Books

Romance publisher Harlequin is celebrating its 60th anniversary with an exhibition of book covers over the years, and we couldn't help but want to celebrate with them.

Today, we stopped by the opening of "Heart of a Woman: Harlequin Cover Art 1949-2009" at Openhouse Gallery on Mulberry Street in Little Italy, a stunning display of hundreds of classic Harlequin cover art over the years, complete with little history lessons about the art and artists and an interactive wall that puts your face on the cover.

(Fun fact learned from the exhibit: "The trend toward featuring photographs of scantily clad, contemporary men rather than painted images of historic heros suggested that women had grown increasingly interested in the objectified male body.")

On hand to toast Harlequin's diamond anniversary today were New York Times best selling authors Gena Showalter and Debbie Macomber, as well as Harlequin CEO Donna Hayes.

Hayes told FishbowlNY that the point of the exhibit was "to represent through our covers how women's lives have changes since our company has been in business."

continued...

Being successful in publishing means finding a need and filling it.

Boston-based literary agency The Strothman Agency is doing just that with their new publicity services offered to clients -- and other authors, too. These specialized services, called Epilogue Media, will mix traditional and social media strategies tailored to each particular book and author, and are ideal for journalists-turned-authors.

"Things have been shifting over the past few years," explained Strothman agent Dan O'Connell, who will be overseeing Epilogue Media. "There are agents that bring on people like me who oversee the publicity efforts of the publishing houses for their clients, but this is sort of a spin-off. We’re ramping up our promotional abilities for our clients and other clients."

Epilogue's services will, of course, be available to Strothman's clients, which include a number of journalists like Peter Gosselin from the LA Times and former New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis. However, O'Connell's insight is also being made available to authors outside the agency, although they'll be looking to help authors who are similar to those represented by the agency, namely journalists, academics and writers of nonfiction and narrative nonfiction.

"We really want to very carefully target clients that will help us play to our strengths," O'Connell said. "But we have had great success with journalists in the past."

continued...

Elizabeth Edwards has been all over -- showing up in interviews in magazines and on "Oprah" and the "Today Show" -- promoting her new book, "Resilience," in stores last week.

Last week, we sat down to watch Edwards on "Oprah", expecting to sob hysterically as the terminally ill cancer patient discussed her husband's affair with campaign employee Rielle Hunter and his possible love child. Admittedly, Elizabeth's confession that she had only asked John for one thing -- loyalty -- pulled at the heartstrings. But the sight of former Sen. John Edwards slinking off at the beginning of the interview, and then waiting around to be chastised by Oprah at the end of the show, was off-putting. Then, Elizabeth unfeelingly described how she had learned about John's affair shortly after he launched his presidential campaign, how she had begged him to pull out, but then stood by him when he decided not to, in order to avoid drawing more attention to their family. There was a disconnect. It wasn't what we had expected at all.

continued...

We are confirmed "Gossip Girl" fans here at FBNY, so when we heard of an open casting call for a new web series from the creators of "GG" based on another book series, we had to do some investigating.

Alloy Entertainment, the marketing company behind such teenage fare as "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" and "Privileged" -- as well as "Gossip Girl" -- is taking Kate Brian's "Private" book series to the web and looking to the books' fans to fill out the cast.

Both "Gossip Girl" and "Private" are targeted to teen girls, take place at fictional elite schools and deal with relationships, fashion and gossip. However, "Private" is a mystery series that focuses on Reed Brennan and her life at a Connecticut boarding school. The web series will be tied to the first four books in the 10-book "Private" series and will unravel the mystery behind the the murder of Thomas, Reed's boyfriend.

Starting today, real "Private" fans can visit the book's site, download one of three monologues and upload a video of them reading one 60-second script. Fans can visit the site to vote on their favorite uploaded videos -- the top 15 fan favs will win prizes -- with the producers picking their top three to compete in a six-part casting competition that will ultimately become a reality series.

The "casting off" reality series will air in late July and the winner will snag the role of Kiran Hayes, a fashion model living in the elite Billings House on the school's campus, in the 20-episode "Private" web series. Kiran's role in the series is going to be fleshed out more than it is in the book, according to Alloy EVP Josh Bank. "She has much more of a presence in the series," he said -- careful to reveal nothing about the mystery.

Can "Private" turn into a new guilty pleasure for all those post-teens like us that watch "Gossip Girl"? At any rate, it will be fun to watch this process unfold. Who knows, they may end up discovering the next Leighton Meester.

And in case you or some teenage girl you know plans to audition, you may want to dress the part: Target just announced plans to debut a "Gossip Girl" inspired clothing line designed by Anna Sui. You know you want it.

After the jump, one of the monologues from the "Private" audition competition

continued...

