June 24: Rights Report

This week, Alvina Ling at Little, Brown buys the new YA novel from Laini Taylor,
Virginia Duncan at Greenwillow Books gets North American rights to Counting Cars by Christina Meredith, Jocelyn Davies at Razorbill acquires Crush Control, a new novel by Jennifer Jabaley, and Jon Anderson of Simon & Schuster has bought A ValueTales Treasury: Stories for Growing Good People by Spencer Johnson, M.D.

Sterling, Hearst Renew Agreement

Hearst Magazines and Sterling Publishing have renewed their long-term trademark licensing agreement granting Sterling the rights to create and publish books under the Hearst Books imprint with Hearst Magazines' trademarks worldwide. Under the deal, Sterling has produced a number of lifestyle and cookbooks based on Hearst's magazines.

Deals: Week of 6/21/10

HC Acquires Brit's Debut for Rumored Seven Figures

A heated auction in the UK for two books by Brit Steven J. Watson, including his debut Before I Go to Sleep, has led to a major pre-empt in the States by HarperCollins. Claire Wachtel and Jonathan Burnham have paid a rumored $1 million for Sleep, along with another book by Watson, Nine Lives.

Deals: Week of 6/14/10

Colfer Pens First Adult Novel

Jane Morpeth and Marion Donaldson at Headline in London, and Peter Mayer at Overlook Press in New York, have bought Eoin Colfer's first independent adult novel, in deals negotiated by Sophie Hicks at Ed Victor Ltd. for an undisclosed sum. Plugged is set in New Jersey and is a classic noir novel which will be published in 2011.

Little, Brown Launching 'Glee' Publishing Program

Calling all gleeks: Starting this fall, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers will launch a publishing program based on the hit Fox TV show about a high school glee club, starting with The Beginning, a paperback original prequel.

Regal Has Wooden Tribute

Regal, the publishing imprint of Gospel Light, plans to release The Greatest Coach Ever: Timeless Wisdom and Insights of John Wooden this July after originally planning to publish the title in the fall. The UCLA coach died over the weekend.

AmazonEncore Announces Fall List

Following an ambitious summer list, Amazon's publishing imprint, AmazonEncore, has announced an equally enterprising fall list, including a humorous book for kids written by a fourth-grade teacher, and a women's fiction title originally published on Kindle.

Big Sales for Yale's Little Books

In 2005, Yale University Press published its first “little history/little book,” E.H. Gombrich’s A Little History of the World, which broke down a large subject into 40 chapters that are just as readable for children as adults. Now Yale is trying to replicate that success with its second "Clittle book," linguist David Crystal's A Little Book of Language, with stylized black-and-white illustrations by Jean-Manuel Duvivier.

St. Martin's Preempts Book About BP

St. Martin's Michael Flamini has journalist preempted Mike Magner's new book on currently embattled oil giant British Petroleum in a major six-figure deal. Ronald Goldfrab at Goldfarb & Associates brokered the deal for Magner, who's been researching BP for a number of years, focusing on allegations that the company has been involved in various cases of pollution.

Hyperion Inks Literary Pact with 'Glamour'

Hyperion has teamed up with Glamour magazine to do a series of books aimed at the magazine's readership of roughly 12.2 million women. The first three titles are set to publish in 2011 and 2012. The first book, Engagement Chicken and 99 Other Recipes to Get Everything You Want Out of Life will be written by the magazine's editor-in-chief, Cindi Levine, and is scheduled for Valentine's Day, 2011.

Deals: Week of 5/31/10

New Jean Auel

BEA has its big book: today Crown and the Jean Naggar Literary Agency announced that the sixth and final book of Auel's record-breaking, bestselling Earth's Children series will be published on March 29, 2011. Titled The Land of Painted Caves, the book will be published in both hardcover and e-book editions, and in a rare move, it will be published simultaneously in all territories, in a one-day laydown, orchestrated by Jennifer Weltz and the Naggar Agency, with deals so far in the U.K., Croatia, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Japan, Norway, Serbia, Spain, and Sweden.

HMH Signs Streisand Bio

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has acquired a new biography about this year's BEA headliner, Barbra Streisand. Hello, Gorgeous, by William Mann, is scheduled for fall 2012 to coincide with Streisand’s 50th year in show business. Mann (Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn), will cover the trajectory of Streisand’s career from her start in Greenwich Village to her turn on Broadway in Funny Girl to through one of the heights of her success, her 1968 "Happening in Central Park" concert, which drew more than 135,000 fans.

Deals: Week of 5/24/10

Rights Report: May 20

Walden Media will produce a film version of Frank Cottrell Boyce’s novel Cosmic; Razorbill has acquired world English rights to a debut middle-grade novel, Giant Man-Eating Frogs with Hideous Fangs! by Richard Farr, and Tracy Gates at Viking has bought the next installments in Alane Ferguson's Edgar-nominated forensic mysteries series, The Academy.

S&S's MTV Books to Release 'Jersey Shore' Tie-In

Fist-pumping guidos and juicehead-loving guidettes--and the millions who fell in love with them watching MTV's unexpected reality hit Jersey Shore--will soon have a companion book to guide them through the memorable sayings delivered on the show, Gym, Tanning, Laundry: The Official Jersey Shore Quote Book. The book will be published under the MTV Books imprint at Simon & Schuster and will include a 30-minute DVD of bonus material from the show. The trade paperback, which is due out in June and will include photos, marks the first official book tie-in to the show, though not the first title to capitalize on the sudden stardom of its stars.

Konrath Moves 'Jack Daniels' Series to AmazonEncore

Amazon today announced that its publishing imprint, AmazonEncore, will release the newest book in J.A. Konrath's Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels series, Shaken. The Kindle version will go on sale in October, and the print version in February 2011. Hyperion had published the six previous books in Konrath's series about the Chicago cop, including Whiskey Sour, Bloody Mary, Rusty Nail, Dirty Martini, Fuzzy Navel, and Cherry Bomb.