Tag: Publishing Biz (11-20 of 91)

Oct 8 2012 11:32 AM ET

Random House buys Lena Dunham's book for more than $3.5 million

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Image Credit: Larry Busacca/Getty Images

Hannah Horvath would be seething with jealousy right now.

Lena Dunham, the 26-year-old star and creator of the hit HBO series Girls, has landed a book deal at Random House for a massive $3.5 million. That’s more than the $2 million Dick Cheney received for his memoir In My Time and short of Amanda Knox’s $4 million and Tina Fey’s $5 million for Bossypants.

Bidding for the debut essay collection — titled Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s Learned — started at $1 million and quickly climbed as publishers pursued the hot property. The 66-page book proposal contained “color, illustrations and a humor that publishing executives predicted could produce another bestseller like Tina Fey’s blockbuster memoir,” according to the New York Times. READ FULL STORY »

Oct 4 2012 01:20 PM ET

'Girls' star Lena Dunham heading toward a huge, $3.6 million book deal

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If Hannah Horvath got a monster book deal as quickly as Lena Dunham, the 26-year-old woman who created and portrays her on Girls, Girls as a TV series would come to a screeching halt. Where would our broke, semi-motivated aspiring essayist have left to go? There would be no need for roommates or crappy jobs.

According to Deadline, the bids for Dunham’s future advice-book-slash-essay-collection — tentatively titled Not That Kind of Girl — have climbed to a whopping $3.6 million and could go even higher as Dunham and literary agent Kim Witherspoon continue to meet with publishers. The negotiations began at $1 million.

To put things in context, if the deal happens, Dunham’s book would rake in more than Dick Cheney did for In My Time, which went for $2 million — and it would fall a bit short of Amanda Knox’s upcoming memoir ($4 million) and more than a million short of Tina Fey’s Bossypants ($5 million), although Fey had well more than a decade of fodder on Dunham.

Do you think Dunham’s writing is worth the big bucks? Will you look at Hannah Horvath differently when you watch season 2 of Girls?

Follow @EWStephanLee on Twitter.

Read more:
Lena Dunham shopping advice book — What do you want to see in it?
Mindy Kaling: An in-depth interview about her book, childhood, shoes, and homemade sashimi
Rita Wilson says no to nudity on ‘Girls’. What other actresses have no-nudity contracts?

Oct 3 2012 12:37 PM ET

J.K. Rowling's 'The Casual Vacancy' sees respectable sales figures during first week

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Image Credit: Hachette Book Group

J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy is reportedly “on track to become the year’s bestselling novel in hardcover,” according to EVP of Little, Brown Michael Pietsch.

Which is another way of saying it’ll be one of the best-selling novels of the year other than E L James’ paperback Fifty Shades trilogy. Nielsen BookScan reports that Rowling’s first novel for adults sold 157,000 hardcover copies in its first week of publication, and Little, Brown announced that the novel has sold 375,000 copies across all formats. The book only went on sale on Thursday (whereas books are normally published on Tuesdays), but it fell short of the record set for adult books by Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, which moved 550,946 copies in its first week of publication in 2009.

“The Casual Vacancy has exceeded our expectations,” Pietsch said. While it may turn out to be the best-selling hardcover fiction of 2012, it probably won’t be the top-selling hardcover overall. No Easy Day, Mark Owen’s firsthand account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, sold 254,000 copies in its first week and continues to do well, moving 52,000 copies this past week against Rowling’s adult debut.

Will you be purchasing a copy of The Casual Vacancy?

Read more:
J.K. Rowling’s ‘The Casual Vacancy’: 10 NSFW lines you would NEVER see in a Harry Potter book
J.K. Rowling’s ‘The Casual Vacancy’: Read EW’s review
J.K. Rowling considering a ‘director’s cut’ of the ‘Harry Potter’ books

Aug 29 2012 09:16 AM ET

Release date for Navy SEAL's bin Laden account moved up

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Penguin Group is clearly expecting a big response to No Easy Day, a former Navy SEAL’s first-hand account of the raid that successfully killed Osama bin Laden. Plans for the high-profile book have been changing day to day. Dutton, an imprint of Penguin, announced yesterday that the publication date will move from the previously announced Sept. 11 to Sept. 4. The initial print run has risen from 300,000 to 400,000 to now a massive 575,000 copies. Dutton cited “overwhelming excitement” as the reason for the new publication date and the expanded first printing.

No Easy Day has been creating a stir not just for the unprecedented look at the historic mission, but for the potentially sensitive information it may contain. A representative for Dutton tells EW that the account was vetted by a former special operations attorney for “tactical, technical, and procedural information as well as information that could be considered classified” and that it was found “to be without risk to national security.” The account is being published under the pseudonym Mark Owen out of concern for the Navy SEAL’s personal security, although his alleged actual identity has been widely publicized.

Read more:
Navy SEAL writes firsthand account of Bin Laden raid
No conspiracy: New documents explain Pentagon, CIA cooperation on ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ — BREAKING

Aug 24 2012 12:02 PM ET

Singer-songwriter Steve Earle has deal for 2 books

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Steve Earle likes the literary life.

