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Feb 9 2010 04:20 PM ET

Sweet Valley High Sequel: What I'd Love to See

Categories: Francine Pascal, Publishing Biz, Sweet Valley High

Brush off your Droids cassette and put on your lavalieres – the Wakefield twins are back. And I don’t mean in Diablo Cody’s movie adaptation of the series.

No, according to St. Martin’s, Sweet Valley High’s Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield – the identical twins with blonde hair, eyes the color of the Pacific Ocean and “perfect size six” figures – will return to bookstores, possibly as soon as early next year, in Sweet Valley Confidential, a book chronicling their lives as twenty-somethings.

Rumors have swirled for years that SVH creator Francine Pascal was working on a book focusing on the twins and their friends several years out of high school. Late last month, the SVH world went into a frenzy when an editorial assistant at St. Martin’s confirmed the existence of the novel, giving Shannon’s Sweet Valley Blog a tentative publishing date of February 2011. While there is no word yet on what characters will appear in the book, there is a plethora to choose from. I think it’s safe to say that Lila Fowler, Jessica’s rich frenemy and my personal favorite, will make an appearance, as will Porsche-driving Bruce Patman and Elizabeth’s moody on-again off-again boyfriend Todd Wilkins. Continuity has never been one of Sweet Valley’s strong points, so I won’t really mind if the book pretends Sweet Valley Senior Year and Sweet Valley University never happened, focuses on just SVH characters, and retains the same fabulous campy quality as the original series.

So, what plots/characters would you like to see in Sweet Valley Confidential? Are there any other YA series that need to reappear with the characters grown up?

Feb 6 2010 07:00 AM ET

'Game Change': The authors discuss politics as unusual

by Keith Staskiewicz

Categories: Barack Obama, Campaign memoir, Game Change, Interview, John Edwards, John McCain, Nonfiction, Sarah Palin

The 2008 presidential election was historic both in terms of the nature of its candidates and its near-complete level of media saturation, but political journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann somehow managed to put together a campaign book chock full of behind-the-scenes details, often juicy, that were overlooked the first go-round. That book, Game Change (click to see the EW review), quickly became a best-seller, demonstrating that over 15 months later, we as a nation are still captivated by that year-long mad rush towards the White House. The two authors spoke with EW about doing hundreds of interviews, how they deal with accusations of gossip-peddling, and their exhaustive attempts to report all the fear and loathing on the campaign trail.

Why do you think so many people are still interested in this particular election, over a year later, even though they know the ending?

John: We started out with a notion as we were covering the campaign that this was an unusual election on a lot of different levels, but it was unusual in particular in that the candidates who were front-and-center were bigger-than-life characters. You had here people who were more interesting than your average politician. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain, these are all people who had celebrity stature. We often like to joke that any race where Rudy Giuliani is the seventh most interesting person is a pretty colorful race. And we thought that all the historic circumstances around the campaign in combination with these characters who had clearly riveted the country in a way that we hadn’t seen before in a presidential election, we thought that there was some chance, that if we rendered the high human drama of what it was like to go through it, and how it changed them, and how the strengths and weaknesses in their characters affected the outcome, that people would, a year later, still have some interest in it, if we did our jobs right.

In the prologue you say that it’s essentially a love story between Obama and Clinton. But parts almost feel like a Greek tragedy…

Mark: We hoped to write a book that wouldn’t be seen as a political book that only people in the beltway would read. What we thought was that these were bigger-than-life figures, many of them iconic, and there was a lot of tragedy and comedy and high drama that, if we told the story right, would reveal these famous people but in a brand-new way. (Read full post)

Feb 5 2010 06:00 AM ET

Jenny Sanford's 'Staying True': A Review

by Tina Jordan

Categories: Controversy, Jenny Sanford, Mark Sanford, News, Staying True

Hell hath no fury like a political wife scorned.

It was true with Elizabeth Edwards, who took her husband John to task in her most recent book, Resilience, and it’s certainly true with Jenny Sanford. You remember Sanford – she’s the wife of South Carolina governor Mark Sanford. (You know, the one who told his staff and his family that he was going to go hike on the Appalachian Trail and instead flew to South America to see his girlfriend.) Jenny Sanford remained quiet during the ensuing media hullabaloo, letting the press skewer her husband while she retreated to the family’s beach house with their four boys.

