On Thursday (May 20th), this GalleyCat Reviews editor will help review the world’s best and worst book trailers at Melville House’s first annual Moby Awards–a genuine red carpet ceremony held at The Griffin in Manhattan. Email here to RSVP.

After the jump, you can see all the finalists for a variety of categories: Best Big Budget Book Trailer; Best Cameo in a Book Trailer, Best Author Appearance in a Book Trailer; Least Likely to Actually Sell the Book; and finally, Best Low Budget/Indie Book Trailer. To prepare yourself, check out that Karl Rove attack ad book trailer (not a finalist) embedded above and read this Flavorwire article about book trailers.

The awards will be judged by a panel of publishing folk, including this GalleyCat editor, Slate.com‘s Troy Patterson, the LA Times‘ Carolyn Kellogg, OR Books’ Colin Robinson, and Melville House Publishing’s Megan Halpern.

Read more

Over the last few years, conservative host Glenn Beck has emerged as a publishing star. This summer, he’ll test the waters with an adult novel published by Threshold Editions–the Simon & Schuster imprint publishing Lynne Cheney and Karl Rove.

Entitled The Overton Window, the novel will be released in June 15. Through pre-orders, the title is already rising up the Amazon rankings.

At an Orlando rally led by Beck, Philly.com gleaned this novel intelligence: “[Beck] described [the novel] as ‘a story of America in a time much like today where the people are confused,’ with a government in crisis and the rise of a citizens’ group called the Founders Keepers, which ‘leads to a battle and a civil war, and life is upside-down planetwide.’” (Via Gawker)

After the jump, watch a clip where Beck explains the Overton Window–the political theory behind his new novel.

Read more

The publishing world will watch four major publishers very closely for the next few weeks. According to Publishers Marketplace, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Penguin, and Hachette–a quartet dubbed “Agency Four”–could have their buy buttons removed by Amazon (AMZN) if they can’t strike an eBook deal.

Here’s an excerpt from the subscription-only story: “The indications are that if the Agency Four have not finalized new digital sales agreements with Amazon prior to the launch of Apple’s iPad, they could face delisting from direct sale at Amazon, as Macmillan did.”

The New York Times has spoken with unnamed publishing executives about the terms of the eBook deal–noting that major publishers are “reluctant” to strike this kind of deal: “Amazon has agreed in principle that the major publishers would be able to set prices in its Kindle store as well. But it is also demanding that they lock into three-year contracts and guarantee that no other competitor will get lower prices or better terms. ”

Last month Amazon pulled the buy buttons on all Macmillan titles, making it impossible to buy directly through the online retailer. If you want to follow buy buttons from the Agency Four, we have a handy guide to double-checking after the jump. (Via MobyLives)

Read more

The publishing world is obsessed with political books right now, as political figures from Sarah Palin to Glenn Beck to Karl Rove climb the bestseller chart. One book trailer decided to fight the trend with a time-tested political trick: the attack ad.

Unbeige blogger Steve Delahoyde designed that attack ad book trailer embedded above to support Rework, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson.

Check it out: “REWORK, our new book on starting, building, and growing –or not growing–a business was released one week ago today. The book is selling out around the country and rocketed to #3 on Amazon.com’s bestseller list. Thanks to everyone who picked up a copy and spread the word. But there’s this book right ahead of it by this guy named Karl Rove. Heard of him? Turns out his book just came out too. And he’s all over the press … With a wink and a grin, we present the truth about Karl Rove’s Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight and 37signals’ Rework.”

On Monday, the memoir of conservative political strategist Karl Rove will ship–a 608-page tome entitled Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight.

Today Politico published a few juicy excerpts, looking at Rove’s score-settling passages. His memoir refers to a number of other political memoirists–a literary conversation within his political story. Here’s an excerpt: “I admire Colin Powell‘s many years of service to our country and I think he was a fine secretary of state. But I sensed he never felt comfortable around me because he looked down on me as a ‘politico.’”

Rove also obsesses about a brief conversation with Barack Obama about a sentence in Obama’s memoir–a story that climaxes at a 2008 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Rove attended with Newsweek editor Jon Meacham. Here’s Rove’s take: “At the dinner, Jon sat between me and Valerie Jarrett … During the dinner, Jarrett e-mailed Obama on her BlackBerry to let him know she was breaking bread with Satan himself. He e-mailed her back and Jarrett made the mistake of showing Jon and me his reply, which was ‘Rove hates me.’ I knew Senator Obama was alluding to our run-in over the passage in his book. I asked Jarrett to tell him I wasn’t in the habit of hating people.”

Yesterday Simon & Schuster and Hachette made headlines as they revealed they will delay the eBook release of many frontlist titles. Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy, told the Wall Street Journal: “The right place for the e-book is after the hardcover but before the paperback.”

Over at eBookNewser, our digitally obsessed sibling, you can read more about the new publishing schedule at Simon & Schuster–where eBook versions of 35 of its early 2010 titles will be held for four months. The site also has a link to the delayed eBook publishing schedule, which includes books by Don DeLillo, Karl Rove, and Jodi Picoult.

The post also includes a statement from a S&S spokesperson about the delays: “We believe this publishing sequence will benefit the performance of all the different formats in which these titles are published, and in the long term will contribute to a healthier retail environment for the greater book buying public.”

Today Threshold Editions announced that they will publish Karl Rove‘s 592-page memoir, “Courage and Consequence” on March 9, 2010.

The political strategist helped elect President George W. Bush and served as White House deputy chief of staff in Bush’s administration. His book promises to “set the record straight on those controversial years”–a popular theme with former Bush staffers. In 2011, both Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney will publish their own memoirs. Cheney has already promised to reveal the “heated arguments” behind the scenes at the White House.

Threshold editor-in-chief Mary Matalin (a conservative leader in her own right, profiled here) had this statement: “Karl has always been in a league of his own in the world of electoral politics and now he creates a unique genre for historians, policy makers, political junkies and serious readers.”

Politico recently profiled Mary Matalin, the Republican strategist, commentator, and and author who now serves as EIC at Simon & Schuster’s 4-year-old conservative imprint, Threshold Editions.

The article explores Matalin’s close working relationship with her powerful authors, including former Vice President Dick Cheney and stategist Karl Rove. The article also offers a sneak peak at the next book by Fox News personality Glenn Beck, entitled “Arguing With Idiots: America’s Next Epic Battle: 1776 vs. 1984.”

The article also interviewed HarperCollins executive editor Adam Bellow, who had these thoughts: “You have to have screaming commercial best-sellers. You have to keep delivering them year after year. The success at Threshold, which took a while to find its legs, has been largely to do with Glenn Beck and Mark Levin. And the success of those books is that these authors have enormous media platforms.”

Looks like the folks at Gawker, who are running a prediction game just as we are, are going to have to wait a bit longer till the publisher for IF I DID IT is revealed. Goldman family spokesperson Michael Wright told us this morning that the announcement has been held off until tomorrow. No word yet as to why (beyond “just planning”), or whether the result will be the same if we start asking tomorrow morning when the announcement will happen, or even if there is a publisher in place and this has all been a giant smokescreen to get us talking about OJ instead of, oh, Karl Rove book deal speculation (Thomas Nelson or Mary Matalin‘s imprint at Simon & Schuster, natch.)

Ron still just hopes this doesn’t turn out to be Madonna’s nanny’s memoir all over again.