Douglas Coupland, perhaps best known for Generation X but also the author of a number of novels published by Judith Regan at her Harper imprint, has decided to make a move. He has jumped to the Random family, for a world rights, hard-soft deal offered jointly by Pantheon's Dan Frank and Vintage's Marty Asher. The money was in the mid six figures. Coupland's agent, Eric Simonoff at Janklow &Nesbit, said it was no secret that the author was seeking "a strong editorial hand," and when the manuscript of his newest novel, Miss Wyoming, was sent out to several interested publishers, Coupland had been particularly struck by the notes given him by Frank and Vintage editor Jenny Minton, who will in fact edit the book. "I had the feeling Doug was simply not being taken seriously enough," said Frank, "and I wanted to see him get the kind of recognition he deserves as a writer." Frank aims to publish the book, which tells of a former child beauty contestant who decides to start a new life after she is the sole survivor of a plane crash, early in 2000.

A PUSH FROM OPRAH
Three of Oprah Winfrey's "Change Your Life" TV experts are already regulars on the bestseller list -- John Gray, Iyanla Vanzant and Suze Ormond -- and plans are afoot to have the two remaining members join them there. Senior editor Mitchell Ivers at Pocket Books has signed a mid-six-figure deal for Codes of Love by Mark Bryan, who was the cocreator with Julia Cameron of the Artist's Way series and who has written The Prodigal Father on his own. Agent David Vigliano, who negotiated the sale, took Bryan around to see a number of editors, five of whom took part in an auction from which Ivers emerged the winner. Bryan's thesis is that parental love is often communicated to children in a code that must be broken before hurt relationships can be healed. Pocket plans to publish next fall. The remaining Oprah strategist, Phillip McGraw, has penned Life Strategies: Doing What Works, Doing What Matters, for Hyperion editor Leslie Wells. According to president Bob Miller, the book will be available as soon as January 7, with a planned 500,000 first printing.

LIBERATION TRILOGY
The Washington Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Rick Atkinson is taking a long leave of absence from the paper to pen an ambitious three-volume account of the victorious Allied campaigns in Europe and North Africa in WWII. Tentatively titled The Liberation Trilogy, it has been signed by John Sterling, new president of Henry Holt, as his first acquisition since taking the job. Sterling was Atkinson's editor for his two previous books, the bestselling Long Gray Line, about West Point, and Crusade, about the Gulf War. "The story of the Allied liberation has never been told as a single narrative," Sterling said. Atkinson's agent, Washington-based Rafe Sagalyn, said Atkinson wished to write only for Sterling and that the project had been sold to him for a "very substantial sum." Atkinson, he said, became passionately interested in WWII battlefields when he was the Post's European bureau chief five years ago, and he has wanted to write a major history of the liberation ever since. The plan is for a book to appear roughly every three years, beginning in 2002.

HOLY JUBILEE, 2000
It's not often that a travel publisher gets to make a deal worth reporting here, but Fodor's creative director, Fabrizio La Rocca, has come up with a decidedly offbeat one. Every 25 years or so, a Jubilee brings a huge convergence of Christian pilgrims to Rome; the millennial Jubilee of 2000 is expected to be the biggest ever, bringing perhaps 24 million visitors to the city in the course of the year. So La Rocca, himself a Roman, conceived of the plan for Holy Rome, an extensively color-illustrated guide to the highlights of Christian Rome and its history, and arranged a co-publication deal with Touring Editore, the largest Italian guide publisher. Fodor will supply the design and new photography, and the Italians will prepare a text, using Italian experts, that will be translated into English exclusively for Fodor's; publication is set in both countries for next November -- and La Rocca hopes to keep the price of the portable but tall -- format book to around $20.

ONE OF THEIR OWN
When 25-year-old Kate Morgenroth began work at HarperCollins, straight out of Princeton, as a marketing assistant two years ago, she already had a first novel in mind and was working away at it in her all-too-scant spare time. Eventually, she decided to quit full-time work to concentrate on the book, paying the bills by freelancing. She hadn't forgotten her Harper colleagues, however, and when she had finished Kill Me First, and a few agents she showed it to chose not to take her on, she showed it to executive editor Larry Ashmead, who took it like a shot. "I was surprised and delighted," Morgenroth said. "I thought he'd just read it and offer me advice. It's a dark, violent, quirky sort of book, and I wasn't at all sure he'd like it." In fact, Ashmead offered the unagented Morgenroth a two-book world rights deal, for which, she said, she was "very fairly paid," and she is now at work on a second book. "I agreed to read it with the usual reluctance when the author is someone you know," said Ashmead. "But she's very talented, and I think this could be the start of a strong career." Kill Me First, which is set for publication next May, tells the story of a middle-aged woman who is kidnapped by an unstable but brilliant terrorist, and the strange relationship that develops between them. How many young publishing people have novels in their bottom drawer? "You'd be surprised," said Morgenroth. "When I told my colleagues about it, quite a few confessed they were hoping for something just like this to happen to them, too."