With BookExpo America beginning today at the Javits Center, publishers wasted no time in announcing a number of high profile acquisitions this morning. At Putnam the bold-faced name trotted out was Dolly Parton's. The country music legend inked with the Penguin imprint to write a book called Dream More, which is expanded, in part, from a commencement speech she gave in 2009 at the University of Tennessee and which the imprint said "recounts her deeply held philosophy of life and shares her heartfelt hopes for everyone." Putnam's Ivan Held negotiated the world rights deal at auction with Parton's lawyer Gerald F. Edelstein, and the book is scheduled for November 2012.
At Grand Central Publishing, executive editor Ben Greenberg bought world rights to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone's Things A Little Bird Told Me, in a deal negotiated by agent Lydia Wills. The title is set for April 2014 and will be about, per the imprint , "creativity and different ways of thinking, as demonstrated through Biz’s fascinating personal stories from his life and career."
HarperCollins's Harper division sent word about the first acquisition from Dennis Lehane for his new eponymous imprint: the author bought Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist The Cutting Season by Attica Locke. The title is slated for September 18 and, in the agreement, Lehane took world Engligh rights; agent Richard Abate negotiated the deal before he left WME for 3 Arts Entertainment and now Suzanne Gluck is handling, with WME controlling foreign rights. The title marks the author's second novel after her acclaimed debut, Black Water Rising.
In a second deal out of HarperCollins, Ecco's executive editor Hilary Redmon acquired North American rights to the latest from God Delusion author Richard Dawkins. The currently untitled book, which was sold by agent John Brockman at Brockman Inc., will be a somewhat person one for Dawkins; Ecco said it will "tell the story of his own intellectual evolution, explaining how his groundbreaking work as a scientist led to his work as an atheist."
