Eat French, Sell More

Now in its 20th printing, with 970,000 copies, since its release by Knopf in December, Mireille Guiliano's French Women Don't Get Fat has at least one other house scrambling to publish a similar title.

Last week, DK rushed out Michel Montignac's boldly subtitled The French Diet: The Secrets of Why French Women Don't Get Fat. Though the house hasn't secured the reams of national print and TV coverage that Guiliano got, DK backed its 100,000-copy printing with a 15-city TV satellite author tour and a full-page New York Times ad last week.

Self-taught nutritionist Montignac has been a European favorite since his self-published diet based on the net glycemic outcome of a meal, Eat Yourself Slim, sold 2.5 million copies in France after its 1999 release. DK originally signed him up for winter 2006, but once Knopf's book began to explode, the house asked for a second book—to come first.

Though his The French Diet also deals with the endlessly fascinating French diet paradox, its similarity to French Women stops there. Where Guiliano eschews scientific discussions, Montignac focuses on how food is metabolized.

Montignac isn't the only author riding Guiliano's coattails. A Crown title first published in April 2003, The Fat Fallacy: The French Diet Secrets to Permanent Weight Loss by neuroscientist Will Clower, had a sales spurt shortly after the Knopf release, when it was mentioned in early media coverage of French Women. Three Rivers repackaged the book in January and shipped 20,000 copies on top of the 30,000 already sold. Three Rivers also plans to publish Henry Beard's French Cats Don't Get Fat: The Secrets of La Cuisine Feline, an 80-page illustrated humor paperback to be released on September 13.