Angelina To Foreword

Ex's New Memoir

Angelina Jolie has written the foreword to ex-husband Billy Bob Thornton's new memoir, The Billy Bob Tapes: A Cave Full of Ghosts, a rep for the book's publisher, HarperCollins, confirms to Us Weekly.

Jolie, 36, and Thornton, 56, were married from 2000 to 2003; during their intense, sometimes odd union, the couple famously wore vials of one another's blood around their necks. Jolie and Brad Pitt have been together (but not married) since 2005. Married five times overall, Thornton and makeup artist Connie Angland have been in a relationship since 2003.

"We talk every now and then," the Faster actor said in late 2010 of Jolie. "She seems to be doing very well directing her own movie [In the Land of Blood and Honey], which I am so proud of her for."

"She's real smart, and very creative, and I think it's a great job for her."

Co-written with country music singer and author Kinky Friedman, The Billy Bob Tapes promises to tell, according to book description info on Amazon, "colorful tales of his modest (to say the least) Southern upbringing, his bizarre phobias (komodo dragons?), his life, his loves (including his heartbreakingly brief marriage to fellow Oscar winner Angelina Jolie), and, of course, his movie career."

Us Magazine

Amazon Pressuring

Publisher's Row

President of the second-largest independent book distributor Independent Publishers Group (IPG) Mark Suchomel said in an e-mail alert yesterday, "I am disappointed to report that Amazon.com has failed to renew its agreement with IPG to sell Kindle titles." As of Feb. 21, Suchomel says, Amazon has taken down all IPG ebooks from its site, though they continue to sell print books from the distributor's clients. (Our own check confirms that Kindle editions are missing for IPG titles, complete with the standard box to "tell the publisher!" you would like to read this book on Kindle. Individual Kindle hyperlinks now result in error messages.)

Suchomel writes: "Amazon.com is putting pressure on publishers and distributors to change their terms for electronic and print books to be more favorable toward Amazon. Our electronic book agreement recently came up for renewal, and Amazon took the opportunity to propose new terms for electronic and print purchases that would have substantially changed your revenue from the sale of both. It's obvious that publishers can't continue to agree to terms that increasingly reduce already narrow margins. I have spoken directly with many of our clients and every one of them agrees that we need to hold firm with the terms we now offer. I'm not sure what has changed at Amazon over the last few months that they now find it unacceptable to buy from IPG at terms that are acceptable to our other customers." Suchomel reiterated to us that the company's terms of sale for ebooks have not changed.

Suchomel suggests to clients that they help spread the word to consumers and direct ebook customers to the accounts that still sell the titles. "There is no better way to show our valued customers how much we appreciate doing business with them than to send orders their way."

He suggests that other accounts should be reminded of their "favorable competitive position on our electronic titles." And he reminds accounts to "practice what you preach. Support accounts that support your business. Ask the organizations you support to do the same." Also "remind family and friends of the value to our society of independent voices and ideas, and that independent publishers and bookstores need to be supported or they will go away."

At the same time, Suchomel writes: "Remember that Amazon continues to be an important account that sells a lot of units. This is a business decision on Amazon's part, and hopefully they will soon decide to reverse it and buy at our standard terms."

Wolf Gift Marks Anne Rice

Return to Best-Seller list

by Carol Memmott, USA TODAY

Anne Rice's return to the kind of Gothic horror tale that made her famous--she's best known for her Vampire Chronicles starring the vampire Lestat--seems to be paying off.  Her new novel, The Wolf Gift, about a reporter who gets bitten by a beast and becomes a werewolf, enters USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list at No. 12, her highest debut since 2003's Blood Canticle, a vampire novel, debuted at No. 7. Read the review of Wolf Gift.

After that she wrote two novels about Jesus, two about angels, and the nonfiction Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession. In a YouTube video, Rice says she's thrilled to be writing about classic horror figures again. "I've been dying to do my own werewolf thing for a long time," she says.

Philippa Gregory's First

YA Historical

Here is an exclusive preview of Philippa Gregory's upcoming historical novel, her first aimed at the young adult audience. Scheduled for release on May 22 from Simon & Schuster, Changeling opens in 1453 Rome.