The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, and published author, has a two-book deal with Twelve, the publisher announced Friday. Earle will write a memoir, scheduled for 2014, and a novel set in the 19th century about an escaped slave. A previous Earle novel, I’ll Never Get Out Here Alive, came out last year.

According to Twelve, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Earle’s memoir will tell of his friendship with Townes Van Zandt, his drug problems and the making of the 1995 album Train a Comin’.

Read more:
Caroline Manzo of ‘The Real Housewives of New Jersey’ has a book deal
‘True Blood’ cookbook: What recipes do you want to see?
Molly Ringwald on her new novel, getting dissed by casting directors, and writing about kids

Aug 23 2012 12:57 PM ET

Navy SEAL writes firsthand account of Bin Laden raid

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A U.S. Navy SEAL who participated in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden has written an anonymous first-hand, blow-by-blow account of the operation to be released on Sept. 11.

No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama bin Laden is described by its author, writing under the pseudonym Mark Owen, as an effort “to set the record straight about one of the most important missions in US military history.”  Penguin, the book’s publisher, added that the work provides a “blow-by-blow narrative of the assault, beginning with the helicopter crash that could have ended Owen’s life to the radio call confirming Bin Laden’s death.”

The project had been top secret within Penguin — word had not even reached Washington before yesterday’s announcement. The US government was said to be surprised by news of the book’s release and admitted to not having had the opportunity to review the book for any potential security breaches.

Should it be deemed that there is classified information in the book, Owen could face criminal charges. READ FULL STORY »

Aug 17 2012 06:01 PM ET

Katniss wears the crown: 'Hunger Games' supplants 'Harry Potter' as best selling-series on Amazon

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Move on over, Harry.  It’s Katniss’s turn to wear the crown.

In a statement released today, Amazon.com announced  that  The Hunger Games trilogy has supplanted Harry Potter as the best-selling series of all time on the website.

“Since debuting in 2008, Katniss Everdeen and the Hunger Games have taken the world by storm, much as Harry Potter did a decade before,” Sara Nelson, the editorial director of books and Kindle at Amazon, said.

In what is yet another testament to the immense popularity of Suzanne Collins’ post-apocalyptic novels, the three-part Hunger Games saga overtook the seven-book Harry Potter series in just four years.

The figures take both print and Kindle book sales into account.

Does this news have you itching for some Katniss? No need to fret, ‘The Hunger Games’ Blu-ray/DVD hits stores tomorrow.

Jul 12 2012 09:30 PM ET

Comic-Con: Neil Gaiman to write new 'Sandman' series for DC Comics' Vertigo imprint

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Call it a dream come true. Acclaimed fantasy author Neil Gaiman (American Gods, Coraline) is returning to comics and the character that made him a superstar scribe: Dream, a.k.a. Morpheus, member of the Endless, a deeply dysfunctional family of eternal though not immutable entities with names that begin with the letter ‘D’ who preside over various aspects of human existence (except Destruction did abandon his mantle and dominion and ran away… but never mind). Gaiman — who wrote 75 issues of The Sandman from 1988 to 1996 (all collected in “graphic novel” form), producing one of the most celebrated and most erudite comic book series ever — will team with artist J. H. Williams III (Promethea, Batwoman) for a mini-series that’s set prior to the events in Sandman #1. In that story, an English occult leader inadvertently summoned Dream using a black magic ritual involving rat claws and angel wings on June 10, 1916 and held him captive for 72 years. (The foolish mortal was actually trying to trap Morpheus’ sister, Death, but something went awry. Magic: So darn unpredictable!)
READ FULL STORY »

May 15 2012 04:35 PM ET

Another way to get rich off Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg's former assistant writes memoir

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The founder of Facebook might “like” this: Katherine Losse, Facebook’s 51st employee, has written a memoir about her five-year stint at the social network. The book — titled The Boy Kings: A Journey Into the Heart of the Social Network — will be released June 26 by The Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

According to a release, Losse’s book will describe “the vision, culture, and tactics of the hackers, venture capitalists, and Ivy League grads” who took Facebook from campus curiosity to worldwide phenomenon. It will also “ignite broad cultural conversations about technology, gender, race, and the future of the Internet.” But will it involve time travel? Because that’s really what we look for in a Facebook book.

Losse served as a writer and researcher at the website — as well as Zuckerberg’s assistant — from 2005 to 2010, leaving on “friendly terms.” She’s currently living and writing in Marfa, Tx.

Read more:
Facebook making trademark claim on the word ‘book’
Yahoo CEO ousted after resume scandal
See the trailer for ‘The Future of Us’ by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler — EXCLUSIVE

Mar 28 2012 05:33 PM ET

Updated figures for 'The Hunger Games' books: More than 36.5M in print in the U.S. alone

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In explaining the phenomenon fueling The Hunger Games film’s massive $155 million opening, many box office prognosticators referred to the 24 million copies of Suzanne Collins’ trilogy printed in the U.S. alone. But now it seems we’ve all been aiming our arrows far too low. Scholastic released updated figures today, and it looks like there are more than 36.5 million copies of Katniss Everdeen’s saga available domestically. Publishers are notoriously cagey about releasing sales data, but when the numbers are this robust, there’s reason to brag. Here’s the breakdown by book: READ FULL STORY »

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