Octo-Mom's Book:

No Takers

Nadya Suleman has been called plenty of things over the years -- just not "author".

Octo-Mom has finished the autobiography of her less-than-typical life as the mother-of-14, including octuplets born in 2009, and the worldwide media frenzy that surrounded her since their birth.

There is only one problem: no one wants to publish the book.

Nadya has been shopping her book around to publishers, but no one has offered her a publication deal that she wants to go with,” a source close to Octo-Mom exclusively told RadarOnline.com.

“She has been talking with publishers, but is not nearing a deal. She is holding out because she is not being offered a lucrative deal, and she feel like her personal story is worth a lot more than anyone is even interested in paying.”

In 2009, Nadya’s lawyer Jeff Czech confirmed that Wendy Leigh would be ghost writing the book, but RadarOnline.com can exclusively reveal that Leigh, who ghost wrote My Life with Madonna, Christopher Ciccone’s book about his famous sister, quit the job.

“She agreed to write the book, but once she found out the pay and conditions Nadya was going to insist on, she quit working with her,” the source added.  Leigh declined to comment on her relationship with Nadya when reached by RadarOnline.com.

Nadya has written the entire book by herself, but for those wanting to know, she doesn’t reveal the identity of the man she says was the sperm donor for all 14 of her kids.

She is also keeping the title of the book secret: “She thinks it is clever and will make people want to buy the book.”

Publishers are curious about the exclusive details Nadya can provide about her lifestyle and issues with raising 14 children without a steady stream of income that haven’t been public knowledge.

And keeping with the family infighting, RadarOnline.com has learned that Nadya’s father Ed Doud is writing his own book, chronicling her childhood.

We’re told he hasn’t found a publisher yet either.

Top Money-Making

Authors

Publishers are feeling the heat, with hardcover sales weak and the rise of e-books promising to upend their business models. But the world's 10 top-earning authors are making out just fine, earning a combined $270 million over the 12 months to June 1.

James Patterson's $70 million in earnings vaults him to No. 1 on our list, up from second place two years ago. The prolific thriller writer's latest deal, signed last fall, involves penning a carpal tunnel-risking 17 books by the end of 2012 for an estimated $100 million.

Patterson's literary empire includes television, comic book and gaming deals. His foreign sales alone bring in well over $10 million a year. Patterson's e-books are posting respectable numbers, too. I, Alex Cross alone has sold 160,000 units digitally. Ironic, given that there's no computer in his home office--Patterson writes all his novels in longhand. To date he has published 51 New York Times best sellers.

Vampire romance author Stephenie Meyer ranks second this year. Her Twilight series has become such a juggernaut that despite not releasing a new title in 2009, she earned $40 million over the year. About $7 million of that came from movies adapted from the Twilight series. In June the third Twilight installment pulled in $175 million in its first six days, the most successful first week of any movie of 2010.

The bad climate for brick and mortar bookselling hasn't hurt prolific horror maven Stephen King, either, who placed third on our list with a take of $34 million, $8 million of which we estimate came from backlist sales. His 51st novel, Under the Dome, was released in November, selling 600,000 copies, according to Nielsen BookScan. It was optioned by DreamWorks TV.

Forbes

Spencer Pratt Tell-All on

Ex, Heidi Montag

NEW YORK (CBS) - Spencer Pratt is planning to share juicy details about his relationship with soon-to-be ex-wife Heidi Montag in a tell-all book.  The former "The Hills" star told US magazine that book will also showcase new details about Montag's relationship with her mother, Darlene Egelhoff.

"My last book, 'How to Be Famous,' didn't make the New York Times Best-Seller list because it was in the self-help section," Pratt, 26, told the magazine. "This one is going to be totally different. I'm not holding anything back."

Naturally, Montag wasn't too happy when she heard about Pratt's plan. "This is exactly why I left him," the 23-year-old told TMZ Wednesday. "Right now I'm looking into my legal options."

Back in July, Montag filed for divorce from Pratt after a year of marriage, citing irreconcilable differences. TMZ reported that their divorce will become final on Valentine's Day next year.

Earlier this month, Pratt confessed to People magazine that he chose fame over his wife. "We love each other but I'm a fame whore and I'll never grow out of it."

