What the Editors Bought Recently (Nonfiction)

This is an interesting, diverse group of new publisher purchases that might fascinate you:

Advice/Relationships

Deb Brody at Harlequin bought Gena Showalter and Jill Monroe's untitled book about dating, mating and sometimes hating Hot Men of the Otherworld, to be designed like a woman's magazine.

Business/Investing/Finance

Kathe Sweeney at Jossey-Bass bought Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management Professor James Shein's REVERSING THE SLIDE: A Strategic Guide to Turnarounds and Corporate Renewal, illustrating how to reverse any corporation's decline and identify distressed companies as investment opportunities.

Tim Sullivan at Basic Books picked up Kellogg School of Management professor Leigh Thompson's THE CREATIVE CONSPIRACY: How the Science of Collaboration Can Transform Your Organization, offering surprising and counter-intuitive findings about teams and innovation that will challenge managers and leaders to adopt some unconventional, controversial, and downright blasphemous best practices.

David Owens's THINKING INSIDE THE BOX: Recognizing and Overcoming the Innovation Barriers in Your Organization went to Susan Williams at Jossey-Bass, explaining to managers that to create real innovation in their organizations they must present a compelling and irrefutable case that motivates their people to adopt all of the changes that the innovation demands.

If you want to make millions on our idea, you'll want entrepreneur and licensing expert Stephen Key's ONE SIMPLE IDEA: Become Rich and Successful While Letting Others Do the Work, a book that explains how to make millions without having to actually invent, create, or produce a new product, that went to Gary Krebs at McGraw-Hill.

Cooking

Chef and owner of top San Francisco dining destination The Slanted Door, Charles Phan's VIETNAMESE COOKING, featuring 100 classic recipes and select favorites from the Slanted Door repertoire, will be published by Ten Speed Press.

Anja Schmidt of Kyle Books bought James Beard Award-winning and Emmy Award-winning TV food personality Ming Tsai's SIMPLY MING ONE-POT MEALS: Quick, Healthy & Affordable Recipes, co-authored with Arthur Boehm, 80 recipes with an Asian twist -- every ingredient can be found at your local market, every recipe will track its salt and fat intakes, calories, and allergens, every dish will cost under $20, and you'll only have to use one vessel in which to cook.

This should be fun--"Desperate Housewives" Eva Longoria Parker's EVA'S KITCHEN: Cooking with Love for Family and Friends, her debut cookbook reflecting her passion for cooking and her life -- from her Texan roots and Mexican heritage to her French NBA-star husband -- including a broad range of international influences as well as personal stories and intimate photographs, to Emily Takoudes at Clarkson Potter.

Diet

Tanya Becker and Jennifer Maanavi's PHYSIQUE 57, a 2-week diet and fitness plan for total body transformation, based on the workouts taught in the exclusive NY and LA Physique 57 studios, to Diana Baroni at Grand Central (perviously known as Warner Books--and still called Warner by many of us!).

Shannon Welch at Rodale picked up Women's Health contributor and CBS Early Show Nutrition Expert Keri Glassman's book presenting a 4-day cleanses and 2-week plans adapted to the most common goals and lifestyles based on the principles she put forth in her O2 Diet.

History/Politics/Current Affairs

The first of undoubtedly many books about the recent oil spill, DEEPWATER HORIZON: The Oil Disaster, Its Aftermath, and Our Future, by the executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Peter Lehner, writing with Bob Deans, former head of the White House Correspondents Association, will be published by John Oakes of OR Books.

Author of THE ARABS - A HISTORY, Eugene Rogan's THE GREAT WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST 1914-1920, an account of how The Great War totally shaped the Middle East, to Lara Heimert at Basic and Simon Winder at Penguin Press UK.

Professor of Philosophy at Columbia College Chicago Stephen T. Asma's AGAINST FAIRNESS: In Favor of Favoritism, arguing that some of the assumptions of liberal democracies are wonderful but unrealistic and troublesome, and that tribal ethics can provide a more realistic and peaceable approach to life, to Elizabeth Dyson at University of Chicago Press.

Victor S. Thomas and Leila Ahmed's THE QUIET REVOLUTION: The Story Behind the Veil's Resurgence, a surprising and heretofore untold story of Muslim women's role in the period of Western colonialism through to the growing religious fundamentalism of the present day, told through the lens of the veil, to Jennifer Banks at Yale University Press.