Now it’s her turn to do the skewering, and boy, does she let him have it. In her by turns funny, thoughtful, and introspective memoir, Staying True (which goes on sale today), Sanford looks back at her marriage and her husband, giving, to her credit, what seems to be a well-rounded portrait of him. Here we have not just a philanderer but a go-getter, a restless man with a zest for life. An incredible cheapskate. A loving son and brother. A tireless campaigner. A strict, if largely absent, father. Here are some of the highlights (or, rather, the lowlights):

How he was a jerk early on: The first Thanksgiving they were married, they joined Mark’s family at the Sanford farm — where Mark informed her he’d be bunking with his brothers, not with her. “I’ve always slept with my brothers and I don’t see why that has to change now that we’re married,” he told her.

How he pinched pennies: One year, for her birthday, he gave her a drawing of half a bike; for Christmas, he drew the other half. A few months later he handed her a $25 used bike. Then there was the time he had a staffer pick out a necklace for her—but when he saw her wearing it, he said, “That is what I spent all that money on? I hope you kept the box!” He returned the jewelry the next day. And he was once too cheap to hire an exterminator when their Charleston house was infested with bats.

How his disregard for her turned callous: When Sanford needed a tubal ligation (she had been through four difficult pregnancies and could not risk another), she went to the hospital alone. “As I was wheeled in for surgery, the nurse asked me why I didn’t have anyone with me for support.” And shortly after she discovered his long-running affair, he began “pestering me for permission to see his lover…so he could find the ‘key to his heart.’” When she demurred — she knew she could forgive him for what had happened, but condoning continued adultery was another matter — he asked her, “Do you want to wake up when you are eighty and know you never had a heart connection?”

People will no doubt criticize Jenny Sanford for writing this book and airing so much dirty laundry about her husband, a man once buzzed about as a presidential contender. But I think he had it coming (in fact, I think the very idea of using a book as revenge is pretty delicious.) He publicly humiliated her, not once but time and time again over the last year. She has every right to humiliate him. That’s how I see it, anyway. You?

Feb 4 2010 10:42 AM ET

Zombies and unicorns: Natural enemies?

by Keith Staskiewicz

Categories: Uncategorized

It’s a match-up centuries in the making, one that can turn brother against brother, mother against son, and babysitter against baby. The question is, of course, which mythological creature is cooler: The zombie or the unicorn? Zombies have been experiencing a resurgence in popularity lately, a revivification, if you will, from Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to Zombieland to the raised-from-the-dead career and mangled face of Mickey Rourke. (“He came back…different.”) Not to be outdone, those rainbow-pooping, ark-missing unicorns have always enjoyed a consistently strong popularity among the puffy-sticker-on-a-Lisa-Frank-folder set, as well as a brief period in the 80’s when movies like The Last Unicorn and Legend helped bring them back into the mainstream.

Well, the age-old question will finally be answered in a new book, Zombies vs. Unicorns, just announced by Simon & Schuster, which will be a collection of essays detailing the pros and cons of both the shambling undead and the horned horses. The idea for the book came from a series of blog posts between authors Holly Black (The Spiderwick Chronicles, Ironside) and Justine Larbalestier (Liar, How to Ditch Your Fairy) that started in 2007 and grew from there. A number of big names from the young-adult circuit, including The Princess Diaries writer Meg Cabot, have contributed individual pieces on one of the two creatures, all of which are tied together by a running deliberative commentary from Black and Larbalestier as they argue for Team Unicorn and Team Zombie respectively. “What’s great about what the contributors are doing is that it isn’t anything typical,” says publisher Justin Chanda. “There’s definitely the standard eating-your-brains zombie, but there’s also some heartfelt zombies and funny zombies. And on the unicorn side there’s some really dark stuff going on, too.”

Anticipating a September launch for the book, Simon & Schuster has set up a website allowing people to vote and make it known where they stand in this debate. I just wonder why we can’t just compromise and agree that clearly a zombie unicorn would be coolest beast never to roam the earth. What do you guys think? Are you on Team Unicorn or Team Zombie?

Feb 2 2010 04:24 PM ET

EA's 'Dante's Inferno' and other classic literature we'd like to see as a video game

by Keith Staskiewicz

Categories: Games, Tech, Uncategorized, Video Games

Abandon all hope ye who enter the secret code to Level 9. The first part of Dante Alighieri’s pre-Renaissance masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, has been adapted into a video game by Electronic Arts. The game, which hits stores Feb. 9, recasts the moody, reflective poet as a buff, sword-swinging Crusader out to save his beloved’s soul from the fiery clutches of Lucifer. It looks like there will be a lot less introspection and whole lot more decapitation than in the original. Surprisingly, though, Dante’s phantasmal tour guide Virgil hasn’t been changed into a wisecracking talking dog that can give you hints.

