This book will examine Presidential race between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Penguin Press president and editor-in-chief Ann Godoff negotiated the deal with The Wylie Agency’s Andrew Wylie. According to The New York Times, the publisher has planned a release date for fall 2013.

Here’s more from The Hollywood Reporter: “The book already has been optioned by HBO. The cable network aired Game Change, a Jay Roach-directed and Danny Strong-written movie about the 2008 election that in September won four Emmys, including one for Julianne Moore‘s performance as Sarah Palin. Roach and Strong are likely to return for the sequel.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

This publication catalogs Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence. The actual museum will open to the public on April 27th. This institution, located in Pamuk’s hometown Istanbul, was inspired by Pamuk’s 2008 novel which shares the same name.

Here’s more from the release: “The Innocence of Objects will explore the many meanings of this remarkable project. While it offers a rich visual guide to the exhibitions, it also allows Pamuk to write about things that matter deeply to him, including the psychology of the collector, the proper role of the museum, the uses of photography in modernizing societies, and of course the customs and traditions of his beloved city. The book’s imagery is equally evocative, ranging from pop ephemera that has become ‘collectible,’ to Pamuk’s superb collection of haunting photographs and movie stills of old Istanbul, to the stunning images captured by Turkish photographer Ara Guler.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

His essay stressed that despite self-publishing options, the writing profession needs “a chain of people who have authority and can help convey what is essential.” What do you think?

Here’s an excerpt: “The devaluation of quality editing and writing is sad and it’s inevitable. Each house has a large number of titles to publish, and with a difficult economy, fewer people to handle the publications. But publishers need to become smaller, leaner, and they will have to learn new disciplines. The whole one-year publication process must be reduced.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Executive editor Jon Meacham negotiated the deal with The Wylie Agency founder Andrew Wylie. The deal includes World English, German and Spanish languages, first serial, audio, and e-book publication rights. The publisher will release the book in 2012.

Gore gave this quote in the release: “I am delighted to be working with Jon Meacham and Random House on my next book. With this new work, I hope to help start a conversation about the large-scale drivers of change that are defining and shaping our future—from the rapid development and integration of radically new technologies to the planet-changing impact of the climate crisis, to poverty, globalization, and the democratization of knowledge accompanying the emergence of a ubiquitous Internet linking ever more intelligent devices.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Here’s more from the article: “The books include two follow-ups to Chronicles and a collection of riffs from Mr. Dylan’s radio show on Sirius XM … Mr. Wylie had been looking for an eight-figure offer, according to another editor, who didn’t know the deal’s final value.”

Chronicles: Volume One covered Dylan’s 1961 arrival in Greenwich Village, entering a bustling literary and musical scene. Follow this link to read an excerpt.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Andrew Wylie from The Wylie Agency negotiated the deal (proving once and for all that problems between the publisher and Wylie’s agency have been resolved). The manuscript should be finished by next year.

Random House imprint publisher Susan Kamil had this statement: “Will Murphy, his U.S. editor, and I have read many pages from Mr. Rushdie’s first draft, and we are dazzled once again by his prodigious literary gifts and his mesmerizing ability to tell a riveting story, this time of his very own life. We can’t wait to read the completed manuscript and to work with him to bring it to publication.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

In the interview, Evil Wylie admitted they created the Emperor Franzen Twitter feed (a satirical version of Jonathan Franzen), but did not create the Good Random House Twitter feed (a satirical version of the corporate publisher). Evil Wylie maintained his or her anonymity for the interview.

According to the Evil Wylie writer, these anonymous Twitter feeds created a safe space for publishing people to speak candidly about industry issues. EvilWylie explained: “We don’t live in a black-and-white, good-vs.-evil world, but wouldn’t it be nice if we did? It would certainly be less confusing. Great evil characters — from Emperor Franzen to Darth Vader to Dick Cheney — provide safe outlets for us to examine our feelings. Of course, Evil Wylie doesn’t have any feelings, so I’m obviously not speaking from experience here.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

At Publishers Weekly, the CEO noted that the backlist titles involved compose “a very small percentage” of the company’s total revenue. “I don’t think it’s a cosmic issue. We will continue to talk to the Wylie Agency and we will continue to talk to our authors about what is best for them,” concluded Makinson.

Last week Wylie unveiled the Odyssey Editions eBooks imprint, releasing 20 eBook versions of beloved literary titles including, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison and Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich. Macmillan CEO John Sargent said he was “appalled” by the Wylie/Amazon deal and Random House has stopped dealing with the agency.