Stefan Bechtel's MR.HORNADAY'S WAR, the story of pioneering early environmentalist William Temple Hornaday, founder of the How-ToBlogger of DigginFood.com Willi Galloway's GROW. COOK. EAT, tips, advice and information for growing and preparing fifty of the most popular and best tasting vegetables, herbs and small fruits, to Susan Roxborough at Sasquatch Books.

ModernJune.com Kelly McCants's SEWING WITH OILCLOTH, featuring 20 hip handmade houseware projects -- including a market tote, bench cushion and party banners -- to make with laminated cotton and oilcloth, to Roxane Cerda at Wiley

Humor

Magnus Muhr's THE LIFE OF FLY, a hilarious photographic revelation of the secret life of flies, to Emily Haynes at Chronicle.

Illustrated/Art

MTA Metro-North Railroad and New York Transit Museum's GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL AT 100, the only official book celebrating the 2013 Centennial of one of the world's great railroad stations, offering 300 archival and contemporary photos never before seen of this historic building and its surrounding area, to Jennifer Levesque at Stewart, Tabori & Chang.

Memoir

Ultrarunner and star of BORN TO RUN, Scott Jurek's EAT & RUN, an inspiring memoir of Jurek's remarkable running career, fueled, surprisingly, by an entirely plant-based diet, written with Bill Gifford, to Susan Canavan at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Tony Hendra and son Nick Hendra's book on basketball and life, documenting, exploring and celebrating the thrills, setbacks, excitement, tedium, hopes, dreams, stark realities, emotional highs and lows, timeless human truths, hilarious predicaments, and weird, touching or insane characters they have encountered during a journey which began in earnest six years ago and whose outcome is still unknown, to Patrick Mulligan and Bill Shinker at Gotham.

Musician (and former Van Halen member) Sammy Hagar's memoir, to Lisa Sharkey for Harper Collin's It Books, with Matt Harper editing.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's WHILE I WAS GROWING UP, her experiences and those of her family during and immediately after World War II, drawing on her own memories, her parents' written reflections, interviews with contemporaries, and other primary source materials, giving a child's view of the time and also an adult's broader perspective, to Tim Duggan at Harper.

Rachael Herron's KNITTING IN THE ROUND, a memoir in essays about the ways in which knitting defines the milestones of her life -- from surviving a typhoon, to marrying the love of her life, to grieving for her mother's death, to Jodi Warshaw at Chronicle.

Narrative

Sally Koslow's THE WANDER YEARS: A Mother's Display of Public Reflection, combines interviews, personal observation, and social science, on the modern phenomenon of "adultescents" (kids who return to the nest after college until who knows when) from the point of view of their beleaguered parents, to Clare Ferraro and Carolyn Carlson at Viking.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of The Big One David Kinney's THE DYLANOLOGISTS, a participatory journey into the lively global community of zealous Dylan followers, seeking to understand why he's mattered both to individuals and to our culture, again to Jofie Ferrari-Adler at Grove/Atlantic.

MacArthur fellow Will Allen's THE GOOD FOOD REVOLUTION, the story of a former fast-food executive who bought a derelict two-acre plot in a struggling neighborhood in Milwaukee and built a pioneering urban farm that feeds thousands who otherwise would not have access to healthy food, demonstrating how a relationship with the soil can heal broken communities and people, to Lauren Marino at Gotham.

Religion/Spirituality

Greg Paul's CLOSE ENOUGH TO HEAR GOD BREATHING, awakening readers to the fact that there's a wonderful and intimate connection between our own life experiences and the "Great Story" -- the whole of the Bible viewed as one extended account of the loving relationship of the Creator with his creation, to Brian Hampton at Thomas Nelson.

ScienceScience journalist Kayt Sukel's THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON LOVE: The Neuroscience of Love, Sex and Relationships, exploring the latest research on the neurobiology behind love, attraction, pair-bonding, and sex, to Hilary Redmon at Free Press.

Celebrated mathematician and FLATTERLAND author Ian Stewart's THE MATHEMATICS OF LIFE, an investigation into the role of mathematics in life sciences, and THE GREAT MATHEMATICAL PROBLEMS, on the challenges and eccentric personalities surrounding some of history's most important math problems, again to Lara Heimert at Basic.

Sports

Sports Illustrated journalist David Epstein's THE SPORTS GENOME, exploring what genetics reveals about athletic performance, and questioning the correlation between effort and excellence, to David Moldawer at Current.

