HC, EpiCom Team Up For New 'Day in the Life'

The Women in Military Service for the Military Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery was the setting for the May 8 launch of A Day in the Life of the United States Armed Forces. Among the dignitaries taking part in the event was Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who said, "This project is a superb and appropriate tribute to the armed forces."

Gen. Tommy Franks, who ran the war in Iraq, was also at the opening reception for what will become a traveling exhibition, with both the reception and the exhibition paid for by Boeing, whose name also appears in the book as an underwriter. "You see a movie and the images are gone," said Franks. "But you can put this wonderful book on the coffee table and look at the pictures of our men and women in the armed forces and you'll think of them every time you see them." The book, which dispatched 125 photojournalists around the world on October 22, 2002, is a joint venture between HarperCollins and EpiCom Media, whose founders include Trident Media Group's Robert Gottlieb.

"This book shares a message of bravery, dedication, honor and sacrifice that is lived out each day by men and women in the United States armed forces," said Jane Friedman, the president and CEO of HC. "The book doesn't have a political point of view," confirmed Gottlieb, whose EpiCom co-founders are Columbia Pictures COO Lewis Korman and packager/photojournalist Matthew Naythons.

Conceived after the tragic attacks of September 11, the project was Gottlieb's creative answer to the visceral question "What can an ordinary citizen do?" When John Siblersack, a senior v-p at Trident, introduced his boss to Naythons, it struck Gottlieb that he could "supercharge" the A Day in the Life franchise, a trademark owned by HC, by marrying it to a powerful icon—the American military.

Gottlieb had little trouble interesting his friend Lewis Korman, who had lost a son-in-law in the World Trade Center collapse. HC has issued a multibook license to EpiCom, and Gottlieb told PW that there are three more A Day in the Life projects under consideration.