Although Helen Colijn's Song of Survival: Women Interned (White Cloud Press) and director Bruce Beresford's movie Paradise Road (to be released by Fox Searchlight on April 25) are in fact separate stories with no shared rights, they will be promoted simultaneously and symbiotically in the hope that the connection will reap greater rewards for both.

For Ashland, Ore.-based White Cloud, a small, three-year-old press with 14 titles, mostly on spirituality, the fortuitous relationship began more than two years ago, when retired Sunset magazine editor Colijn first approached publisher Steven Scholl with her personal story of Dutch female prisoners of war during WWII who kept their sanity by singing classical works for symphony and piano. At this point, Scholl already knew Beresford was making a movie on the same subject, inspired by a recent concert, and that a Sony Classics tie-in CD was in the works. And although Scholl knew "from the beginning that we would pull out the stops with the movie release," he didn't sit on the book, and published a hardcover edition in January 1996 with a print run of 4000. Today, a little more than a year after the hardcover was published, the trade paperback has sold out of its 10,000 first run and Scholl is going back for a second printing of 15,000 to tie into the movie release. White Cloud has also already netted more than $20,000 in foreign sales to Britain, Australia and Germany, and expects to sell others once the film comes out.

Scholl's enthusiasm isn't even dampened by a late-breaking deal Fox Searchlight made with St. Martin's imprint Buzz Books to publish the screenplay of Beresford's film. This is the first of a four-books-per-year deal signed by Buzz Books partners Eden Collinsworth, CEO of Buzz Enterprises, Jim Fitzgerald, executive editor at SMP, and David Dinerstein, senior v-p of marketing for Fox Searchlight. "I don't see it as a problem," Scholl said. "I think it can only, pardon the pun, help the buzz for all of us. Besides, I think there's a different market for screenplays."

Apparently Fox Searchlight agrees. Realizing that Colijn could add a dimension of historical reality to the film, Fox decided to put Colijn in the middle of its promotional campaign. As such, working closely with Fox and Sony, White Cloud has a promotion lineup for Colijn that would make any author proud (and most small publishers green with envy): profiles in People, Parade and Modern Maturity; interviews on CBS Evening News and NBC's "Today" show; an interview on Lifetime cable for a documentary narrated by Paradise Road star Glenn Close on the making of the film, and a CNN Cable News promotion featuring a giveaway of the book and the CD, which gives a nod to Colijn by being entitled "Paradise Road/Song of Survival."