The male protagonist – 17-year-old Luca Vero – has been expelled from his monastery, his home since age 11. Meanwhile, the heroine, Isolde, has just lost her adored father. After she refuses her elder brother's demand that she marry slimy Prince Roberto, she is forced into a convent against her will. The couple meet when Luca is sent to investigate why young nuns are developing stigmata.

Gregory, who is British, is best known for her best sellers about the Tudors, including The Other Boleyn Girl, and her new series about The War of The Roses.

Read Sample

Rowling Growing Up

JK Rowling's first adult novel is coming, from Little, Brown.  The British-based publisher has purchased world English rights to the first novel for adults by JK Rowling, the company announced Feb. 23.  Little Brown UK publisher David Shelley will serve as Rowling's editor, and Michael Pietsch will oversee publication in the US. 

All other details--title, pub date "and further details about the novel--will be announced later in the year." But one important element has been settled: While the world waits for Pottermore and the Harry Potter ebooks, Little, Brown promises they will publish "both in print and ebooks."

Rowling says in the release: "Although I’ve enjoyed writing it every bit as much, my next book will be very different to the Harry Potter series, which has been published so brilliantly by Bloomsbury and my other publishers around the world. The freedom to explore new territory is a gift that Harry's success has brought me, and with that new territory it seemed a logical progression to have a new publisher. I am delighted to have a second publishing home in Little, Brown, and a publishing team that will be a great partner in this new phase of my writing life." Rowling was represented by Neil Blair at The Blair Partnership.

Feldman Memoir:

Yay or Nay?

by Sarah Weinman

Deborah Feldman's memoir UNORTHODOX, detailing her Satmar Hasidic upbringing and how she eventually broke from it a few years ago, was no stranger to controversy even before its February 14 publication date. Close-knit communities are almost never happy about having their customs aired to a larger public, especially by someone, like Feldman, whose book details many grievances she had with her onetime way of life. Prominent appearances on "The View" and a feature article in the New York Post likely exacerbated matters.

But post-publication a number of serious charges have emerged as to whether UNORTHODOX stretched the truth on multiple fronts, including the timing of when Feldman's mother herself left the community; a sister whose existence is never mentioned; and a description of what is called a homicide that was, in fact, deemed a suicide by the coroner and New York State police.

We've read the memoir (and liked it very much, living in reasonable proximity to the Williamsburg-based community and being familiar with other ultra-Orthodox enclaves) and feel most of the charges levied within Orthodox circles -- and now to a wider public in the New York Daily News -- don't quite meet the standard of fabrication made famous by James Frey, Margaret Setzer, and others who clearly invented or described things that did not happen.

Perhaps because of those past instances, UNORTHODOX, published by Simon & Schuster and debuting at No. 7 on the NYT combined print and ebook nonfiction list dated March 4, includes a disclaimer as follows: "The names and identifying characteristics of everyone in this book have been changed. While all the incidents described in the book are true, certain events have been compressed, consolidated, or reordered to protect the identities of the people involved and ensure continuity of the narrative. All dialogue is as close to an approximation as possible to actual conversations that took place, to the best of my recollection."

That disclaimer would seem to cover charges that Feldman misrepresents her mother, Shoshanna Berkovic, leaving Williamsburg when the author "was a toddler" (online evidence indicates it was 2003) and the excising of her sister, who left with Berkovic, even if the explanation may not pass as much muster.

The most serious of the charges concerns a story Feldman claims she heard from her then-husband about the murder of a 13-year-old boy by his father in the upstate New York hasidic enclave of Kiryas Joel, a crime allegedly covered up by the Jewish ambulance service Hatzalah. But both the Forward and the Daily News reported "the young man in question was seven years older than Feldman reported, and evidence from the coroner, the New York State police, ambulance workers who reported the crime and family members of the dead man all overwhelmingly suggest that the young man (an allegedly troubled individual) died from slitting his own throat."

From our reading of UNORTHODOX, it's clear Feldman is describing a story she heard second- or third-hand and does not claim direct knowledge. It would have been prudent, and more ethical, for her to check the facts on that story, but Feldman isn't writing a journalistic account of Satmar Hasidism, either. (Ironically, she commented on Tumblr, "I cannot be responsible for what reporters write. Misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and just plain getting the facts wrong is common in journalism.")