This isn’t the first work of literature to be transformed into a game, but up to now it’s usually been via movies. Where the Harry Potter and Beowulf games had just as much to do with the films as the books, Dante’s Inferno skips that step, ready to muck around in public domain without the help of Hollywood. BioShock, which has a sequel releasing the same day, certainly borrowed from Ayn Rand’s philosophy when designing its Art Deco dystopia (it even had a character not-so-subtly named Atlas) but it didn’t purport to be a straight interpretation of her books.

This newfound interest in literary gaming got us thinking: What other classics would we like to see coming to a console near us?

Don Quixote: A lot like the old arcade game Joust, except your enemy is a windmill.

Hamlet: Polonius’ Revenge: This re-imagining is a stealth game in the mode of Metal Gear Solid that has you sneaking throughout Elsinore, hiding behind curtains and listening to other people’s conversations. But don’t get caught, or it’s curtains for you!

Edgar Allen Poe’s RavenHunt: Use the light-gun to shoot at those pesky ravens rapping at your chamber door.

Catch-22: There is no way to beat this game.

The Brothers Karamazov: Power of Three: Dmitri wields the power of ice, Ivan the power of fire, and Alyosha the power of heart. Together they must face down the final boss, an evil, black-robed maniac called the Grand Inquisitor.

Finnegans Wakeboarding: Welcome to the world of Joycean extreme sports!

What do you think? Excited for Dante’s debut on the Xbox 360 and PS3? Any other titles you’d like to see?

Feb 1 2010 02:42 PM ET

'Workin It' with RuPaul: Eight essential bon mots from the drag legend's new book

by Tanner Stransky

Categories: Uncategorized

RuPaul’s back tonight with the second season of the reality delight that is RuPaul’s Drag Race on Logo. But the drag superstar isn’t just reigning over our TV sets these days: She’s workin’ the bookshelves, too, with a new book, Workin’ It: RuPaul’s Guide to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Style, which hits stores tomorrow. (How’s that for cross-promotion? Talk about knowing how to work!)

Before I get too deep into this, I have to just say that, if for nothing else, Ru’s new book is worth picking up just for the photos alone. Look at the cover there on the left—and just please realize that RuPaul’s pompadoured look here is only about 1/100th of the fabulosity inside. The thing is a veritable photo book of Ru’s amazing looks throughout the years! This is the type of book that’s, truly, coffee table-worthy without actually being a coffee table picture book.

So now, rather than bore you with a straight up review of Workin’ It—because c’mon, there’s now way I wouldn’t just love all over this hilarious guide to life and style from RuPaul—I thought I’d regale you with one delicious bon mot—and a little accompanying T. Stran commentary—from each section of the book. So without further adieu:

Introduction: “Remember to love yourself, because if you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else? Can I get an amen in here?”
If you’re a Drag Race fan, then this maxim has a particularly special place, as Ru often uses it to lift up the ladies on her dragtastic reality show.

Chapter 1: It’s Your Attitude, Quite Frankly: “Today, kindness is the new cool. Being kind illustrates the highest level of consciousness and deliberate optimism.”
Tell it, gurlfriend! I love that Ru doesn’t use her platform to promote drag-queen bitchery but self-empowerment, instead. Yes, I’m a sap.

Chapter 2: Give Me Body: “Ever been to a dinner party where a guest insists on standing and talking as they eat? Ew, gross! Food flying out of their mouths! Or on the subway when somebody whips out some Chinese takeout and it smells up the entire car? Double gross! Food should be eaten deliberately at a table.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself. I didn’t want to go into it here, but one of the best parts about Chapter 2 starts on page 45 when Ru goes into the first time she got a “high colonic.” Literally.

Chapter 3: Wake Up to Makeup: “Shaving my natural eyebrows gives me way more eyelid for shadow.”
Who would’ve guessed?

