Hyperion Does Second Soap Book
by Rachel Deahl -- Publishers Weekly, 2/1/2008 10:16:00 AM
To call Charm!, Hyperion’s new novel about a New York City cosmetics exec, a tie-in would be, well, off the mark. The book springs from a deeper connection with the daytime soap that inspired it, All My Children, than the tie-in tag suggests. The second book the publisher has released that’s supposedly written by a character on a daytime drama—the first was 2005’s The Killing Club which was featured on One Life to Live—Charm! draws on a more elaborate art-imitating-life-imitating-art gimmick.
Charm!, out this month in hardcover is, like The Killing Club, a book that is supposedly written on-air. But Whereas Killing Club was lightly worked into the show’s plot—Walsh was a minor character on OLTL—Charm! is getting a more significant plug. Because the book’s fictional author is a main character—Kendall Hart is the daughter of Susan Lucci’s long-running lead, Erica Kane—the book, according to Hyperion associate publicist Alexandra Ramstrum, has been featured on the show since the end of November in some 12 to 15 episodes.
This time around Hyperion, which is in the same corporate family as AMC broadcaster ABC, was even worked into the plot. After Hart starts writing a supposedly saucy semi-autobiographical tale that may or may not cast stones about the fellow residents of Pine Valley, her sister sends the manuscript to Hyperion. The publisher, which is the only one offered a crack at the work, accepts and Hart proceeds to go through writing process, working up to a final release party for the book that airs on February 5. On that show, which features cameos from Hyperion staffers like editor Gretchen Young and publicist Beth Gebhard (as members of the media), the book will get a sales plug from a post-show, pre-commercial zoom-in.
The genesis of Charm!, Ramstrum explained, began with Hyperion approaching both the author and the soap. (Sebastian Stuart, who does not have an author credit on Charm!, has written two previous novels.) Ramstrum explained that the book’s heavy promotion grew out of an interest from the creatives at AMC. “The [show’s staff] writers took to [the book] and decided they could work a plot around it.”
And Hyperion, which was surprised by the success of Killing Club—Ramstrum said the title’s sold over 100,000 copies—is thinking Charm!, with its heavier play on-air, will draw even more readers into its elaborate connection to the show.