Feldman wasn't available for comment to the Daily News, with S&S providing a statement to the paper: "Deborah Feldman's UNORTHODOX is an inspiring memoir that recounts, from the author’s perspective, her experiences as a child growing up in the Satmar community, and her eventual departure from that life. We are confident that UNORTHODOX accurately presents her deeply personal recollections of that journey."

Slate Begins

Monthly Book Review

by Julie Bosman

Slate will introduce a monthly book review on Friday, the latest expansion of literary criticism online as stand-alone book review sections in newspapers have dwindled.  The section will nearly triple the number of book-related articles that Slate publishes, covering fiction, nonfiction and the occasional children’s book and young adult.

Dan Kois, a senior editor in the culture department, will oversee the book review, which will use a mix of staff writers and freelancers to produce author interviews, essays and multimedia pieces, as well as reviews.

Mr. Kois said that even as he watched many newspapers drop their book sections in recent years, “it didn’t seem to me that there was less of an appetite for good writing about books.”

“Maybe the mode of doing it in print wasn’t appealing to editors or bean-counters,” said Mr. Kois, a former editor at New York magazine who helped develop its popular Vulture entertainment section. “So to my mind, I wanted to bring to Slate this idea of a concentrated, intense focus on books over the course of one weekend, where books essentially take the site over.”

Called the Slate Book Review, it will be published on the first Saturday of each month. The first section will have 13 articles.

NYT

How Vintage Landed

50 Shades of Grey

As the NYT reported over the weekend Vintage bought world English print, digital, and audio rights to republish EL James' erotic romance trilogy 50 SHADES OF GREY, which has sold more than 250,000 units (predominantly in ebook format) and has become an increasingly prominent topic of conversation over the past few weeks. The republished ebook edition is available now, priced at $9.99, with trade paperbacks to follow in early April, priced at $15.95. Foreign rights auctions have concluded or are underway in a number of territories as well.

In a telephone interview, Vintage evp and publisher Anne Messitte told us the deal with James, her agent Valerie Hoskins, and her previous publisher Writers Coffee Shop "may be the most complex deal I've ever worked on" -- a fitting process for what was a complicated path to publication.

Messitte was first alerted in January to 50 SHADES OF GREY by a publishing colleague, but she observed that "within a day, I was socializing with some moms at my kids' schools who were chatting about the book rather enthusiastically." Messitte also followed web discussions at DivaMoms.com, a community for mothers living on Manhattan's Upper East Side, and she got a physical copy of the first volume. "As soon as I finished it I immediately downloaded the second book. Both of them were completely immersive, something that was really connecting with a lot of women. The buzz building around them was notable."

Messitte contacted James and her agent Hoskins through the DivaMoms group, and arranged for a meeting at Vintage's offices on January 24. "I said I really wanted to make an offer, as I had a very strong idea of how to republish the books and make them more widely available, especially in physical editions. This is about taking books that are seen as strictly genre and saying yes, it's for those audiences, very much so but also clearly for many other readers. I really felt there was a way to help EL James find the audience that the momentum was really building towards."

James and Hoskins met with other publishers as well, and at least four were involved in the auction process. Messitte stressed, however, that it was "not a conventional auction." By the time James and her books were garnering national attention, deal negotiations were already well in hand. Messitte couldn't comment on specifics but with several parties needing to be satisfied from a financial standpoint, "We had to come up with a plan that was collaborative and supportive with everyone's interest and we happily found a way forward."

Messitte said the trade paperback editions (previously reported to have a 750,000 first printing for all three volumes) will feature more editorial oversight, as James has spent the past few days reviewing copyedits to the books "at lightning speed to bring a new standard to both the editorial presentation and packaging." The cover art will retain the same look as the original print-on-demand versions issued by Writers Coffee Shop but with added effects so that it will "look as great as other books on the front table in bookstores." Once the trade paperback edition is released the ebook edition will be updated to reflect the new copyedits and other changes, which is "not too dissimilar from what we generally do with reprint editions."