(Read full post)

Feb 1 2010 11:01 AM ET

Talking Books: Week of 2/1

by Keith Staskiewicz

Categories: Author Appearances, TV, Talking Books, Uncategorized

Welcome to Talking Books, your table of contents for author appearances. Here’s what’s up this week:

2/1

Gayle Haggard, Why I Stayed: The Choices I Made in My Darkest Hour, on The View (ABC, 11 a.m. EST)

John Yoo, Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power From George Washington to George W. Bush, on Tavis Smiley (PBS, check local listings)

2/3

Andrew Young, The Politician, on The View (ABC, 11 a.m. EST)

Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart (Comedy Central, 11 p.m. EST)

2/5

Patti Smith, Just Kids, on Tavis Smiley (PBS, check local listings)

Feb 1 2010 08:05 AM ET

Amazon capitulates to Macmillan's e-book pricing demands

by Tina Jordan

Categories: Amazon, E-Books, E-Readers, Publishing Biz, Tech

As many of you know, the e-book pricing wars came to a head on Friday and Saturday, when Amazon stopped selling Macmillan titles (St. Martin’s, Holt, and Farrar, Straus and Giroux books), though customers could still purchase books on the site from other sellers. Macmillan CEO John Sargent issued an impassioned plea on Saturday night to explain his company’s position, and last night, Amazon gave in, posting a statement to customers on its Kindle page that said, in part, “We want you to know that ultimately, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative. Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!”

As someone who has been following this drama, and reading all the comments on this and many other books blogs, I’m alarmed that so many people seem to see Macmillan as the villain here. It’s not that simple. The book business has never had high profit margins (I believe 3 percent is considered fairly healthy, which ought to give you some idea.) It costs an enormous amount of money to produce a book. The author is paid an advance; the book is edited and copy-edited and often put through a legal check; a jacket is designed; the publisher pays for marketing (ads!) and publicity (sending authors on tour, or, if they’re lucky, paying to bring them to New York so that they can appear on a national TV show). The printing, binding, and shipping of a title are not the real expenses involved in publication. The issue that Macmillan had with Amazon is a very real one: Given the punishing terms that Amazon insists upon (most e-book profits are going to Amazon, not to the publisher or author), publishers literally are often losing money on their e-book ventures with the company. What Macmillan wants to do is what it calls “agency pricing,” that is, offer the e-book for more money when it first comes out, and then decrease the price as time passes — much in the way that a book is first available in hardcover and then in paperback.

This is a gross oversimplification, but what it comes down to is this: Unless all publishers negotiate better e-book pricing deals with Amazon, the number of books being published will decline. You won’t see a book like The Help. It will never see the light of day, because companies just won’t be able to take a chance on unknown authors. And small literary novels and short-story collections will suffer the most. They are often money-losers anyway, subsidized by companies’ bigger commercial successes. As the percentage of e-book sales rises, publishers simply will not be able to continue putting them out unless Amazon agrees to different terms.

As of 8 a.m. today, the “buy” buttons at Amazon have not been reinstated on any Macmillan titles I checked.

Jan 30 2010 05:22 PM ET

Amazon is no longer selling Macmillan books; Macmillan CEO John Sargent issues statement

by Clark Collis

Categories: Amazon, Apple Tablet, Controversy, E-Books, E-Readers, Publishing Biz, Tech

Amazon has pulled books from publishing giant Macmillan, according to the New York Times. Authors — and book buyers — began to notice last night that Amazon was no longer selling any of Macmillan’s titles (although they can still be purchased on the site from third-party sellers). The skirmish is most likely the latest chapter in the bitter war that Amazon and publishers are waging over the cost of e-books. Along with other companies, Macmillan has been pressing Amazon to raise the price of e-books, while Amazon is keen to keep prices low to promote its reader, the Kindle. (The $9.99 e-book prices advertised during the holiday season were a special point of contention.) So it is any coincidence that Macmillan is emboldened to make such demands just days after the unveiling of the iPad from Apple? Probably not. Apple, after all, made it clear it will allow publishers more freedom to set their own prices for e-books. And when Steve Jobs was asked at the iPad press conference why customers would buy an e-book for $15 from Apple if they could get it for $9.99 on Amazon, he replied, “That won’t happen…Publishers are actually going to pull their books from Amazon because they’re not happy.”

Macmillan is, of course, one of the biggest book companies in the world and its imprints include Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Henry Holt and St. Martin’s Press, which publishes Janet Evanovich and Augusten Burroughs, amongst many others.