Dubbya Is

Back!

by Peter Wallsten

George W. Bush has remained mostly out of view and silent on policy debates since leaving office 19 months ago.  Now, the former president is about to step into the public arena again, at a moment when Washington is revisiting tax cuts, stem cells and other issues that were among the most contentious of his administration.

After remaining mostly out of view and silent on policy debates since leaving office, George W. Bush is about to promote his memoir, to be published a week after the Nov. 2 elections. Peter Wallsten has details.

Mr. Bush is re-emerging to promote his memoir, to be published a week after the Nov. 2 elections.

While the timing suggests that the book will not provide fodder for midterm campaigns, Mr. Bush will return to the public eye just as the Republican Party looks ahead to asserting greater power in Congress and to choosing its 2012 presidential nominee, and as President Barack Obama accuses the GOP of wanting to take the country back to Bush-era programs that, the Democratic president says, "drove the car into the ditch."

And the contents of his memoir make it likely that his voice will be heard on policy issues of the moment.  The book, "Decision Points," published by Crown Publishing Group, lays out 14 major decisions by Mr. Bush during his life and White House tenure. Among them, according to several people who have seen the manuscript: backing the bailout of the nation's financial system, enacting billions of dollars in tax cuts, limiting the use of human embryonic stem cells, and building up troops in Iraq for the so-called surge.

Some of those issues have regained prominence recently.

Due to a court ruling this week, lawmakers this fall may revisit the question of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, one of the major domestic controversies of Mr. Bush's early years in office.  Mr. Bush's tax cuts expire at year's end, making them a likely topic of debate by lawmakers this fall, while Mr. Obama's commission on deficit reduction is scheduled to submit its report on related subjects Dec. 1.

Leading up to the midterm elections, the financial bailout also has emerged as a point of debate on the role of government. And this month's drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq, and the transition away from a combat focus, has spurred debate over Mr. Bush's surge.

Mr. Bush also offers new details on his decisions during Hurricane Katrina, and on immigration, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and other war-related issues, such as the controversial warrantless wiretapping program.

Mr. Bush's promotional efforts begin Nov. 8 with a one-hour, prime-time special on NBC hosted by Matt Lauer. Advisors to Mr. Bush say other media interviews and a book tour are in the works, possibly further opening him to questions from the media and the public.

Several close advisors to Mr. Bush said in interviews they hoped the book, along with the new museum and presidential center at Southern Methodist University, would begin to redefine the public's view of a president who left office with approval ratings in the 30s.

The theme of "Decision Points" is "to lay out for people all of the information he received and the advice he was getting, and ultimately engage the readers to decide for themselves how they would have acted if they were in his shoes," said David Sherzer, a spokesman for Mr. Bush

WSJ

Blair's Book

JOURNEY Begins

Tony Blair garners considerable coverage on both sides of the Atlantic following the release today of A JOURNEY: My Political Life. The book is expected to rank as the bestselling UK political memoir ever. Released at the steep fake list price 25 pounds, the press is yet again surprised that the book is already deeply discounted. (Blooomberg has an amusing typo, listing the 720-page book as weighing 25 pounds.)

As promised, the book offers the closest thing to candor you can expect from a former leader, as he admits to deep emotions over the UK's participation in the Iraq war though cannot concede any errors, writing "I can't regret the decision to go to war." He says: "I ... regret with every fiber of my being the loss of those who died. Tears, though there have been many, do not encompass it." He adds "on the basis of what we do know now, I still believe that leaving Saddam in power was a bigger risk to our security than removing him and that, terrible though the aftermath was, the reality of Saddam and his sons in charge of Iraq would at least arguably be much worse."

Also on the topic is this circular bit of reasoning: "the blunt and inescapable truth is that though Saddam definitely had WMD, since he used them, we never found them. The intelligence turned out to be wrong ... We admitted it. We apologised for it. We explained it, even.

"The mistake is serious; but it is an error. Humans make errors. And, given Saddam's history, it was an understandable error.

"So the aftermath was more bloody, more awful, more terrifying that anyone could have imagined. The perils we anticipated did not materialise. The peril we didn't materialised with a ferocity and evil that even now shocks the senses."

