Back in the old days—long before Napster—publishers and booksellers actually worried about the competition between books and music for a finite number of entertainment dollars. Now many in the book business are forging new harmonies between the media.

For bestselling novelist E. Lynn Harris, music is central to the plot of his July release, Any Way the Wind Blows (Doubleday), featuring Broadway diva Yancey Harrington Braxton, who was jilted at the altar in Not a Day Goes By (Anchor), which is just out in paperback. When Harris began writing Any Way the Wind Blows, he said, "I started with the title, and I tried to figure out what the title meant. Then I thought, that's Yancey. She's got a song, and it's going up the charts."

With his background in marketing—Harris worked in sales for 13 years before self-publishing his first novel, Invisible Life, in 1991—he decided to record a promotional Yancey song with the help of Bobby Daye, who wrote the music and lyrics. Whitney Huston's backup singer Yvette Cason performed the vocals. Doubleday produced 15,000 promo-only CD-singles that have the same title and cover art as the book. Daye is so pleased with the result that he's already in talks with Harris about doing other CD compilations from his books—and possibly a Broadway musical.

Doubleday initially used the CDs to create buzz among Harris's 7,000-plus fan base and key accounts. "What we hope to do," said Doubleday director of publicity Alison Rich, referring to the next phase of the promotion, "is work with all the radio stations where Harris is interviewed and have them play it."

In perhaps one of the most unusual literature and pop music combos to date, Mark Z. Danielewski, author of House of Leaves (Pantheon, March 2000) and his singer/songwriter sister Poe, whose album Haunted (Atlantic Records) came out last fall, are finishing a 44-city tour opening for Depeche Mode. Danielewski is not just going along for the ride. He's up on stage with Poe performing a passage from his novel on "Hey Pretty (Drive-By 2001 Mix)," which reached #13 on the Billboard Modern Rock chart. Danielewski also appears in the "Hey Pretty" video currently airing on MTV.

Both brother and sister look to the other for inspiration. In the fine print on the liner notes for Haunted, for example, Poe credits Danielewski's 709-page first novel, which won the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award in April, for many of her songs. On the back of the CD, there's a plug for Danielewski's House of Leaves. Similarly, the back cover of his book recommends Haunted. "We mutually influenced each other," Danielewski told PW in a phone interview on the tour bus with shouts of "Mark's the adult" in the background. He said his sister's work had a melancholy effect on his novel. "When we finished [the book and album], we said, 'Wow, these relate. They're siblings to each other,'" Danieleski added.

There is a more conventional link between book and music in Colin Escott and Kira Florita's celebration of Hank Williams: Snapshots from the Lost Highway (Da Capo Press), which brings together letters, photographs and lyrics of the country musician best known for "Your Cheatin' Heart" and "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry." The book's publication will coincide with the release of Timeless Hank Williams (Lost Highways Records), a tribute album featuring Bob Dylan, Lucinda Williams and Sheryl Crow.

Given more than one Lost Highway connection to the book—Florita is v-p of marketing for the label—Da Capo marketing director Kevin Hanover commented, "As much as possible, we are trying to tie in. Anytime you can cross-promote, you have the attention of reviewers and the paying customer."

Da Capo enjoyed similar synergies with Wynton Marsalis and Carl Vigeland's Jazz in the Bittersweet Blues of Life (Da Capo), a portrait in dialogue of the famous jazz musician, for this year's BEA, where Marsalis gave a benefit performance for the Book Industry Foundation. Hanover is working with Sony/Legacy to copromote Marsalis's new CD, Popular Songs: The Best of Wynton Marsalis, which was released late last month. "We'll do ads together," Hanover said, "and we're working with a group that does jazz radio promotion. They'll be promoting our book with the CD."

While it may have seemed like a natural for Nashville singer/songwriter Steve Earle to play his music in conjunction with the June tour for his first book, a collection of short stories, Doghouse Roses (Houghton Mifflin), he refused. "He wanted to be an author when he was on tour," explained Houghton marketing manager Carla Gray, adding, "it's really hard to separate the music and songwriting from his fiction. Sixty percent of the questions he got on tour were about his music." Yet, of all the stories in Doghouse Roses, only "Taneytown" started out as a song.

Earle may have been reluctant to mix his music and fiction directly, but he did agree to put out postcards for people who wanted to know more about his then-forthcoming book at a music tour in the spring. Gray told PW that the publisher got back 4,000 postcards from fans. Also, country greats like Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson, who had no such qualms, offered to plug Doghouse Roses at their own concerts.

North Carolina—based Algonquin helped pioneer a series of book and music tours last spring (Bookselling, July 2) for authors such as Larry Brown, who did a three-city tour for Billy Ray's Farm with musician Alejandro Escovedo, who promoted his CD, Man Under the Influence (Bloodshot). A similar event cosponsored by No Depression magazine with Silas House, author of Clay's Quilt, and fiddler Caitlin Cary for her CD Waltzie (Yep Roc) so impressed Steve Gardner, promotions manager for Sugar Hill Records in Durham, N.C., that he's hoping to make his own music with Algonquin in the fall.

"The part that I thought was really exciting about that event," said Gardner, "was I saw half the crowd holding Silas's book, and they said, 'I've never been to a reading before. This book is awesome.' Half the crowd I've never seen before, and they were going up to the musicians and asking if they could get their CD. It was just a great cross-pollination." For the September release of Robert Morgan's This Rock (Algonquin), Gardner is hoping to hold more book and music events. "I am a big fan of Gap Creek," he said.

At the same time, booksellers have tuned into the idea of creating more excitement around their regular reading series by adding music. Timothy Huggins, owner of Newtonville Books in Newtonville, Mass., is planning an off-site writers-and-singers series at the Kendall Cafe in Cambridge, Mass. Cosponsored by Q Division, a recording studio in nearby Somerville, the series will be held on six consecutive Tuesdays starting October 9 and will kick off with local Mystic River author Dennis Lehane. "The whole concept is to stimulate a new market for live book readings and music performances," he said.