UPDATE (6:00 p.m.): Amazon did not respond to a request for comment. Macmillan CEO John Sargent issued this statement moments ago, addressed to Macmillan authors, illustrators, and the literary agent community: “This past Thursday I met with Amazon in Seattle. I gave them our proposal for new terms of sale for e-books under the agency model which will become effective in early March. In addition, I told them they could stay with their old terms of sale, but that this would involve extensive and deep windowing of titles. By the time I arrived back in New York late yesterday afternoon they informed me that they were taking all our books off the Kindle site, and off Amazon. The books will continue to be available on Amazon.com through third parties. I regret that we have reached this impasse. Amazon has been a valuable customer for a long time, and it is my great hope that they will continue to be in the very near future. They have been a great innovator in our industry, and I suspect they will continue to be for decades to come. It is those decades that concern me now, as I am sure they concern you. In the ink-on-paper world we sell books to retailers far and wide on a business model that provides a level playing field, and allows all retailers the possibility of selling books profitably. Looking to the future and to a growing digital business, we need to establish the same sort of business model, one that encourages new devices and new stores. One that encourages healthy competition. One that is stable and rational. It also needs to insure that intellectual property can be widely available digitally at a price that is both fair to the consumer and allows those who create it and publish it to be fairly compensated. Under the agency model, we will sell the digital editions of our books to consumers through our retailers. Our retailers will act as our agents and will take a 30% commission (the standard split today for many digital media businesses). The price will be set for each book individually. Our plan is to price the digital edition of most adult trade books in a price range from $14.99 to $5.99. At first release, concurrent with a hardcover, most titles will be priced between $14.99 and $12.99. E-books will almost always appear day on date with the physical edition. Pricing will be dynamic over time. The agency model would allow Amazon to make more money selling our books, not less. We would make less money in our dealings with Amazon under the new model. Our disagreement is not about short-term profitability but rather about the long-term viability and stability of the digital book market. Amazon and Macmillan both want a healthy and vibrant future for books. We clearly do not agree on how to get there. Meanwhile, the action they chose to take last night clearly defines the importance they attribute to their view. We hold our view equally strongly. I hope you agree with us. You are a vast and wonderful crew. It is impossible to reach you all in the very limited timeframe we are working under, so I have sent this message in unorthodox form. I hope it reaches you all, and quickly. Monday morning I will fully brief all of our editors, and they will be able to answer your questions. I hope to speak to many of you over the coming days. Thanks for all the support you have shown in the last few hours; it is much appreciated. All best, John.”

More on e-books:
Apple’s iPad is officially here
Amazon says e-books outsold physical books on Christmas Day
Kindle’s popularity fires up

Jan 29 2010 07:50 PM ET

Author Jay McInerney on J.D. Salinger

by Keith Staskiewicz

Categories: Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, Uncategorized

The death of J.D. Salinger yesterday has had reverberations across the landscape of modern American literature. Jay McInerney, author of Bright Lights, Big City and Story of My Life, gives EW his take on the author’s legacy.

“When I heard about Salinger’s death yesterday I realized I hadn’t thought about him in quite a while. He left the stage a long time ago and his influence is so pervasive that it’s easy to forget how different the cultural landscape would probably be if he’d never come along. Like Mark Twain, whom he mimicked in the opening line of Catcher in the Rye, he injected a new slangy colloquial tone into our literature. It’s impossible to imagine the work of Philip Roth or John Updike without his influence. Several generations later, writers like David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers still seemed to be channeling Holden.

“Twenty-six years ago, when I published my first novel, more than a few reviewers remarked on my indebtedness to Salinger. Some commentators went so far as to suggest that my publisher had deliberately mimicked the cover art of the paperback edition of Catcher. I wasn’t necessarily displeased but I was baffled; back in 1984, it had been years since I’d read Salinger or really thought about him. In graduate school, we weren’t reading or discussing Franny and Zooey and I wasn’t remotely conscious of any influence when I was writing Bright Lights, Big City. I’d read Salinger in high school. I said as much in interviews. I’d point to what I thought of as more obvious influences like Hunter S. Thompson and Raymond Carver without stopping to consider the extent to which they were influenced by Salinger. I guess I was writing under the influence of Salinger, whether or not I was conscious of it. He’s the most influential American writer since Hemingway.

“As for the purported trove of fiction, I’m skeptical. Not of its existence, but of its quality. Anyone who’s read “Seymour: An Introduction” or most especially his last published work, “Hapworth 16, 1924” will wonder just how readable his later fiction is. “Hapworth” is a rambling, self referential, improbable letter home written by an alleged seven year old at camp. By the time he wrote it, Salinger seems to have decided to dispense with most of the niceties of storytelling, and to be talking to himself more rather than to the readers of Catcher in the Rye. I suspect we are going to be disappointed, but I would love to be proven wrong.”

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