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Koufax Vs. DiMaggio: Will Lefty Outscore Yankee Rival?

Publishing doesn’t exactly abound with happy stories these days. But over at HarperCollins, executive editor David Hirshey has been feeling pretty good. Especially on Wednesdays, the day...

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Raging Rosset Ignored; ‘Warm, Gentle’ Beckett Fêted

Given the publishing-world scuttlebutt last week, you might have thought the P.E.N.-sponsored tribute to Samuel Beckett, held at Town Hall on Monday night, Dec. 9, was subtitled “Waiting for Barney.”...

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Publishers, Open Your Books! We Know the Numbers Lie

A few years ago, I met with a prominent editor at a major house on a kind of “go-see” to introduce myself as a publishing reporter and tell her about the kinds of stories I would be writing. I told her...

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Publicity Move du Jour: The Embargo, Served Cold

It seems counterintuitive, in a business driven by buzz, that one of the most cutting-edge weapons in a publisher’s arsenal depends on not letting people talk about-or even read-their books in advance....

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Summer Reading Starts Now- Where’s My Paperback?

Like a couple of million other Americans, I’ve already read Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones -so the fact that it will not be appearing in paperback this summer makes no difference to my reading plans....

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Go West, N.Y. Publishers: It’s Showtime in L.A.

To the casual observer, the annual publishing extravaganza known as Book Expo America seems like just another in the trifecta of party-heavy, schmoozy publishing hoedowns, a stateside Frankfurt or...

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Hollywood’s Calling, But Bookstore Shelves Are Bare

It’s every author’s dream: You write a book that everybody loves. It gets fabulous reviews-one of them on the front page of The New York Times Book Review . You appear on the Today show and on C-Span...

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Pile On, Publishers! Dueling Titles Hit the Shelves

“If one’s good, two (or more) would be better” might as well be the official mantra of nonfiction publishingthesedays. Name any high-profile subject and you can pretty much bet that if one house is...

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Whose Book Is It Anyway? When Journalists Get Book Deals

Last spring, Seth Mnookin landed himself the kind of book deal every journalist who’s honest would admit to coveting: a healthy six-figure deal with Random House for a book about the debacle at The New...

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Ann Godoff Knocks Wood For New Shabby-Chic List

Poor Ann Godoff, she can’t win for losing. When the veteran editor was fired as president of Random House last January, she was both hailed and reviled for being tough, for being independent, for...

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What the Hecht? The Case of the Missing Marketing Blitz

Has the recent consolidation of Random House taken its first victim? Whoever wrote the four-page memo faxed anonymously to the offices of The Observer obviously thinks so. Titled ” The Unprofessionals...

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Coming Out Soon: A Wild Gay Opera of a Book

James McCourt doesn’t see New York the way the rest of us do. You think the Frick Collection is just a place to go on a Sunday afternoon to soak up some culture? To Mr. McCourt, it’s 1950′s gay-pickup...

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Why Naughty Nannies Got Badly Spanked At Random House

Anyone with a jones for scandal and/or Schadenfreude -which is to say, most of us in the publishing business-has just been delivered of the motherlode. Or, actually, the nannylode, since it was just...

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The Amazon Epidemic: Writers Addicted to Rankings

Most writers have a lot of romantic notions about what will happen to their lives the minute they publish a book. Fame and fortune figures in, of course, and some of the most ambitious dream that soon...

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Little Guy Hits It Big After 20 Smackdowns

There’s always a bit of a mystery when a “small” book hits it big. Who knows, for example, exactly why a sappy memoir by a then demi-celeb sportswriter named Mitch Albom- Tuesdays with Morrie -became a...

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