General/Other

Whitley Strieber's THE KEY, fresh insight into the nature of the universe and the soul of humanity, delivered to the author by a mysterious stranger who offers us the Key to our ultimate destiny as co-creators with and companions of God, to Mitch Horowitz at Tarcher.

Laurie

http://www.authorbiz.com/

Photo credit: (c)2010 clipart

Attention BLOOMBERG PRESS Authors

John Wiley purchased Bloomberg Press--smart move on Wiley's part. Fine. But then they decided they didn't want to adhere to the contracts of Bloomberg authors--since they paid Wiley authors less than Bloomberg paid. So they sent an amendment around to the authors to sign, couching it in the most favorable terms a la "We're happy to announce the great news that we're reducing your royalties!" The Authors Guild was all over this the last couple days.

Even if you're not a Bloomberg/Wiley author, it's relevant because publishers sell to each other all the time, and this situation of the new publisher trying to change terms is fairly common. Heads up, Authors.

The author wonders, Do I have to sign it? What happens if I don't?

The best case scenario is that after your refusal to sign, negotation, and debate with the publisher, they agree to honor the contract they bought, as is -- as they should. Buying the publishing house does not entitle them to change the contracts they are buying.

Worst case, you negotiate higher royalty rates on the "net receipts" than they are offering, or they let you go! Yes, release you, and you resell the book to another publisher.

Authors Guild:

Late yesterday afternoon, John Wiley issued a press release disputing some of the assertions in our alert of yesterday morning. In our alert, we called Wiley's April letter to its Bloomberg Press authors "deceptive" and "misleading" and that it would "materially and adversely affect the royalty rates of many Bloomberg Press authors."

We stand by every word of our alert, and we again call on Wiley to start over. No sensible Bloomberg author with a contract providing royalties based on the retail list price of their book would have signed Wiley's amendment if they were fully aware of its effects. Wiley should send Bloomberg authors a new letter, informing the authors that they are disregarding any previous consents to Wiley's proposed contract changes and clearly explaining how the new terms they're suggesting differ from the authors' existing contracts. Or, as Scott Turow put it on reviewing their response, "Wiley should knock it off and do the right thing."

In any event, here are our replies to John Wiley's various assertions:
1. Wiley's response says that its April letter to Bloomberg authors "explain[ed] the changes in plain English" and invited authors "to discuss these changes or raise questions."
Wiley's April letter is plain enough, but it avoids any hint that its changes will greatly reduce many Bloomberg authors' royalties. This is fundamental. Wiley's a sophisticated publisher, well aware of what it's doing and well aware that most authors aren't publishing attorneys. It could have spelled out the effects of its proposed contractual changes in equally plain English. If it had done so, then the offer to discuss the changes would have been meaningful.
2. Wiley says that Bloomberg authors' "response to this new alliance has been positive."
This doesn't really respond to our assertions, since it says nothing about the actual letter amendment. To the extent this does refer to the letter amendment to the contract, we note that if one sends a misleading letter, one might successfully get positive responses.
3. Wiley says it "believe[s] former Bloomberg authors will be paid higher royalties in most instances." The calculation is pretty simple, really. For Bloomberg authors that were paid royalty rates on the basis of retail list price, as is the case for every Bloomberg contract we've reviewed, the author, for example, might receive royalties of 15% of the retail list price on a hardcover priced at $25, or $3.75 per book. If you instead base the royalties on the publisher's net receipts, and the discount to the retailer is a typical 50% off list price, then the author receives 15% of $12.50, or $1.88 per book.
So we're not quite sure where this is coming from, but we note that Wiley doesn't say that it will be paying higher royalty rates, nor does it say that it will pay higher royalty amounts per book sold. It may be assuming that its marketing will be better than Bloomberg's was, so sales will be higher, and the author will benefit, even with reduced royalties per book. That could be, but increased sales are no reason to reduce the contractually agreed royalty rate.
Or, it could be that most Bloomberg authors were already paid on the basis of net receipts, so the effects of the Wiley amendments might be minor. Perhaps there are many such contracts, and perhaps the effects would then be minor. Beats us: we haven't seen an example of a net receipts Bloomberg contract yet.
4. Wiley says that "the limited number of contract amendments the AG apparently chose to select are not therefore representative; nor are their 'calculations' accurate."
While it's true we didn't discuss all of the amendments, things don't look much better if we expand our review. For example, here's one of the amendments we didn't discuss: "For any sales made at a discount of fifty six percent or more, your royalties will be calculated at 7.5% of net receipts and there will be no deductions for manufacturing costs." But the Bloomberg Press contracts we've seen pay authors more than 7.5% of net receipts for those deeply discounted sales. Again, an author who doesn't happen to be a publishing lawyer might not get that. That there will be no deductions for manufacturing costs sounds like a good thing, but the Bloomberg contracts we've seen only deducted those costs for what are essentially remainder sales, books sold at discounts of 75% or more. Royalties on remainders have always been trivial.
We stand by our calculations, which were done using real sales figures by an independent royalty auditor. Wiley can't possibly know if our calculations are inaccurate, since they don't know which books were in our sample.
5. Wiley says we issued our alert "without speaking with Wiley concerning its specific assertions."
Actually, we raised these specific concerns with Wiley in an e-mail on Friday, May 7th: "[T]hese letters strike us as a deceptive way to make substantial, material changes to a book contract. We think any signed letters you received in response should be ripped up and this whole thing redone. When it is redone, we don't think there's any good reason to change the royalty structure or the termination rights of the Bloomberg authors." We then spoke to Wiley. Wiley told us that the net effect of the changes was complicated and that authors would do better overall. We weren't persuaded, but we hired a royalty auditor to be doubly sure that we were reading the changes correctly.

