Marilyn:

"New" Pix Published

A series of never-before seen pictures of Marilyn Monroe showing the sex symbol in unguarded and intimate moments has been published for the first time. The photos show the screen legend, then 27, still oozing sex appeal despite being in the clutches of a grizzly bear. They are part of more than 100 previously unpublished and digitally restored black and white images taken during the summer of 1953 and featured in a new book.

Picture: REUTERS/The Estate of John Vachon/Dover Publications, Inc

Candy Man…

Uhh, WOman

Simon and Schuster Executive V.P. and Publisher Jonathan Karp confirmed that Candice Bergen will pen a second memoir as a follow-up to her 1984 book Knock Wood.  Bergen's new memoir will be published in 2012. The currently untitled book will cover Bergen's time on the acclaimed TV show Murphy Brown, as well as the death of her husband, director Louis Malle.

Bergen has won five Emmys for her performance on Murphy Brown and guest-starred in the dramatic television series, Boston Legal, which finished its four-year run in 2008. The actress has recently had roles in films, including The Romantics, Sex and the City, and The Women.

Bergen, the daughter of ventriloquist/comedian/actor Edgar Bergen, was born in Hollywood and grew up in show business, appearing at an early age on her father's radio show as well as on Grouch Marx's You Bet Your Life under the name, Candy Bergen.  She spent years as a successful fashion model before dedicating herself to acting.

Bergen is sixty-four.

Quercus Up on

Larsson Sales

Quercus Publishing Plc, the award-winning independent publisher in the trade, contract, paperback and children’s sectors, today presented its interim results for the six months ended 30 June 2010. These six months have seen notable developments and achievements in both trade and contract publishing divisions.

Highlights include:

* Revenue nearly tripled to £15.01m (2009:£5.55m)

* UK book publishing market share increased to 1.53% (2009:0.39%)

* Non-Larsson trade division revenue growth of 24% over the period

Mark Smith, Chief Executive of Quercus Publishing Plc, commented ‘The results for the first half of the year bode extremely well for the full year performance as we head into the pre-Christmas selling season.’

In August, a fiction publishing joint venture, Silver Oak, was agreed with Sterling Publishing Inc., a subsidiary of Barnes & Noble Inc, the world’s largest bookseller. The Company expects Silver Oak to be a significant contributor to profits in the future.

Following an extensive tender process, Pan Macmillan Australia has been appointed as Quercus’ sales, marketing and distribution partner in Australia and New Zealand (“ANZ”) from 1 January 2011. The Company’s ANZ business has grown substantially with their former distributor, Murdoch Books Pty Ltd, in recent years and Pan Macmillan is well placed to drive the next stage of this market’s development.

Where's the Book?

Is it possible that the most reviled Federal spending program in U.S. history might actually make a profit?  Turn some heads?  Set a precedence?  And, if so, who's going to write the book?

Even as voters rage and candidates put up ads against government bailouts, the reviled mother of them all — the $700 billion lifeline to banks, insurance and auto companies — expired on Monday, Oct. 4, at a fraction of that cost, and could conceivably earn taxpayers a profit.

A final accounting of the government’s full range of interventions in the economy, including the bailouts of the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is years off and will most likely remain controversial and potentially costly.

But the once-unthinkable possibility that the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program could end up costing far less, or even nothing, became more likely on Thursday with the news that the government had negotiated a plan with the American International Group to begin repaying taxpayers.

The rescue of the troubled insurer included $70 billion from the bailout program that was enacted two years ago, at the height of the global financial crisis late in the Bush administration, initially to prop up big banks.

At the White House on Thursday, the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, briefed President Obama about A.I.G. and about the broader outlook for the expiring rescue program, putting the projected losses at less than $50 billion, at most. Yet neither the White House nor Congressional Democrats are likely to boast much in the month remaining before midterm elections. For most voters, TARP remains a four-letter word.

Brian A. Bethune, the chief financial economist in the United States for IHS/Global Insight, while critical of parts, called the program over all “a tremendous success. Now obviously, they can’t go out on the campaign trail and say that, because certainly, for a lot of voters, it’s just not going to resonate.”

The “bank bailout” was the first big issue, before the Obama administration’s roughly $800 billion stimulus plan and its health insurance overhaul, to stoke the rise of the Tea Party movement. After supporting TARP, several Republicans have lost elections largely because of their votes. For many Americans, TARP is more than a vote; it is a symbol of big government at its worst, intervening in private markets with taxpayers’ billions to save Wall Street plutocrats while average Americans struggle through the recession those financiers spawned.

