“He thought that it was the best work he had done since The Best and the Brightest,” says Halberstam’s widow, Jean Halberstam, referring to her husband’s book on Vietnam. “He had been thinking about doing this book since he was in Vietnam. It was always in the back of his mind.” Highlights of the promotional tour will include Didion reading in New York City; former basketball great Bill Walton in La Jolla, Calif.; Hersh in Washington, D.C.; Anna Quindlen in Milwaukee, and Goodwin and fellow author Samantha Power in Cambridge, Mass.

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A published writer since the 1950s, Paley released only a handful of books over the next half century, mostly short stories and poems. Writing was a passion, but not a compulsion: She never felt the need to put every experience into words. Her fiction, although highly praised, competed for time with work, activism, family and friends. “None of it happened, and yet every word of it is true,” she once said of her fiction. “It’s truth embedded in the lie.” Paley was named state poet laureate for Vermont in early 2003. “Artists are known for challenging convention,” said Gov. Jim Douglas at the time. “Great artists like Grace Paley do that and more.” Elaine Woo at the LA Times also has a lengthy obit highlighting Paley’s writing and activism.

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Doubleday Broadway president and publisher Steve Rubin credits Potter for changing the way the imprint will market the next book by Dan Brown. “I surely would hesitate before trying to do something like 12 million copies…but thanks largely to Potter, we can think about numbers we wouldn’t have imagined before.” Other ways Harry Potter changed and was changed: fewer distribution hubs causing more efficient delivery patterns; better technology enabling email use for manuscript delivery, supply and demand updates and communication; and a blockbuster mentality helped by the movies. “It wasn’t conceivable for a hardcover book to have that kind of sales, even for a book as sought after as Jaws,” said Random House spokesperson Stuart Appelbaum. “At that time, the mass market paperback was the format for multimillion sellers. But mass merchandisers weren’t selling as many books, and at the same velocity, as they do today.”

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“I think the reason that authors write books about J.K. Rowling’s works and readers buy them is because being a fan of Harry Potter is about much more than just reading and enjoying Rowling’s book series,” said Jennifer Heddle, an editor at Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster. The company, not only responsible for more than 100 “Star Trek” related titles, but will publish a Potter history by Leaky Cauldron proprietor Melissa Anelli. “I think it is similar to ‘Star Trek’ in that it takes place in a richly imagined world that invites fans to immerse themselves in every aspect. I think it’s even closer to ‘Star Wars’ because it’s also a very mythic story that appeals to a broad audience that crosses all age and gender lines.”

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Today, Simon & Schuster launches Bookvideos.tv, a dedicated website featuring interviews and features of over 40 authors. One of them, Marianne Wiggins, told AP’s Hillel Italie why even a Luddite like her needed little persuasion to get on board the video bandwagon. “I’m a professor … I’m plugged into what individuals in their early 20s are thinking about, people who live on the Internet. I’m not writing in a vacuum.”

Now that book videos, once a novelty, are just about commonplace in the marketplace, it remains to be seen what impact a new one will have. “I don’t know if we’re reaching people we wouldn’t otherwise be reaching, but we are reaching people who are not necessarily reading book review sections, or always watching a TV show,” says Sue Fleming, Simon & Schuster’s vice president and executive director for online and consumer marketing. But for someone like Wiggins, it’s all part of the publishing game. “I don’t know any writers these days who would say that it is beneath their dignity to make a video. Sales have been flat for publishers and I want to find readers. If my publisher suggests something like this to me, I’m certainly going to go hand-in-hand with that endeavor.”

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Meanwhile, Disney plans a similar project later this year, making favorites such as “The Jungle Book” and “Cinderella” available online. While Scholastic, for now, is sticking to the school and library market, Disney will offer books to general consumers, charging a fee, still to be determined, for downloads. “We saw a void in the marketplace and decided to act upon it,” said Jon Yaged, U.S. publisher of the Disney Book Group.