Our job, in any event, is to play the role of watchdog. While in this instance we raised our issues with Wiley, we don't believe we're obligated to speak to a publisher when we see egregious behavior before we alert our members. Do not sign Wiley's misleading letter and send it back to them. First consult us or your agent or your attorney. If you have signed the letter, we urge you to contact us immediately.

Wiley asked us to send you their response. It follows.

Wiley Responds to Authors Guild
Hoboken, NJ, June 10, 2010—Since Wiley acquired the rights to all formerly Bloomberg book titles on March 11, we have been working to provide a wider audience and more sales for these authors. On April 29, Wiley sent letters to the affected authors explaining the changes – in plain English, which we felt would be most helpful and informative for our authors. Wiley invited authors to speak directly with a specific (and named) publishing officer if they wished to discuss these changes or raise questions. Their response to the new alliance has been positive.
This morning – without speaking with Wiley concerning its specific assertions – the Authors Guild issued an “alert” to its authors, claiming that the Wiley letter is deceptive and inferring that the Wiley changes it effects will reduce royalties for all or most former Bloomberg authors. This is simply not the case. We believe former Bloomberg authors will be paid higher royalties in most instances. The limited number of contract amendments the AG apparently chose to select are not therefore representative; nor are their “calculations” accurate. In any event, Wiley stands by its offer to discuss their individual contracts with all affected authors. We are happy to address any questions and concerns they may have about their individual contracts. Wiley is committed to the Bloomberg authors and is confident we will provide the best possible working relationships for them.

Feel free to forward, post, or tweet. Here is a short URL for linking: http://tiny.cc/d8txr

Laurie

www.authorbiz.com

Photo credit: (c)2009 clipart

Quotation of the Day

This quote was in this morning's Shelf Awareness (http://www.shelf-awareness.com) e-newsletter:

HANDSELLING: "This Simple, Physical Gesture Can Change Lives"

Who was that bookseller who thought, 'Here is an almost-eight-year-old girl who loves Abraham Lincoln. What other book will she love? Oh, yes. This book about a cricket.'? There was nothing logical about that decision. It was a leap of faith. Those two books changed me. Together, they cemented an idea in my eight-year-old heart. That idea was this: It doesn’t matter how small, how lonely, how broken or sad or poor you are. There is a way to make yourself heard. There is a way to sing. A bookseller put those books into my mother’s hands, and my mother put them into mine. Sometimes we forget that this simple, physical gesture can change lives. I want to remind you that it does. I want to thank you because it did."--

Kate DiCamillo, winner of the 2010 Indies Choice Award for Most Engaging Author, at ABA's Celebration of Bookselling Luncheon during BEA.

The most recent book I put in a friend's hands this weekend was Mary Pearson's THE ADORATION OF JENNA FOX. What book have you put in someone's hands lately?

Laurie

Author Biz Consulting

www.authorbiz.com Photo: www.bing.com