Fewer than three in 10 Americans say they believe the program was necessary “to prevent the financial industry from failing and drastically hurting the U.S. economy,” according to a poll in July for Bloomberg News.

“This is the best federal program of any real size to be despised by the public like this,” said Douglas J. Elliott, a former investment banker now associated with the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

“It was probably the only effective method available to us to keep from having a financial meltdown much worse than we actually had. Had that happened, unemployment would be substantially higher than it is now, the deficit would have gone up even more than it has,” Mr. Elliott added. “But it really cuts against the grain for a public that is so angry at banks to think that something that so plainly helped the banks could also be good for the public.”

After Sunday the Treasury can no longer commit money to new initiatives or recycle repayments to other purposes.

The Treasury never tapped the full $700 billion. It committed $470 billion and has disbursed $387 billion, mostly to hundreds of banks and later to A.I.G., the car industry — Chrysler, General Motors, the G.M. financing company and suppliers — and to what is, so far, a failed effort to help homeowners avoid foreclosures.

When Mr. Obama took office, the financial system remained so weak that his first budget indicated the Treasury might need another $750 billion for TARP. The administration soon dropped that idea as Mr. Geithner overhauled the rescue program and the banking system stabilized. Still, by mid-2009, the administration projected that TARP could lose $341 billion, a figure that reflected new commitments to A.I.G. and the auto industry.

The Congressional Budget Office, which had a slightly higher loss estimate initially, in August reduced that to $66 billion.

Now Treasury reckons that taxpayers will lose less than $50 billion at worst, but at best could break even or even make money. Its best-case assumptions, however, assume that A.I.G. and the auto companies will remain profitable and that Treasury will get a good price as it sells its corporate shares in coming years.

“We’d have to be very lucky to have both A.I.G. and the auto companies pay us back in full,” Mr. Elliott said.

NYT

Rambo's Morrell Inks

Exclusive Kindle Deal

First Blood author David Morrell will publish his new novel, The Naked Edge, exclusively through Amazon.com's Kindle store, along with a further nine of his thrillers

Fans of David Morrell will be able to read his 10 thrillers on Amazon's Kindle e-reader.  Bestselling thriller writer David Morrell, creator of Rambo, has become the latest author to sign a deal to publish ebook exclusively through Amazon.

Morrell, whose debut First Blood ("His name was Rambo, and he was just some nothing kid for all anybody knew") went on to become the Rambo film franchise, announced yesterday that he would be releasing a new novel, The Naked Edge, along with nine other thrillers, as ebooks exclusively through Amazon.com's Kindle store. The author follows in the footsteps of bestselling business writer Stephen Covey, who struck a similar deal last December, and agent Andrew Wiley, who launched a new digital publishing company, Odyssey Editions, selling ebooks by authors including Saul Bellow and Oliver Sacks exclusively through Amazon.com's Kindle shop earlier this summer.

"Publishing these 10 books in the Kindle store is a great opportunity to explore how electronic publishing enables me to give my readers additional, unique content," said Morrell, co-founder of the International Thriller Writers organisation and a three-time winner of the Bram Stoker award, in a statement. "I hope that my fans will be able to rediscover their favourite titles, and that new readers will have the chance to enjoy my books on their Kindles. I'm especially excited about publishing my new thriller, The Naked Edge, in digital format, exclusively for Kindle."

Guardian

Afghanistan as Obama and

Others Game It

It’s no secret that there have been ferocious arguments within the Obama administration over the war in Afghanistan: both substantive policy debates, encouraged by the president during meetings as a means of fully exploring various military and diplomatic options; and nasty public exchanges and orchestrated leaks from the Pentagon and White House, exposing rifts over America’s mission and strategy there as well as heated disagreements over troop levels, timetables and tactical priorities.

Bob Woodward’s new book, “Obama’s Wars,” underscores just how vociferous and highly personal those altercations and message wars often became. Although the volume essentially retraces a narrative that will be familiar to readers from articles in The New York Times and The Washington Post and from Jonathan Alter’s recent book, “The Promise,” Mr. Woodward adds lots of detail and anecdotal color to the story of how the White House’s policy on Afghanistan evolved over the administration’s first 18 months, and how the decision was made to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan (to try to wrest momentum away from a resurgent Taliban) with a drawdown of American forces scheduled to begin in July 2011.