Despite his calming words, Makinson added that he is unhappy with the Wylie/Amazon deal and agreed with Sargent’s sentiment that books should be made available through a wide variety of channels.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The first wave of eBooks contain some of the 20th Century’s most important titles: Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth, The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, and The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer. These books will be sold for $9.99, all of them available for the first time in eBook format. See the complete list after the jump.

Andrew Wylie had this statement: “As the market for e-books grows, it will be important for readers to have access in e-book format to the best contemporary literature the world has to offer … This publishing program is designed to address that need, and to help e-book readers build a digital library of classic contemporary literature.”

UPDATE: Other publications analyze the news:
New York Times
Publishers Weekly
Teleread
Future Book
Enhanced Editions
A Reading Odyssey

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Wylie’s agency counts 700 clients, including major writers like Dave Eggers, Al Gore, Philip Roth, and Louise Erdrich–so these are not idle threats. eBookNewser has more about the article.

Here is an excerpt: “Wylie threatens to monetize those unassigned rights by going outside the publishing business entirely: ‘We will take our 700 clients, see what rights are not allocated to publishers, and establish a company on their behalf to license those e-book rights directly to someone like Google, Amazon.com, or Apple. It would be another business, set up on parallel tracks to the frontlist book business.’”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Yesterday Crain’s New York reported that Penguin Press publisher Ann Godoff and literary agents Andrew Wylie and Scott Moyers negotiated a $5 million deal for a book about the 2012 election from the bestselling authors. With memoirists Sarah Palin and Barack Obama running around in 2012, it should be a literary election season.

Here’s more from the article: “‘This is presidential memoir level money,’ said one executive familiar with the deal… [it] harks back to a period before the recession ate into book sales and put pressure on houses to hold down costs. But the giant price tag is also representative of a trend among publishers toward making bigger bets on known commodities.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The NY Observer reports on the fascinating bidding process as the magazine’s literary editor Amy Grace Loyd pursued agent Andrew Wylie for the rights to the story. Knopf will publish the unfinished novel in the United States, and Penguin UK will handle the UK edition.

Here’s more from the article: “‘I’m happy to tell you we’ve never paid this much for a book excerpt before, ever,’ Ms. Loyd said, adding: ‘There are parts of it that are much more cohesive than others. But I found it fascinating in that way.’”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

According to Bookseller, Nabokov’s son decided to publish, and literary agent Andrew Wylie negotiated a six-figure deal for the notecards.

Penguin Classics editor Alexis Kirschbaum explained in the article: “I’m an avid, obsessed fan of Nabokov and for other fans it’s incredibly interesting to see his handwriting and read his prose–not necessarily extremely polished, but you can still see kernels of genius in everything he wrote.” (Via MobyLives)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

With Wylie’s recent announcement in Le Monde that he has signed three French writers – two novelists, Christine Angot and Philippe Djian, and a journalist, Florence Hartmann – is, Taylor says, the equivalent of throwing a hand grenade into the traditional world of French publishing. In Wylie’s view – which he has already laid out in a sharp exchange of letters with the publisher André Schiffrin, of the New Press – this structure is to blame for many of French literature’s ills, from its failure to make a substantial impact abroad to its stylistic solipsism. “[I]f you were trying to buy a company in England, you wouldn’t call your accounting department and have them speak to the accounting department of the company in England. You would go chief executive to chief executive.”

Of course, publishers see things rather differently, especially with regards to the customary 50% stake in subsidiary rights. “This seems huge, but it’s also what allows publishers to take risks on authors and on works that won’t necessarily sell well,” said Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens, director of the French publishing house P.O.L. Editeur. “I have the impression that in the U.S., the big publishers only publish books that can be marketed, and the difficult books are published by small presses or university presses, so they are marginalized. In France, the same editors publish unknown authors, and authors who will never sell a lot of books, like poets, and best sellers.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

He may be known for mingling with celebrities and his multimillion dollar deals, Merritt explains, but he does literary substance as well: he represented Iris Murdoch and continues to look after her estate, and recently took on John Banville after his Booker Prize win. “I was surprised that he didn’t do more authors like her, for such a clever man,” says fellow agent David Godwin, “but he chose to concentrate on the popular books. It may be that as an enterprising agent, he felt he could do more to build those kind of authors than for someone like Iris.” And considering how big Victor seems to have scored with the Alastair Campbell diaries most recently, he still feels that way…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.