Lord Archer Released (by HC)
By John F. Baker -- Publishers Weekly, 8/19/2002
Bestselling British author Lord Jeffrey Archer, currently serving a four-year jail term for perjury and obstruction of justice, but still actively writing, has been released from his old contract with HarperCollins and is moving to Macmillan in the U.K. and fellow Holtzbrinck house St. Martin's Press here. SMP publisher Sally Richardson announced that the houses had bought world rights in the two novels and story collection he had contracted with Harper, and that SMP would also get the Archer backlist as the Harper licenses expire. The deal was arranged in London with agent Jonathan Lloyd at Curtis Brown U.K., who said the author had returned the sum he received on signing the $15-million contract with Harper in 2000. First of the new books to appear will be Sons of Fortune, a novel about two brothers, with a background in American politics, which Richardson plans to publish next January.