Like all Woodward books, “Obama’s Wars” plows relentlessly forward like a shark. It is all about narrative and scenes and relationships among its principle subjects, not policy assessments or evaluations of conditions on the ground. Readers looking for historical perspective on the long walk-up to Sept. 11 will find Steve Coll’s “Ghost Wars” and Lawrence Wright’s “Looming Tower” more useful; for those seeking analysis of what went wrong in Afghanistan after America’s routing of the Taliban in late 2001, Seth Jones’s “In the Graveyard of Empires” is the book to look at.

NYT

Barnes & Noble PubIt Offers

40 - 65 Percent Royalties

Today Barnes & Noble is opening for their business their previously-announced PubIt! program, allowing individual authors, self-publishers and small publishers to upload their ebooks for direct sale through Nook/BN.

In the press release, they underscore that their program has "clear and competitive terms -- and no hidden fees." BN is offering a royalty/revenue share of 65 percent of list price for titles between $9.99 and $2.99 (slightly lower than Amazon on the surface, though there are no "delivery" charges, no surcharges based on file size, and no provision that BN can lower the price and pay royalty on that basis). And they pay 40 percent of list price on ebooks selling for more than $9.99, as well as $.99 to $2.98 (slightly higher than Amazon's 35%). PubIt ebooks are automatically included in BN's lending and "read in store" programs--whether you like it or not.

The company says that "content will be available for sale within 24 to 72 hours after upload." Barnes & Noble also promises special support for the PubIt titles, including a dedicated bestseller list, "special promotions" in their ebookstore, and additional focus on "select content" in their in e-mails and newsletters.

FAQs/Terms

Release

Will eBooks

Kill Publishing?

by Harold McGraw III and Philip Ruppel

Today, it is not uncommon to hear predictions that the names of the great publishing houses will soon fall from the covers of books to the footnotes of self-published history tomes. Casual observers could be forgiven for thinking this way based on headlines on the e-reading revolution.

First, Amazon announced that its e-book sales topped its hardcover sales for the first time. Then, in August, the Washington Post Co. sold iconic Newsweek amid questions about the future of weekly magazines. And just recently, this newspaper launched a " major organizational restructuring" as part of a continued shift from newsprint toward more digital platforms.

While this tide of headlines speaks to the sea change sweeping the publishing world, the industry itself is anything but washed out. In fact, many parts of the industry are thriving in the digital age.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the success of the e-book. The Association of American Publishers recently reported that e-book sales for the first half of the year were up more than 200%. Far from being the end of the publishing industry, this number is a sign of a new beginning.

Why is there such a gap between the perception of a dying industry and the reality of a rapidly adapting one? It begins with five common myths about publishing:

Myth No. 1.Publishers are merely printers. That would be news to companies like ours, which don't even operate their own printing presses. Publishers today are in the content business. We develop it; we design it; and we deliver it however our readers want it. And while a large part of our business remains in paper and print, we are seeing an unmistakable and irreversible shift toward bits and bytes with e-books and digital delivery platforms accounting for a growing share of the total market.

Myth No. 2.Authors don't need publishers in the digital age. Anyone who has ever written a book knows this to be false. Many great authors would never have found their audience without a great publisher willing to take a risk on their talents and market their works. At every stage of the editorial process, publishers partner with their authors as creative consultants, editors and designers. Ernest Hemingway had Maxwell Perkins from Charles Scribner's Sons, and Norman Mailer had E.L. Doctorow from Dial Press.

These relationships are even more critical to a book's success in the digital age. With the ascent of e-books, authors will need publishers to serve as digital artists who can bring words to life by pairing text with multimedia features such as audio, video and search. While many of these functions are only included in so-called enhanced books today, they will be part of every book tomorrow.

USA Today

Star To Adopt

NYT Book Coverage

This Sunday, the Toronto Star will begin carrying content from The New York Times’ Sunday book review section.  The section will be a 12-page tabloid that Star spokesperson Bob Hepburn describes as an “abridged version” of the weekly New York Times Book Review, which typically runs between 28 and 32 pages. It will contain a selection of book reviews, essays, and bestseller lists as chosen by Times staff, as well as advertising sold from out of Toronto. The supplementary section will not impact the Star’s existing books coverage, Hepburn says.