Bloomberg says that overall "the tone is respectful, in keeping with the Teflon nonchalance that got Blair through 10 years at 10 Downing Street," with Blair coming across "as the bemused head of a dysfunctional family." Six hundred pages into the book he criticizes Gordon Brown--easy enough to do now that he is out of office as well. They add that "some wondrous insider anecdotes grace these pages: Brown getting locked in a bathroom when the two were having it out over who would become Labour leader in 1994; Blair tripping over a Buckingham Palace carpet and stumbling into Queen Elizabeth II's arms when being appointed prime minister in 1997; and Blair lunging for a 'stiff drink' to recover from a 60-second bear hug by Russia's Boris Yeltsin in 1999."

Bloomberg

POD DOA?  Or

Doing Just Fine?

How Authors Really Make Money: The Rebirth of Seth Godin and the

Death of Traditional Publishing

by Tim Ferriss

Print is dead!

This has become a popular headline, and a great way to get quoted, as Nicholas Negroponte has shown. Iconic author Seth Godin, after 12 bestsellers, just announced that he will no longer pursue traditional publishing, and the writing seems to be on the wall: the e-book is the future, plain and simple.

But what are the real concrete numbers? How are established authors actually making money, and what should new authors do? Go straight to e-book?

In this post, I’ll look at real-world numbers to discuss some hard truths of publishing, explain economics and pay-offs, and provide a few suggestions for aspiring authors.

To start, some contrasting numbers…

- The 4-Hour Workweek is one of the top-10 most highlighted Kindle books of all time.

- The 4-Hour Workweek was the #1 business book when Kindle first shipped after November 2007, and is currently around #116 in the Kindle store.

- In my last royalty statement, December 2009, digital book sales (all formats, including Kindle) totaled…. ready?… a mere 1.6% of total units sold.

My own book has been on the bestseller lists for more than three years, and I’ve tracked most multi-month bestsellers for all of those 36+ months using Nielsen Bookscan (among other tools) which covers about 75% of all retail book sales since 2001, including Amazon but excluding discount clubs such as Sam’s Club. Titlez has also been useful for looking at detailed trending on Amazon.

This all gives me a good pool of data, and I feel like I have a good grasp of what authors are selling and… realistically earning directly from books. If you’d like to get a basic idea, just subscribe to Publishers Lunch to see what authors are getting paid as advances. Enjoy.

We’ll come back to the Kindle numbers, but first, here’s a sketch of book economics, incentives and options:

More

eBook Humans

Reading More Books

There’s a lot of angst in the book publishing industry--and among book lovers--about the rise of the e-book and the decline of the printed version, but there’s good news for those who care about books regardless of what form they take: A growing body of evidence shows that people with e-readers are reading more books. A recent survey found that 40 percent of those with e-readers said they were reading more books than they used to before they had the device, which is consistent with earlier data on e-reading habits. E-book sales climbed by more than 200 percent in the first six months of this year, according to the Association of American Publishers.

Gigaom

Oprah Book Club:

FREEDOM or Not?

Just under a year after selecting Uwem Akpan's SAY YOU'RE ONE OF THEM, Oprah Winfrey is ready to pick another book for her audience to read (they must be slow readers).  Newtonville Books blogged that they were notified by a Macmillan sales rep of the impending announcement, to air on September 17, when the Oprah-stickered edition will release.  The secret selection is a hardcover with a list price of $28 (confirmed by online bookselling sites, which also list the title for blind pre-order).  No one seems to be taking blind pre-orders for an ebook edition yet, however.

There was some speculation online that the selection could be Jonathan Franzen's FREEDOM (which also lists for $28), but it at first appeared not.  Indigo lists the Canadian edition as also coming from Macmillan (with the same ISBNs as are listed on US bookselling sites) at a Canadian price of $29.50.  But Franzen has long been published by Harper Canada, which sells FREEDOM for $34.99 CA.

That would seem to leave the book club candidate to a Farrar, Straus or Henry Holt book, since they price new titles in even dollars, whereas St. Martin's usually releases hardcovers at $x.99.  But Walmart.com lists St. Martin's as the publisher, and the ISBN uses SMP's 312 ISBN prefix, making additional speculations and metadata searches inconclusive. 

