Four More Hours
Timothy Ferriss has just signed a major deal with Crown to continue his 4-Hour brand; executive editor Heather Jackson bought world rights to a new 4-Hour title from StephenHanselman at Level5 Media. Ferriss, whose The 4-Hour Work Week has sold 600,000 hardcovers to date for Crown, will bring his approach to “lifestyle hacking” to an equally important area of our lives in the new work, but beyond that, the actual topic of the book is still under wraps. Pub date is early 2010.
Word by Word
HarperStudio senior editor Julia Cheiffetz has signed up Stanley Fish's How to Write a Sentence in a world rights deal negotiated by Melissa Flashman at Trident. This celebration of language and rhetoric by the NYT columnist will draw from a wide range of examples, including Hobbes, Scalia and Elmore Leonard. Fish is the author of 10 books, most recently Save the World on Your Own Time, published this past summer by Oxford. Harper's tentative pub date is 2010.
Reich Builds Franchise
Doubleday executive editor Stacy Creamer has acquired two new novels of international espionage by Christopher Reich via Richard Pine at InkWell, who sold North American rights. The two books will continue the franchise that began with Reich's bestselling Rules of Deception, published this summer, and will again feature American doctor Jonathan Ransom. No pub dates for the new books yet; Doubleday will first publish a sequel to Rules of Deception, titled Rules of Vengeance, next July.
Fostering Innovation
Hyperion editorial director Will Balliett bought world rights to Eric Haseltine's first book, Long Fuse: Big Bang via Wes Neff at the Leigh Bureau. Haseltine, a strategic and conceptual thinker who has worked with the Imagineers, where he was head of R&D, as well as the National Security Agency, will provide insight into how organizations can light the long fuse that leads to big innovation while still performing the daily tasks necessary to keep the existing enterprise viable. Pub date is spring 2010.
One Year's Soundtrack
Da Capo executive editor Ben Schafer has acquired David Browne's Fire and Rain: How Rock & Roll and America Changed in 1970 via Erin Hosier at Dunow, Carlson & Lerner. This socio-cultural-musical look at this pivotal year is told through the music and stories behind four albums that defined those times: the Beatles' Let It Be, Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge over Troubled Water, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's Déjà Vu and James Taylor's Fire and Rain. Da Capo has world rights, and pub date is spring 2011.
Man and Wolf
Claiborne Hancock and Jessica Case at Pegasus have acquired U.S. rights to Mark Rowlands's The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death and Happiness via Angela Rose at Granta. Rowlands, a philosophy professor at the University of Miami, writes of stumbling across an ad in the local paper for wolf cubs, and subsequently ending up with a wolf that would become a permanent fixture in his life, from the classroom and rugby games to travels in Italy and France; Rowland will also describe how the wolf led him to reevaluate his attitude toward love, happiness and what it means to be human.
The Briefing
Joanna Yas at Open City has acquired North American rights to Rachel Sherman's first novel, Shooting the Gap, which had been previously signed up at Macadam/Cage; pub date is fall 2009. Open City published Sherman's collection of stories, The First Hurt, which was shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor Prize, in 2006. Emilie Stewart negotiated the deal.