As part of the content-sharing agreement, the Sunday Star will also begin carrying a new 16-page broadsheet news and commentary section culled from the Times. For the next six weeks, home-delivery subscribers will receive the supplemental sections for free, after which they can request delivery of the sections for an additional $1 per week. As of Nov. 28, the price of newsstand editions of the Sunday Star will increase from $1 to $2.

The Star has launched a major multimedia marketing campaign to promote the new sections. “This is one of the largest marketing campaigns the Star has launched in many years,” consumer marketing executive Sandy MacLeod said in a press release. “We believe that through the combination of newspaper, television, radio, point-of-sale, telemarketing, and e-mail marketing efforts we will reach almost every adult reader in the Greater Toronto Area.”

Canuck Readers' Reactions:

Among responses to the announcement about the Toronto Star acquiring the NYT book section:

• Wow, what a drag.
• Congratulations to the Toronto / New York Star for helping to build a branch-plant nation.
• As far as Books Editor Levin is concerned talent is elsewhere. He has not nor has ever been a champion of Canadian writers and publishing and yet we keep inviting this schmuck to book events in the hopes he will notice something wonderful is happening here, which it is.

Bits & Bytes

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FICTION

Horror

Author of the upcoming novel DUST Joan Frances Turner's FRAIL, which follows the lone human survivor of a small town as she must make her way across a land ravaged by the "feeding plague" and contend with dangerous humans and zombies alike, again to Michelle Vega at Ace, in a good deal, by Michelle Brower at Folio Literary Management.

Paranormal

Sophie Renwick's IMMORTALS OF ANNWYN, in which Fallen Angels and the Fae meet and play with humans at a nightclub and the battle against evil escalates, to Tracy Bernstein at NAL, by Mary Louise Schwartz at Belfrey Literary Agency.

mls@thebelfreyliteraryagency.com

Children's: Middle grade

Dan Poblocki's HAUNTINGS AND HEISTS (The Mysterious Four #1), about four kids in the oddball community of Moon Hollow who come together to solve crimes and puzzles big and small: debunking sea monsters, thwarting bullies, or revealing who threw out mom's asparagus; they will figure out the truth in six clues or less, and readers are invited to guess alongside them each step of the way, to Nick Eliopulos at Scholastic, in a three-book deal, for publication in Spring 2011, by Barry Goldblatt at Barry Goldblatt Literary (World).

barry@bgliterary.com

Will Alexander's debut THE MASKS OF ZOMBAY, in which an orphan must discover what happened to his brother in an urban world of witches and gear-works, goblins and soldiers, and a river about to flood, to Karen Wojtyla at Margaret K. McElderry Books, in a two-book deal, by Beth Fleisher at Barry Goldblatt Literary (NA).

beth@bgliterary.com

NONFICTION

Advice/Relationships

Valorie Burton's SUCCESSFUL WOMEN THINK DIFFERENTLY, on leadership principles for women, to LaRae Weikert at Harvest House, for publication in January 2012, by Andrea Heinecke at Alive Communications (World).

aheinecke@alivecom.com

Sara Horn's MY SO-CALLED LIFE AS A PROVERBS 31 WIFE, in which the author undergoes a one-year domestic experiment to reconcile her differences with the Proverbs 31 woman, while addressing cultural issues along the way, to LaRae Weikert at Harvest House, for publication in September 2011, by Andrea Heinecke at Alive Communications (World).

aheinecke@alivecom.com

Parenting

Dr. William Sears, Martha Sears, Drs. Robert Sears, James Sears, and Peter Sears's THE BABY BOOK, the third edition of The Baby Book, the "bible" of childcare with over 2 million copies sold, to be published for the 20th anniversary, to Tracy Behar at Little, Brown, for publication in 2013, by Denise Marcil at Denise Marcil Literary Agency (NA).

DMLA@denisemarcilagency.com

General/Other

Toni Carr a.k.a. Joan Dark's KNITS FOR NERDS: Projects for Fans of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Comic Books, projected to include a Star Trek mini dress, Hobbit slippers, and a laptop bag that doubles as a chessboard, to Lane Butler at Andrews McMeel, in a nice deal, by Kate Epstein at Epstein Literary Agency (World English).

kate@epsteinliterary.com

Dr. Ronald Glasser's WOUNDED AMERICA, reviewing the staggering price of our three modern wars: Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, from a military doctor's perspective, revealing how America has failed to prepare, both in combat and back home, for the long-term impact of the wounded and the dead, to Don Bracken at History Publishing, for publication in 2011, by Claire Gerus at Claire Gerus Literary Agency (world).