Couric Assembles

Book of Essays

by Bill Carter

It is not, she assured, in any way a statement about her future career plans, but Katie Couric will take a step this spring into a different media arena with the publication of her first book.

With no fanfare — the book will be officially announced Thursday by its publisher, Random House — Ms. Couric, the CBS News anchor, quietly assembled “The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons From Extraordinary Lives” over the past year, relying on essays, brief comments and even poems from a wide range of prominent people she recruited for the effort.

“I know there are a lot of books out there with different pieces of advice, but I don’t know if there is anything quite like this out there,” Ms. Couric said in a telephone interview. She described the book as a compilation of thoughts and ideas on everything from the virtues of tenacity to how “to find the passion in your work.”

At the same time she continued to express passion for her work on “The CBS Evening News,” which has been a subject of considerable speculation in the news media because her current contract with the network ends so soon, on June 4.

Ms. Couric said that she was aware of the short timetable, and that “obviously I’m going to have to figure out what’s ahead.” But for the moment, she said, she is continuing to “focus on doing the best job I can on the ‘Evening News,’ ” adding, “There is nothing to tell right now” about any future moves.

Ms. Couric said her new book, which will be published April 12, was inspired by a graduation address she gave last May at Case-Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Seeking to find a different way to “get 22-year-olds to think about their future possibilities,” she solicited insights from a group of people she had come to know in recent years, including the singer Sheryl Crow; Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google; and Queen Rania of Jordan.

The speech went over well, Ms. Couric said, and “I started to think it might be nice to cast a wider net, to reach out to a host of accomplished people in various fields.”

NYT

John B. Thompson on

Publishing in the Twenty-First Century

by Gabriel Cohen

As the coordinator of Sundays at Sunny’s, one of New York City’s longest-running literary reading series, I have shot the breeze with hundreds of my fellow authors. Their most common complaint—hands down—is this: “My publicist/publisher doesn’t do anything for me.” Most writers harbor secret hopes that their books will become breakout best-sellers, and it can be quite a shock to find that works that required years or even decades of great effort often flicker into print, then disappear without a trace.

We writers experience our little corners of the publishing world, but the overall system often seems murky, if not downright impenetrable. If we had access to the bigger picture, we’d discover that the inadequate promotion and marketing of most books does not necessarily represent a failure of one publicist or publishing house. In fact, to borrow a saying from the world of computer programming, That’s not a bug—it’s a feature.

In his latest book, Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century, published last September by Polity Press, John B. Thompson elucidates the complexity of the book-publishing industry. A professor of sociology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, Thompson is one of very few writers and academics who have attempted to examine publishing in a truly multifaceted and comprehensive way. His study of academic publishing, Books in the Digital Age, was published in 2005. Merchants of Culture, a refreshingly accessible read, demystifies the world of general-interest trade publishing in the United States and in his home country.

As one of the subjects Thompson spoke to during his research, I decided to turn the tables and ask him about the big picture he had pieced together through literally hundreds of such interviews, and to see if he could explain what’s behind the distressing problem of scant marketing. We met in a café in New York City’s West Village.

What mission did you set out to accomplish in writing this book?

My aim was to try to understand the world of trade publishing: how it has changed since the 1960s, and how it’s changing today. How is it organized, and where is it going? The surprising thing was, when I began researching the book-publishing industry ten years ago, no one in academia had taken the subject seriously for about thirty years. It’s a world that is largely ignored by serious scholars. Many authors know little about it.

So I threw myself into this world; I immersed myself in it as an anthropologist would study a remote tribe in the South Pacific. I interviewed 280 people working in the industry of trade publishing in London and New York City—publishers and editors, people who work in the publishing houses, agents and booksellers, and authors. I was able to show that there is a very specific relationship among different forces and processes within the field that produces a certain dynamic. And all the players operate within the constraints of what I call the logic of the field.

I don’t think logic is the first word most people think of when it comes to publishing.

You’re right. Logic doesn’t mean that it is logical—that it’s reasonable or rational. It simply means that there is a set of forces and processes that shape what actors do. This field, which looks to the outsider like a chaotic mess, actually has a structure and a dynamic to it.

Poets & Writers

Palin Books

Still Hot?

by Todd Walker, MSNBC

A copy of a tell-all book by Frank Bailey, “Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin: A Memoir of Our Tumultuous Years,” has been leaked to members of the media. In the book, Palin’s former chief of staff gives an unflattering view inside the former governor’s rise to fame.

In the foreword of his 456-page manuscript, originally titled “Renegade: Sarah Palin’s Hatchet Man,” Bailey says Palin e-mailed him, “I hate this damn job” days before she quit in July 2009. The book goes on to describe Palin’s staff targeting political opponents for personal retribution, through a variety of public channels.

“We set our sights and went after opponents in coordinated attacks, utilizing what we called ‘Fox News surrogates’, friendly blogs, ghost-written op eds, media opinion polls (that we often rigged), letters to editors, and carefully edited speeches,” Bailey wrote. “Nobody needed to be told what to do; we understood Sarah’s silent mandate to do something now.”

Bailey says he regretted his actions on Palin’s behalf, describing them as contrary to the Christian principles in which he believed.

“I have no doubt Sarah's belief in God was real and passionate. Hers just wasn’t the same God I knew growing up, the one who preached the importance of love, honor, and charity,” Bailey wrote. “That I turned my back on these teachings and offered her blind allegiance is a cross I will forever bear.”