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Yesterday Cormac McCarthy made his debut television appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show and AP’s Hillel Italie has the details. The 73-year-old McCarthy has spoken with the press just twice before – both times for print publications – in the past 40 years, but he opened up for Winfrey. The author said he has nothing against the media; he just doesn’t like talking about what he does – a trait Winfrey illustrated with a story about how McCarthy, when he had no money years ago, refused a speaking engagement that would have paid him $2,000. “You work your side of the street, I’ll work mine,” he said in the interview, taped at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico.

Ed Park liveblogged McCarthy’s appearance, taking down many memorable quotes such as this exchange:

O: Are you just not interested in material [things]?

C: They take a distant second place to living your life and doing what you want to do… I always knew I didn’t want to work….It was my number one priority.
O: So you have worked at…not working.
C: Absolutely.

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Motoko Rich concentrates on the digital aspects of BEA.

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The AP’s Hillel Italie reports that Scott Turow‘s next project is a sequel to his bestselling debut thriller PRESUMED INNOCENT. Turow, speaking to AP on Saturday at BookExpo America, said he has written about one-quarter of a novel featuring the famed chief deputy prosecutor who investigated, and was eventually accused of, the murder of his colleague and former mistress, Carolyn Polhemus. “I got the idea a couple of years ago when I was working on a serialized book for The New York Times,” explained Turow. “I had this image of a man sitting on a bed, near the body of a dead woman. And then I realized, ‘Wait a minute, that guy on the bed is Rusty Sabich!’ And that’s how I began the new book.” The new novel, currently untitled, would probably not come out before the summer of 2009.

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Which brings us back to print-on-demand. In a follow-up email, S&S spokesman Adam Rothberg explained that the earlier version of the boilerplate contract “reflected a time when p.o.d. was nascent and not-ready for prime time. This brings it into the era when p.o.d. is an established printing technology and p.o.d. books are readily available for sale.” But agent David Black told the NYT’s Motoko Rich that in reality, if a book is available only through print-on-demand, “an author’s book is going to be available in dribs and drabs.” He added: “If there is the possibility that I can take this book and place it somewhere else where somebody is going to publish it more aggressively than on a print-on-demand basis, shouldn’t I have the opportunity to do that?”

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“We wanted to streamline consumer participation and add to the credibility of those who are named winners,” Quills founder and chairman Gerry Byrne said Thursday, adding that the decision had been made after consulting with publishers and NBC Universal Television Stations, which again will air the event. Byrne said this fall’s ceremony will be shorter, around an hour and a half, and simpler, as all winners except Book of the Year will be announced online on September 10, a month in advance of the ceremony to be held Oct. 22 at Frederick P. Rose Hall, home of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

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The news is welcomed by Greenpeace, who protested the previous Harry Potter book’s US publication saying that Scholastic was not using enough recycled paper and urged consumers to buy copies from the Canadian publisher. For this new volume, their attitude is different. “Many of the Harry Potter fans worldwide have been able to enjoy the books on FSC-certified paper, and it’s great news that Ms. Rowling’s American readers can enjoy the final installment of Harry Potter while playing a part in responsible forest management,” said Greenpeace forest campaign coordinator Scott Paul.

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Those who have followed Tenet’s somewhat torturous publication path will remember that the book was initially bought by Crown in 2004, the deal cancelled in March 2005 and picked up by HarperCollins in January 2006. The book’s publication date was pushed back from last month.

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“I hope it can mark a beginning of more of this kind of integration of art and history,” McCullough told the AP, speaking from a hotel in St. Louis, where he was in the midst of a Midwestern lecture tour. “I’ve tried, as much as I can, to encourage teachers to teach history this way – there’s nothing like the experience of holding a real letter or diary in your hands from a distant time. It’s the closest you can get to being in touch, having a tactile connection with those vanished people.”

The project was first suggested by Simon & Schuster, says McCullough, who embraced what he calls a “a new way to unfold what was the most important year and important war in our history.” Simon & Schuster’s publisher and executive vice president, David Rosenthal, says that he liked the idea of “1776″ as a “coffee table reference and browsing book” that would expand the appeal for a work of history that already has sold more than 2 million copies. THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION has an announced first printing of 250,000.

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