Grateful Dead Books, an imprint of Grateful Dead Productions, has published its first original title, Spirit into Sound: The Magic of Music by the band's drummer, Mickey Hart, who is also editor-in-chief of the new house. The publisher has also taken over rights to three Grateful Dead titles and a calendar previously published in conjunction with Acid Test Productions.
Acid Test, meanwhile, is closing its doors. Rights to its two Janice Joplin titles have reverted to Laura Joplin, while hardcover rights to The Art of the Fillmore are for sale (Thunder's Mouth bought paperback rights). Rights to two other titles have reverted to the authors, and the rest of Acid Test's list is being remaindered. Stacy Kreutzmann Quinn, previously president of Acid Test, will continue packaging for Grateful Dead Books, which will use PGW for distribution.
Grateful Dead Books will also market its titles through its Web site, www.dead.net, which receives one million hits a month, and through its catalogue, which is mailed to an active list of 400,000 names. Grateful Dead Productions has $20 million in sales a year.
Future titles, noted Hart, will be "spiritually based, to reflect our band. I'm interested in creating a larger vision and have been entrusted by the others to represent them in whatever that might be."
So far, two projects are in the works, both drawing on the vast Grateful Dead audio and visual archives. "One will be a visual bio--my world, my friends--mostly a picture book," Hart told PW. The other, possibly in the form of a series, will be Art of the Dead, to be published in fall 2001.
Spirit into Sound will also be available in a combo package next spring with an accompanying CD. "I always get inspired by a book to make music," said Hart, who is compiling the CD now from Grateful Dead archival material. With the publication of Spirit into Sound, an e-mail address sis@nbn.com, was set up to encourage readers to offer their favorite musical quotes for possible inclusion in a follow-up book.
Hart, who is on a 12-city tour to promote Spirit into Sound, is the author of two previous titles, Drumming at the Edge of Magic (published first by HarperCollins) and Planet Drum. Both are now being reprinted by Grateful Dead Books. "All of us in the Grateful Dead are book readers," Hart told PW. "This is about who we were, why we were, who we are today and all the things we did to get there."
