ESPN Books Partners With Ballantine
By Rachel Deahl -- Publishers Weekly, 6/4/2008 8:58:00 AM
After a lengthy tenure with Hyperion, and stints with a handful of different distributors, ESPN Books has a new home at Ballantine. ESPN and Ballantine will co-publish 10 to 12 titles annually, ranging from celebrity sports books to nonfiction and reference. The first book due from the partnership, New York Giants head coach Tom Coughlin's A Team to Believe In: Our Journey to the Superbowl, will bow September 2.
ESPN Books has gone through a number of expansions, and publishing partners, over the years. The book division of the goliath sports brand launched in 1997 at Hyperion, which, like ESPN, is under the Disney corporate banner. According to Sandy Deshong, senior director of publishing at ESPN Books, the relationship evolved over the years as ESPN Books grew. Initially, she said, Hyperion "sort of ran the show," while ESPN focused almost solely on the marketing of the titles. Then, in 2004, ESPN took more control and "brought the business back in-house." At that point the division signed on with Hachette as its distributor while Hyperion continued to handle sales. In July of last year ESPN moved distribution to HarperCollins, but maintained its relationship with Hyperion.
The move to Ballantine, Deshong said, speaks to the fact that the division "wanted a relationship where we could centralize everything under one umbrella." That Ballantine is "very good at what they do not just in general publishing but also in sports publishing" sweeted the deal, Deshong said. And, although all titles ESPN and Ballantine co-publish will be jointly agreed upon, Deshong said ESPN still has the ability to do their own books with Random House acting as the distributor. In addition, some titles previously published by ESPN will be distributed by Random.
Forthcoming 2009 titles from Ballantine/ESPN will include a currently untitled book about the NBA by "The Sports Guy," Bill Simmons, ESPN College Basketball Encyclopedia & ESPN SEC Football Encyclopedia and a title on the history of sports by radio hosts Mike Golic and Mike Greenberg, aka Mike and Mike.
