Earlyword

We’ve said it before; we think the book about a Mumbai slum, Behind the Beautiful Forevers is going to the the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks of 2012 (meaning, a book about a subject that may not immediately sound appealing, but still garners great press attention, is an instant best seller, hanging on for months [...]

David Angus’ book, The End of Illness, hardly needs more attention. It’s been at #1 on the NYT Hardcover Advice & Misc. best seller list for the last two weeks. On Amazon, however, it didn’t break the top 100 until Jon Stewart issued the magic words during his talk with the author on The Daily Show, [...]

SAG Best Actress Award winner (and Oscar nominee), Viola Davis has been signed for two book-to-movie projects; Beautiful Creatures (see previous story) and the movie based on Orson Scott Card’s sci fi classic, Ender’s Game. The movie already has a strong cast, with rising young actors Asa Butterfield (Hugo) and Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) as well [...]

Fox has acquired John Green’s new book and #1 NYT Best Seller, The Fault in Our Stars (Dutton; Brilliance Audio). Variety reports that Twilight producers Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen have signed on to do the adaptation. John just wrapped a 17-city tour for the book. He talks about how it felt, below.

Technically, it’s true, as we reported earlier, that a Hunger Games teaser won’t air during the Super Bowl — however, one will appear during the pregame show. Trying to stay current with this is dizzying. A teaser for the teaser appeared on Entertainment Tonight, briefly on the Web before it was yanked by the studio. As of [...]

Finally, an answer for all the teens who have been anxiously awaiting news about the film version of Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl (Hachette/LBYR, 2009). Movie news sources, including Entertainment Weekly‘s blog, report that it now has financing from Warner Bros. and the first cast member has been named, Oscar nominee, Viola Davis. [...]

Top executives from ALA visited New York publishers this week to present the case for making ebooks available for library lending. When librarians found out that Random House had asked to be included, fears grew that the one house that has stood firm in making their titles available was about to change that policy. The [...]

The second trailer for HBO’s Game Change, based on the book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin (Harper), has just been released, giving us a longer look at Julianne Moore’s portrayal of Sarah Palin. The movie debuts on cable March 10. It also stars Woody Harrelson as campaign strategist Steve Schmidt and Ed Harris as John McCain. [...]

Book Expo announces the first speaker for the Book & Author events; Michael Chabon will be featured on Thursday, June 7 at the Book and Author Breakfast. His next book is Telegraph Avenue (HarperCollins, 9780061493348, on sale 9/11/12). More author announcements will be coming soon.

The effect of the Newbery and Caldecott awards on book sales is seen in the Feb 12 NYT Best Seller list; both the medalists and one of the honor books make their debuts. Sales are for the week ending Saturday, January 28, the week of the awards, which were announced that Monday. NYT Children’s Picture [...]

Good news — the deadline to apply to give out books on World Book Night, Monday, April 23rd, has been extended. Organizer Carl Lennertz says they’ve received hundreds of applications, with every state, city and town covered, but “the more the merrier” and he’s heard there are still people out there who want to be [...]

Yesterday’s rave from reviewer Janet Maslin in the New York Times, helped to boost Katherine Boo’s book about a slum in Mumbai Behind the Beautiful Forevers into the top 100 on Amazon sales rankings. Libraries are beginning to show heavy holds on modest ordering (most libraries have bought one copy for their largest branches; holds are [...]

Hilma Wolitzer’s new novel got a strong review from Fresh Air‘s Maureen Corrigan yesterday, calling it a “droll novel of manners” (the publisher compares it to the word-of-mouth success, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand). As a result, the book up to #381 (from #1,251) on Amazon sales rankings. Several libraries are showing holds as high as 10 [...]

GalleyChat regulars sported their new GalleyChat buttons at ALA Midwinter. Below in the Macmillan booth, Standing, from L to R — Talia Sherer, Macmillan Library Marketing, mugging for the camera; Stephanie Chase, Multnomah PL; Ali Fisher, Macmillan Library Marketing. Seated, Alene Moroni, King County P.L. Our next GalleyChat is Tues., Feb. 7 at 4 p.m., [...]

Yesterday, we wrote that this year’s Super Bowl ads bring new twists; advertisers are using social media both to tease the ads and to make them interactive. A good example of both trends just appeared on the interwebs; a teaser trailer for the longer Super Bowl teaser trailer (calling M. C. Escher!) of the movie [...]

Terry Brooks announced on his blog yesterday that Warner Brothers has optioned his Magic Kingdom of Landover series. He cautions, however, that he’s been down this route before with no result. As he said in his 2009 holiday letter, Universal had the rights to the series until April of 2010, but it went nowhere. Warner has had [...]

         

One of our New Title Radar “Watch Titles” for this week, The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey, just received an influential endorsement; the Costco book buyer, Pennie Clark Ianniciello, features the debut novel as her pick in the February newsletter, saying the author has “found a lovely balance between the harsh reality of life in 1920s Alaska [...]

UPDATE: Lionsgate will air a new Hunger Games teaser — not during the Super Bowl, but during the pregame (it’s so much fun trying to keep up with this). Here’s the teaser for the teaser: Did you know that the Super Bowl ads are a predictor of the economy? According to the San Francisco Chronicle, [...]

Rising on Amazon’s sales rankings (now at #30) as a result of a story in the “Fashion and Style” section of Sunday’s New York Times is a book by a man who reportedly ran, “a type of prostitution ring for gay and bisexual men in the film industry, including A-listers like Cary Grant, George Cukor and [...]