'Manhunt' Success Brings New Life for 'Assassins'

by Rachel Deahl -- Publishers Weekly, 9/18/2006

Lincoln's Assassins, a book co-written in 2001 by James Swanson, author of the current bestseller Manhunt, is being brought back into print by Morrow, which plans to market the title as a companion work to Manhunt. Morrow plans to release Assassins on October 31 and has set a 40,000 first printing. The books use different approaches to deal with events before and after Lincoln's murder.

Morrow editor Howard Ferris, who edited Manhunt, first saw Swanson's unusual book after HarperCollins won the auction for Manhunt. Assassins is a coffee-table book filled with photographs and newspapers clippings from the late 19th century that offer a glimpse into the media circus surrounding the capture and trial of John Wilkes Booth and his co-conspirators. The book, which Ferris admitted "is not the kind of book Morrow does," fell out of print when its publisher, Arena, closed. But Assassins stuck in Ferris's mind throughout the publication of Manhunt and with the success of that title (more than 152,000 copies sold, according to Nielsen BookScan), Morrow quickly made a deal with Swanson for his older book. Swanson had retained the rights to the title, and had access to many of the collector's items pictured in the photographs in the book, which allowed Morrow to update the images.

Now Morrow is preparing to tout Assassinsas the perfect complement to Manhunt, including putting a burst on the cover of Assassins highlighting that it's from the same author as Manhunt. And Swanson, who'll continue to do media for Manhunt throughout the fall, will also plug his old book, made new again.