As numerous reports have outlined, 50 SHADES OF GREY grew out of a multi-part series of fan fiction called MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, based on Stephenie Meyer's TWILIGHT novels, that James (a pseudonym for London-based television executive Erika Leonard) published online between 2009 and 2011 in various venues, including fanfiction.net and her own website. When she contracted with Writers Coffee Shop in early 2011 to publish the works, lightly rewritten to take out any references to Twilight characters and situations, James took the fan fiction versions offline.

Vintage issued a statement to the AP Saturday defending 50 SHADES as an original work, and said to us that James had warranted the books were, indeed original. Messitte added she was "aware of the narrative that [50 SHADES] started as differently titled piece of fiction, but that they were and are two distinctly separate pieces of work." A request for comment from Meyer's agent, Jodi Reamer at Writers House, was not responded to at press time.

Bits & Bytes

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Children's: Young Adult
Twenty-five-year old librarian Bethany Hagen's sweeping YA debut, LANDRY PARK, pitched as "Gone with the Nuclear Wind," to Nancy Conescu at Dial, in a major deal, in a pre-empt, for three books, by Mollie Glick at Foundry Literary + Media (NA).

Theodor Geisel award-winning author Kate DiCamillo's Mercy Watson series spin-off, about a cowboy-thief, who first appeared stealing kitchen appliances in the series and now returns, accompanied by an oh-so-beautiful horse, to Karen Lotz at Candlewick, with Andrea Tompa editing, in a six-figure deal, by Holly McGhee at Pippin Properties (World).

NONFICTION
Biography
New York Times bestselling author of THE MAD ONES, Tom Folsom's HOPPER, a biography of the actor, artist, filmmaker, iconoclast Dennis Hopper, viewing his life as a twisted quest for the American dream, moving with Carrie Thornton to It Books (previously acquired by Thornton for Dutton), by James Fitzgerald at the James Fitzgerald Agency and Zoe Pagnamenta, who is Folsom's agent on his other works (world).

Cooking
Chef and owner of the restaurant Prune and author of the memoir Blood, Bones, and Butter, Gabrielle Hamilton's THE PRUNE COOKBOOK, with 250 recipes and 200 photographs, written "from cook to cook," to Pamela Cannon at Random House, for publication in 2014, by Kimberly Witherspoon at Inkwell Management (NA).
kim@inkwellmanagement

History/Politics/Current Affairs
University of California, Berkeley law professor Ian Haney-Lopez's THE DOG WHISTLE: The Untold Story of How Fifty Years of Race-Baiting Reinvented Racism and Destroyed the Middle Class, bringing together legal history with scholarship in politics, history, sociology and psychology to explain the multifaceted ways in which, since the civil rights movement, a particular brand of coded racism -- the dog whistle metaphor of the title -- has been the lingua franca of efforts to roll back the New Deal state that largely created the American middle class, to David McBride at Oxford University Press, at auction, in a good deal, by Andrew Stuart at The Stuart Agency (World).

How-To
Cade Courtley's SEAL SURVIVAL: Ultimate Guide on How to Survive Everything, an authoritative, practical, and entertaining guide on how to truly survive disasters of all kinds, from apocalyptic catastrophes, caused by man or nature, to the countless life-threatening situations we could encounter at any moment, the definitive A-Z sourcebook on how to prepare with confidence and ensure survival when that unpredictable calamity strikes, to Adam Wilson at Gallery, in a good deal, by Frank Weimann at The Literary Group (World).
fweimann@theliterarygroup.com

Narrative
Journalist Niki Kapsembelis's THE GOOD FIGHT, the story of a family with a genetic mutation for early onset Alzheimer's disease, who rather than give up or bemoan their fate, turn themselves over to a doctor and researcher who have invented a groundbreaking compound which makes the disease visible on brain scans, allowing the race for a cure for Alzheimer's to begin, bringing together cutting-edge medical science and one family's remarkable resolve to create meaning out of devastation, to Millicent Bennett at Free Press, in a good deal, for publication in November 2014, by Larry Weissman at Larry Weissman Literary (NA).

Reference
Correlated.org founder Shaun Gallagher's CORRELATED, a collection of humorous and surprising statistics, to Maria Gagliano at Perigee, on an exclusive submission, by Laurie Abkemeier at DeFiore and Company (NA).
Foreign: ajs@defioreandco.com

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