TODAY'S NEWS

Free Speech Groups Urge Passage of Libel Tourism Bill
by Jim Milliot
Nineteen organizations involved with free speech issues have signed a statement sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee asking them to support the Freedom of Speech Protection Act of 2008 (S. 2977). The bill would prohibit foreign libel judgments from being enforced in the U.S. if the speech would be protected by U.S. laws. The bill was introduced after a series of libel judgments were handed down against American authors in foreign courts where speech does not have the level of protection it does in the U.S. Earlier this year, New York State passed a law, The Libel Terrorism Protection Act, that prohibits the enforcement of a foreign libel judgment unless a New York court determines that it satisfies the free speech and free press protections guaranteed by the First Amendment and the New York State Constitution. Read on »

An Indie Hits Back at Globe's Amazon Exclusive
By Lynn Andriani
At least one independent bookseller is distressed over The Globe Pequot Press’s decision to release biographies of Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama exclusively as Kindle e-books. Jane Jacobs, buyer at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Mass., contacted her rep at GPP, Mark Carbray, yesterday, telling him the news was “most distressing.” GPP president and publisher Scott Watrous told PW yesterday that he did not think other accounts would react negatively to the plan which called for the bios to be sold via the Kindle about two months before the print edition will be released. Read on »

New Regency Opens NY Scouting Office
By Rachel Deahl
New Regency, the indie film studio with a distribution pact with FOX, has hired a dedicated staffer to cover the book world in New York. Michelle Kroes, who's been scouting for Warner Brothers (among other clients) at Maria Campbell since 2006, has been named director of feature and literary development. Kroes will be New Regency's first dedicated lit scout, working from a newly established outpost in New York. The company has also brought on veteran producer Amy Israel as executive v-p of production. (Israel arrives from Paramount Vantage, which was recently absorbed into big Paramount, where she oversaw an impressive list of book-to-film projects including There Will Be Blood, Into the Wild and No Country for Old Men.) Read on »

Page to Screen: Waiting on 'Sawtelle'
By Rachel Deahl
Those eagerly awaiting word of a film option for Ecco's runaway summer bestseller The Story of Edgar Sawtelle should settle in, because it may be awhile. PW has heard that 48-year-old debut author David Wroblewski has made an unusual request—he's asked would-be producers to pitch their film ideas to him in person so he can choose who’s most deserving of the film rights. The unusual (and demanding) move, if nothing else, will make a quick acquisition unlikely.

On the shopping front, PW has heard that Bob Bookman at ICM has just taken out film rights for Francine Prose’s forthcoming novel, Golden Grove. The novel, due out Tuesday from Harper, is Prose’s 15th and follows a 13-year-old who, wiling away her summer in her father’s upstate New York bookstore a year after her older sister’s suicide, finds solace with the high school boy her sister was romancing. Only one of Prose’s novels, Households Saints, has made it to the big screen; that film was released in 1993 as an indie starring Tracey Ullman and Lili Taylor.

In a deal that just closed, Bill Contardi, on behalf of the Virginia Kidd Agency, has sold film rights to E.E. Doc Smith’s pulp sci-fi series from the 1930s, Lensman, to Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment. Rumors have floated as far back as January about Howard’s interest in the property, but Contardi confirmed that the deal has just closed after negotiations lagged for months. Imagine optioned all seven books in the series about an intergalactic law enforcement/militia—the lensmen are the officers—charged with preserving civilization. After various fits and starts, Contardi said that Imagine has a screenwriter on the project, which is being fast tracked.

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AUTHORS ON THE AIR

Authors on the Air: Oprah on Straying Men; Bush Hearts McCain; religion reporter Gustav Niebuhr
Today on Oprah, family counselor M. Gary Neuman offers up The Truth about Cheating: Why Men Stray and What You Can Do to Prevent It (Wiley, $24.95; BBC Audiobooks America unabridged CD, $24.95). PW said: “Readers will wish that the author had devoted more time to holding the cheating husband responsible for his actions rather than putting the onus on wives to take preventive—and dubiously effective—measures.” Read on »

PICTURE OF THE DAY

Remembering 9/11
Comics co-authors writer Sid Jacobson and artist Ernie Colon (who created Hill & Wang's comics adaptation of the 9/11 Report) were on hand for a book reception at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., to launch After 9/11: America's War On Terror (2001- ), a graphic take of the Bush administration's post 9/11 policies. Jacobson and Colon were also being honored for creating Coming Home, a comic book created to encourage returning combat veterans to get the health and social services they need. Pictured (l. to r.) at the Pentagon are Mary Craig, Military OnceSource, publisher of Coming Home; Jacobson; Colon; H&W publisher Thomas LeBien; and Kerry Tucker, Military OneSource. Submit your pictures here »

JOB OF THE DAY

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