Robert Ludlum, one of the top thriller writers of his generation, has signed what St. Martin's Press is saying is the biggest deal in its history: an eight-figure contract that will make the house his exclusive North American publisher for hard and soft. SMP publisher Sally Richardson, who announced the deal, said it was "a testament to SMP's new determination to be one of the leaders in the industry." Ludlum, noting that he had "nothing but affection, respect and gratitude for my previous publisher" (his recent titles have come from Random, and in paperback from Bantam), said the SMP deal "affords me the time to explore the many ideas bouncing around this poor head." Under the new arrangement, negotiated between v-p and publisher Matthew Shear and Ludlum's agent, Henry Morrison, the author will write three hardcover thrillers, the first to appear in 2000. He will also create a series character for a new mass market series, with four paperback titles planned. Ludlum published his first thriller, The Scarlatti Inheritance, in 1971, and has since written 21 novels, each a bestseller in its day and all still in print.
PSYCHIC'S NEW HOME
Psychic Sylvia Browne scored such a success on a recent TV appearance on the Montel Williams show (see Behind the Bestsellers, Nov. 9) that her Hay House paperback, Adventures of a Psychic, shot onto bestseller lists. Even before that happened, however, her agent, Bonnie Solow of her own six-year-old New Media Marketing agency in Los Angeles, had brought Browne in to see a number of New York houses with a view to promoting her to hardcover. Visits were paid to 13, with Browne clairvoyantly predicting that in the end it would come to a fight between only two of them for her next book. That's exactly what happened, and Brian Tart, Dutton editor-in-chief, emerged the winner with what Solow called "a substantial six-figure bid" that won him world rights plus audio. Browne will also have a new collaborator, Lindsay Harrison. Her first book was a memoir, but the second, to be called The Other Side and Back: A Psychic's Guide to Our World and Beyond, will be, in effect, a handbook to the spiritual world that will also, said Tart, include practical exercises and meditations to help people get in touch with the spirit world. Yes, Browne demonstrated her gifts when she came to call, and yes, he's tried it, and, he said, "There's certainly something there." On a more hardheaded level, publication is set for next August.
WAY BEYOND THE AUTO
Anyone who has ever listened to Car Talk, the zany radio show hosted -- if that's the word -- by former Cambridge, Mass., auto mechanics Tom and Ray Magliozzi, knows that it strays far beyond its ostensible subject, which is how to get your clunker fixed. Amid peals of maniacal merriment, the brothers go off on a number of tangents, and that's just what a new book of theirs, just signed by John Duff at Perigee, will do. To be called In Our Humble Opinion: Click and Clack Rant and Rave, the book was sold by Rochelle Lurie at Boston's Zachary Shuster agency, after a heated auction involving seven publishers, for a solid six-figure sum for North American rights. (There is, naturally, intense audio interest, but the agency is hanging on to those rights for now.) The book's title refers to the brothers' nicknames; the ranting and raving, which will embrace subjects as diverse as Daylight Savings Time, Hollywood and the Starbucks coffee experience, is self-explanatory. The brothers have employed various vehicles (ahem) for their ramblings for years: they have nearly three million PBS listeners, pen a column that runs in 260 newspapers, have a much-visited Web site and have even done a book before: Car Talk, published by Dell some years ago, and now with 115,000 copies in print.
THE BOOK ON BUZZ
A word that has often been used in this section is buzz. And now there's about to be a book that examines the phenomenon so dear to the hearts of columnists. The Anatomy of Buzz by Emmanuel Rosen, an Israeli-born marketing veteran of Silicon Valley software startups, was preempted by Roger Scholl at Doubleday's Currency line for a sum in the low six figures. Agent Daniel Greenberg of James Levine Communications, Rosen's agent, said several leading business publishers had expressed interest, but he persuaded Scholl to take the book off the table. Rosen looks at both high- and low-tech industries (including publishing) to examine how buzz is started around new products, and offers advice on how it can be created. Publishing examples include the runaway campaigns for Josephine Hart's Damage and Tom Peters's In Search of Excellence. Presumably buzz for Rosen's book will be launched well in advance of publication, set for fall 2000.
A STARR IS BORN
Who, despite the countless hours of pundit time he occupies, is perhaps the least-known figure in the Washington scandals? Kenneth Starr, according to Kensington president Walter Zacharius, who decided to remedy the perceived omission by commissioning an instant "warts and all" portrait. The author Kensington discovered was Chris Tucker, a Texas-based journalist who did a bestselling book on Ross Perot during his run for the presidency. According to editor-in-chief Paul Dinas, the book, which Tucker is writing against the clock, will be published in mid-December with a first printing of 250,000 copies. Kenneth Starr: The Man Who Polarized America will carry pages of photos, and take an in-depth look at Starr's past, including his work for Presidents Bush and Reagan, his ties to the tobacco industry, and how his conservative views affected the Starr Report.