Remember what it was like to be 21? No? Us neither. However we imagine Kevin Roose will clearly remember the book party thrown last night for his debut The Unlikely Disciple, which is about the semester he spent at the Reverend Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, a conservative Baptist school in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Roose, who is currently 21, told us he was headed back to Brown as soon as the party was over so he could write his biology(?) exam about the krebs cycle today. That's dedication!

Roose got his start (if that phrase can be properly applied to a 21 year old published author) as an intern for A.J. Jacobs (who co-hosted the party along with Scott Poulson-Bryant) whilst Jacobs was penning The Year of Living Biblically -- for those of you not in the know the book recounts Jacobs' attempt to follow all the rules in the Bible for one year. Roose told us that apart from it being an amazing opportunity, the strangest part of his internship was when Jacobs was unable to shake his hand due the rule (we are paraphrasing here) the says men can't touch other men who have spilled their seed on themselves. So there you have it. A few more pics (courtesy of R. Sklar) after the jump.

continued...

First there was Hamlet, the Facebook update edition, so perhaps the next logical step is Twitter, the book club!

Via GalleyCat comes word that Picador has launched an online book club where all participation will take place using...Twitter! According to GC "the club begins with Yoko Ogawa's "The Housekeeper and the Professor," which will be discussed on April 10, 2009 in pithy Twitter posts. Upcoming book club titles include: "A Wolf at the Table" by Augusten Burroughs, "The Story of a Marriage" by Andrew Sean Greer and "Last Last Chance" by Fiona Maazel." Interested? You can sign up to follow Picador here.

We're hearing rumors that Hero of the Hudson pilot, Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, may be shopping a book around New York publishing houses. It's unclear whether or not this is some sort of memoir, or how many houses are bidding, but we hear bids may already have reached $2.5 million. More to come as we hear it.

Before the Internet was around as an tool with which to fight back, or start them in the first place, writers had to resort to, gasp, letter writing. The Beast has a collection of letters penned by the late Norman Mailer to people who took a less than favorable view of his writing. One can only imagine what Mailer could have done with Tumbler (Twitter, come to think of it, may have been a useful exercise for the loquacious writer). Anyway! Here's part of what he once wrote to then NYT publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger after one-too-many nasty reviews (including one ill-researched one) from infamous critic Michiko Kakutani.

Over the last ten years, Michiko Kakutani has reviewed every one of my books published in that period. In order, they were Oswald's Tale, Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man, The Gospel According to the Son, The Time of Our Time, and The Spooky Art. All five were given bad reviews (The Spooky Art perhaps the least awful), but three of those five could make the claim that the ugliest review all received came from Kakutani. What underlined the procedure and could give it a willful subtext was that four of those five reviews came out a week to two weeks ahead of publication. Michiko was first with the worst. One of the basic tricks in book criticism is to get out early if you really detest a book. Still, four out of five! Kakutani was abusing her privilege.

continued...

Anyone with even a passing interest in books is by now painfully aware of the struggles the publishing industry is currently undergoing. Troubles came to a head last December when widespread layoffs were announced at both Random House and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (which had already ceased accepting manuscripts). Meanwhile, book sections nation-wide have consistently been the early casualties of newspaper cutbacks — another one fell last week with the announcement that the Washington Post Book World would cease to exist as a stand-alone publication.

Enter Tina Brown, who just this week announced the addition of the Book Beast page to her recently-launched website The Daily Beast. According to Brown the page, which currently features a compendium of recommendations, new and newly relevant books (Oprah, and John Updike among them), video interviews with authors such as John Grisham, as well as book-skewed articles like a current piece on Norman Mailer's writing legacy, was just a natural extension of the book coverage The Daily Beast already provides. It is also a space Brown feels is very necessary at the moment.

"It's really important to support books and I am so distressed by what is happening to the publishing world," she told us over the phone yesterday. "Book sections are closing everywhere and as an author, and an editor, and even for a time a publisher with Talk Miramax Books, I just care very much about writers and what's happening to them and how they spend their time writing all these fabulous books that can never even really get an airing."

continued...

One wonders if maybe it would be in Oprah's best interest to invest in her own memoir research department. Angel at the Fence the Holocaust memoir championed by Oprah and strongly defended by its publisher and agent has been canceled after the author admitted he'd lied about parts of his story.

In the memoir the author claimed he had met his wife of 50 years while imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, corresponding with her through the fence of the camp, only to reconnect with her some years later on a blind date. The claim was disputed by a number of Holocaust historians who said it would have been an impossibility "pointing out that, among other things, the layout of the camp would have prevented the pair from meeting at a fence." Over the weekend the author, Herman Rosenblat, admitted he had fabricated the love story and the publisher Berkley Books, an imprint of Penguin, canceled the book, due to be published in February.

continued...