Short Takes

by John F. Baker -- Publishers Weekly, 4/18/2005

A biography of controversial novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand,the first in many years and claimed as the first to be truly impartial about her, was signed by Nan A. Talese for her Doubleday imprint. Ayn Rand: An American Life is by magazine journalist and editor Anne Conover Heller, and Talese bought North American rights from Amanda Urban at ICM…. A Hollywood memoir by producer Ed Feldman (who made Save the Tiger, Witness and The Truman Show, among many others, and knew everyone in Tinseltown worth knowing) was bought for SMP by Marc Resnick. He preempted Tell Me How You Love the Picture: A Hollywood Life from agent Joe Veltre, North American rights…. Holt's Jennifer Barth beat out three publishers in an auction for Perfume by Chandler Burr,an expansion of a recent New Yorker piece about the highly secretive world in which perfumes are conceived, created and marketed. Burr will follow three scents through the stages of their creation. Eric Simonoff at Janklow & Nesbit made the North American rights sale…. Emme is a supermodel with her own clothing lines, and she is married to Philip Aaronson, who for years has suffered from crippling depression; the couple will tell their story in alternating chapters in a book bought for New American Library by Mark Chait. The North American rights deal was made with Dan Strone at Trident Media Group, for publication next spring.