĂ© Schwarz-Bart; “The Making of the President, 1960” (1961), the first in Theodore H. White’s series on presidential campaigns; and “The Rothschilds: A Family Portrait” (1962) by Frederic Morton.