(Some are tempted to wonder if publishers are moving up Nelson Mandela's CONVERSATIONS WITH MYSELF, but FSG is the U.S. publisher and Doubleday has rights in Canada, so you can cross that one off, too.)  It is a possibility that Indigo has confused the possibilities by releasing an incorrect entry, but since their shopping cart is live for pre-orders, that possibility is extremely unlikely. 

San Diego Indies Provide

Paper's Book Reviews

by Karen Schechner

When the San Diego Union Tribune laid off its arts and books critic, it “caused an uproar,” said Adrian Newell of Warwick’s in La Jolla, California. “We were worried there wasn’t going to be any books coverage.” Now several San Diego-area booksellers – Warwick's, Mysterious Galaxy, The Book Works, and The Yellow Book Road – are partnering with the Union Tribune (UT) to provide the content themselves.

After UT arts and books critic Bob Pincus was let go, Warwick’s organized a community forum to discuss the future of books and culture coverage in the UT. “We invited a panel of arts, books, and culture leaders in San Diego to address this concern,” said Susan E. McBeth, director of marketing and events at Warwick’s. Included on the panel was Jeff Light, editor of the UT, who had overseen the restructuring of the newspaper.

Newell explained that the forum provided “an opportunity for the community to address their concerns to Jeff Light.”

Although many San Diegans wanted Pincus rehired, that wasn’t an option, so the panel and community members brainstormed about how to maintain the arts and books section. From the forum and subsequent meetings with Light, several ideas emerged, said Newell. Various local organizations and individuals with expertise in a particular subject offered to provide free content.

That’s where the coalition of area indies stepped in. Warwick’s proposed that local booksellers participate in the revamped book section. A rotating schedule of four bookstores that are part of the coalition – Warwick’s, Mysterious Galaxy, The Book Works, and The Yellow Brick Road – are slated to provide weekly contributions. “We thought it would be great PR,” said Newell. “And it would give us a chance to focus on titles that were off the radar, and to periodically let the public know which authors would be doing events.” The Grove at Juniper & 30th is also part of the coalition, but is not providing content to the UT.

One title is recommended by one store each week. The first review (Memory Wall by Anthony Doerr), which ran August 22, was provided by Warwick’s. Different booksellers from the participating stores will be providing reviews. “We want it to really represent the personality of the stores,” said Newell, who noted that the diversity of bookstores would provide a range of recommendations.

The year-old coalition will also be joining together to distribute 50,000 copies of the Southern Independent Booksellers Association (SCIBA) Holiday Catalog in the UT. The coalition formed when they sponsored One Book San Diego.

Newell said that she never wants to see books coverage reduced, but “you can’t go back. There have been so many changes in this industry that none of us has liked. Our question is, ‘How do we best move forward that benefits everybody?’ We don’t like that there won’t be a dedicated book critic, but we thought it was important to provide content from San Diego booksellers and focus on the local connection. We wanted to show the community that there are these great independent bookstores that are very committed to the community.”

Author Hawking: God Not

Needed for Creation

by Jennifer Quinn, A.P.

Did creation need a creator?  British physicist and mathematician Stephen Hawking says no, arguing in his new book that there need not be a God behind the creation of the universe.

The concept is explored in "The Grand Design," excerpts of which were printed in the British newspaper The Times on Thursday. The book, written with fellow physicist Leonard Mlodinow, is scheduled to be published by Bantam Press on Sept. 9.

"The Grand Design," which the publishers call Hawking's first major work in nearly a decade, challenges Isaac Newton's theory God must have been involved in creation because our solar system couldn't have come out of chaos simply through nature.

But Hawking says it isn't that simple. To understand the universe, it's necessary to know both how and why it behaves the way it does, calling the pursuit "the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything."

"We shall attempt to answer it in this book," he wrote. "Unlike the answer given in 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,' ours won't be simply '42.'"

The number 42 is the deliberately absurd answer to the "Ultimate Question" chosen by sci-fi author Douglas Adams.