One of the co-authors of the book, Ken Morris, told Channel 2 the manuscript leaked was an “unauthorized draft.” Morris said the writing team’s intent was “to be 100 percent true,” but he said the whole book was subject to change.

“This was an unethical breach and I’m disgusted by it,” Morris said.

Morris said the book had no scheduled release date and currently no publisher.  Bailey served on Palin’s staff during her gubernatorial campaign beginning in 2005 and then as her chief of staff until 2009.

Charlie Shops

$10M Book Deal

Ever since CBS placed the TV comedy Two and a Half Men on production hiatus last month following star Charlie Sheen’s lengthy tirade against the show’s creator, Chuck Lorre, the Sheen rumor mill has been churning. First, Sheen alleged he was in talks with HBO for a show entitled Sheen’s Corner for a salary of $5 million per episode—a claim that HBO denied, saying they had not been contacted by Sheen about any new project.  Shortly after, the drug-crazed actor told TMZ that he’s shopping a tell-all book about life on the set of Two and a Half Men that details what led up to the breaking point.  He said he wants at least $10 million for publishing rights.

Sheen told TMZ he wants the world to know the truth about what happened, and his potential title for the tome is When the Laughter Stopped.

Bits & Bytes

Thousands More Listings for AmSAW PROFESSIONAL MEMBERS Today

FICTION

Debut

Jyotsna Sreenivasan's debut AND LAUGHTER FELL FROM THE SKY, a contemporary love story about a young Indian-American woman determined to please her family and go through with an arranged marriage, as soon as she can stop sleeping with inappropriate men, especially the irritatingly bohemian friend of her younger brother, who may be the one she can't live without, to Maya Ziv at Harper for paperback original, by Jenni Ferrari-Adler at Brick House (NA).

Corwyn Alvarez's THE DOGWALKER, in which a gently disabled young man changes the lives of the misfits he befriends, to Deborah Smith and Debra Dixon at Bell Bridge Books, for publication in February 2012, by Don Fehr of Trident Media Group.

Mystery/Crime

Three-time Agatha nominee Elizabeth Zelvin's DEATH WILL EXTEND YOUR VACATION, the third book in the series featuring a recovering alcoholic, who joins friends in a lethal clean and sober group house in the Hamptons, to Five Star, by Susan Schulman Literary Agency.

schulman@aol.com

Women's/Romance

Teddy Harrison writing as Thea Harrison's next three novels in her Elder Races paranormal series, set in an alternate United States where fae, elves, demons, vampyres, and shapeshifters called wyr live openly and run their own governments, to Cindy Hwang at Berkley Sensation, in a nice deal, by Amy Boggs at Donald Maass Literary Agency (World English).

aboggs@maassagency.com

Children's: Picture book

Baseball Mysteries author David Kelly's BASEBALL MUD, the story of the discovery of the special mud that baseball teams have used on every ball, in every game, for over fifty years, in order to prevent the baseballs from being too shiny for pitchers to use and too bright for the batters to see well, to Carol Hinz at Lerner, by Caryn Wiseman at Andrea Brown Literary Agency (world).

caryn@andreabrownlit.com

NONFICTION

Advice/Relationships

Katie Couric's THE BEST ADVICE I EVER GOT: Lessons From Extraordinary Lives, collecting essays, brief comments and poems from over 100 well-known people, inspired by her own commencement address at Case-Western Reserve, to Susan Mercandetti at Random House, for publication April 12, 2011.

Biography

Frances Wilson's HOW TO SURVIVE THE TITANIC, about the Titanic's owner, J. Bruce Ismay, which explores his desperate need to tell his story, to make sense of the horror of it all, and to find a way of living with the consciousness of lost honor, to Terry Karten at Harper, for publication in February 2012, by Sarah Chalfant at The Wylie Agency (NA).

Business/Investing/Finance

Author of The Art of Non-Conformity Chris Guillebeau's THE $100 STARTUP, an inspirational guide that will teach readers how to rewrite the rules of work, featuring dozens of stories of entrepreneurs who started their businesses with less than $100 and now make at least $50,000/year doing what they love, to Rick Horgan at Crown, in a good deal, by David Fugate at LaunchBooks Literary Agency (World).

LKaplan@randomhouse.com

Memoir

Jarhead author Anthony Swofford's next memoir, HOTELS, HOSPITALS, AND JAILS, covering the turbulent years following his return from serving as a sniper in the Gulf War: his reentry into civilian life; the success of his first book and the film that followed; the tragic loss of his brother; drugs, booze, fast cars and women; and the rocky path to reconciliation with his dying father, a veteran of the Vietnam War, to Cary Goldstein at Twelve, for publication in Spring 2012, by Sloan Harris at ICM (world).

Narrative

Linda Godfrey's REAL WOLFMEN: True Encounters in Modern America, an investigation of whether real werewolves exist in modern America or if reported sightings are caused by something even stranger, to Mitch Horowitz at Tarcher, by Jim McCarthy at Dystel & Goderich Literary Management (World).

Author of 365 Ways to Raise Your Frequency Melissa Alvarez's 101 SIGNS OF PSYCHIC ABILITY, teaching people who never thought they were psychic how to recognize their own unique psychic abilities, to Amy Glaser at Llewellyn, for publication in 2012, by Krista Goering at Krista Goering Literary Agency.