Hawking, who is renowned for his work on black holes, said the 1992 discovery of another planet orbiting a star other than the sun makes "the coincidences of our planetary conditions ... far less remarkable and far less compelling as evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings."

In his best-selling 1988 book "A Brief History of Time," Hawking appeared to accept the possibility of a creator, saying the discovery of a complete theory would "be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we should know the mind of God."

But "The Grand Design" seems to step away from that, saying physics can explain things without the need for a "benevolent creator who made the Universe for our benefit."

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing," the excerpt says. "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to ... set the Universe going."

Hawking retired last year as the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge University after 30 years in the position. The position was once held by Newton.

WSJ To Launch

Book Review Section

New York Observer

The Observer has learned that The Wall Street Journal will launch a weekly book review within the next few weeks. The Journal has never had a standalone book review before, and creating one now flies in the face of ever-dwindling book coverage in papers across the country.

The book review will be a pull-out section that will be inserted in one of the newly created sections for The Weekend Journal that will launch later this month. It is unclear how many pages will be dedicated to the new book review, but one source said it will be "significant," though it's uncertain if that means it will surpass The Times' usual 20-plus pages for its weekly Sunday Book Review, or if it will be in the same ballpark.

The section will be led by Robert Messenger who has been an editor at The Weekly Standard, a former editor of The Atlantic and — surprise! — one of the founding editors of The New York Sun. Mr. Messenger will be in charge of the weekly book review section and will also oversee the Journal's daily book reviews for the web and for the paper. Erich Eichman, who has been the books editor at the Journal since 1994, will now report to Mr. Messenger.

The book review pull-out will be inserted in a new section that will be edited by recent Journal hire Gary Rosen, a former editor at Commentary and, most recently, the chief external affairs officer at the John Templeton Foundation. Sources would not spill details about Mr. Rosen's new super secret section, but it will be distinct from Deborah Needleman's lifestlye section for the Saturday paper. In a memo announcing Mr. Rosen's hire, Journal editor Mike Miller said it would launch "later this month." Though the new book review will appear in Mr. Rosen's section of the Saturday paper, book review editor Mr. Messenger will report to Paul Gigot, the Journal's editorial page editor.

Obserrver

Bits & Bytes

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FICTION

Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Jaz Parks series author Jennifer Rardin's BOOK CLUB OF THE DAMNED, pitched as 'Jane Austen Book Club' meets 'Shaun of the Dead;' when monsters they've only read about in their paranormal book club start stalking the streets and killing innocent people, book club members spring into action, to Devi Pillai at Orbit, in a very nice deal, in a three-book deal, for publication in 2011/2012, by Laurie McLean at Larsen/Pomada Literary Agents (World).

laurie@agentsavant.com 

Women's/Romance

Laurie Brown's WHAT WOULD JANE AUSTEN RISK? and WHAT WOULD JANE AUSTEN CHOOSE?, pitched in the vein of her Rita-nominated What Would Jane Austen Do?, to Deb Werksman of Sourcebooks Casablanca, in a nice deal, by Lucienne Diver of The Knight Agency.

Children's: Middle grade

Mark Steensland's BEHIND THE BOOKCASE, to be illustrated by Kelly Murphy (MASTERPIECE), about a 12-year girl who discovers secret doors hidden behind her bookcase, and becomes embroiled in a battle for the souls of the dead, to Stephanie Elliott at Delacorte, by Jenny Bent at The Bent Agency (World).

Children's: Picture book

TOO PURPLEY! and TOO PICKLEY! author Jean Reidy and illustrator Genevieve Leloup's TOO PRINCESSY!, with a fussy toddler searching for the just-right playtime option, to Michelle Nagler of Bloomsbury Children's, by Erin Murphy at Erin Murphy Literary Agency for Reidy and Michele Manasse for Leloup (World).

NONFICTION

Advice/Relationships

THE POWER OF BODY LANGUAGE and THE YES FACTOR author, Fox News contributor Tonya Reiman's THE BODY LANGUAGE OF DATING, to Anthony Ziccardi at Gallery, with Abby Zidle editing, in a good deal, by Laura Dail at Laura Dail Literary Agency (World English).

Life coach, entrepreneur and Gen-Y blogger Jenny Blake's LIFE AFTER COLLEGE, a guidebook aimed specifically at the 20-something audience and their taste for fast, useful information, to Jennifer Kasius at Running Press, for publication in June 2011, by Sarah Lazin at Sarah Lazin Books (NA). Foreign:

rebecca@lazinbooks.com 

Cooking

Journalist, chef, and Chicago native Amelia Levin's THE CHICAGO CHEF'S TABLE, featuring 100 signature dishes from more than fifty of the city's best chefs -- from Charlie Trotter, Rick Bayless, and Greg Achatz, to the burgeoning street food scene, to Mary Norris at Lyons Press, by Jenni Ferrari-Adler at Brick House (World).

History/Politics/Current Affairs

Florin Diacu's THE LOST MILLENNIUM: History's Timetables Under Siege, to Trevor Lipscombe at Johns Hopkins University Press, by Ron Eckel at Cooke Agency International (US).

rights@cookeinternational.com 

Humor

Adam Bertocci's TWO GENTLEMEN OF LEBOWSKI, which retells the classic film through the wit of the Bard, citing every play and many of the sonnets, to be published in the vein of the Folger Shakespeare editions, with illustrations, annotations, and an afterword on why Shakespeare and the film are meant for each other, to Michael Szczerban at Simon & Schuster, by Lindsay Edgecombe at the Levine Greenberg Literary Agency (NA),

Memoir

2008 Fringe Festival best actor winner Hogan Gorman's HOT CRIPPLE, based on the author's humorous one woman show, about her four-year recovery after being hit by a car and dealing with the healthcare and social service system, all without insurance, to Jeanette Shaw at Perigee, by Monika Verma at the Levine Greenberg Literary Agency (world).

jeanette.shaw@us.penguingroup.com 

Sports

Head of UConn Women's Basketball and one of the most winning coaches in NCAA basketball history Geno Auriemma's WINNING EVERY TIME, revealing the core principles of his unparalleled team building and relentless pursuit of excellence -- and how leaders at all levels can use these fundamentals for success in their own organizations, to Leila Porteous at McGraw-Hill, by Dan Levy and Lindsay Kagawa of Wasserman Media Group.

FOREIGN

Fiction

Portuguese rights to Kjell Ola Dahl's THE LAST FIX, to Porto, by Tor Jonasson at Salomonsson Agency.

tor@salomonssonagency.com 

Japanese rights to Jo Nesbo's HEADHUNTERS, to Kodansha, by Kenny Okuyama at Japan Uni on behalf of Tor Jonasson at Salomonsson Agency.

tor@salomonssonagency.com 

Slovakian rights to Jerzy Kosinski's THE PAINTED BIRD, to Ikar, by Kristin Olson at the Kristin Olson Literary Agency in association with Sylvie Rosokoff at Trident Media Group on behalf of Ellen Levine.

World Spanish language rights to Kate Taylor's MADAME PROUST AND THE KOSHER KITCHEN, to Siruela, by Anna Ascolies at Pontas Literary & Film Agency and Ron Eckel at Cooke International.

rights@cookeinternational.com 

World French rights to Carol Shields's ORANGE FISH and DRESSING UP FOR THE CARNIVAL, to Les Presses de l'Universite d'Ottawa, by Montreal-Contacts/The Rights Agency and Ron Eckel at Cooke International.

rights@cookeinternational.com  

Nonfiction

Italian rights to Bruce Philp's CONSUMER REPUBLIC, to BCD, by Kelvin Kong at The Rights Factory.

Kelvin@therightsfactory.com  

Arabic rights to Andre Gerolymatos's CASTLES MADE OF SAND: A Century of Anglo-American Espionage and Intervention in the Middle East, to All Print, for publication in 2011, by Bill Hanna of Acacia House.

Children's

German rights to Arthur Slade's THE HUNCHBACK ASSIGNMENTS & THE HUNCHBACK ASSIGNMENTS 2: The Dark Deeps, to Stefan Wendel at Thienemann, for publication in Fall 2011 & Spring 2012, by Barbara Kuper on behalf of John Cusick at Scott Treimel NY.