20/20 doesn't often commit to following an author around for a year, but journalist Nora Vincent's account of the 18 months she spent living as a man—complete with five o'clock shadow, size 111/2 shoes and a high-octane sales job—was tailor-made for TV. And that's only the first gig in the macho media lineup for Self-Made Man (Jan. 23). People will run a first serial excerpt in early January, while Good Morning America and Time have scheduled interviews. Viking is planning an 80,000-copy first printing.
When A Million Little Pieces author James Frey couldn't fight the ghoulish thoughts that shadowed his recovery from addiction, he found solace in Stephen Mitchell's 1992 translation of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching from Harper Perennial. In the 12 weeks since Oprah tapped Frey's memoir, new readers have been turning to the pocket-sized paperback work of philosophy, which Frey has singled out as the best edition: Harper reports that sales have spiked from 1,500 copies in September to 10,500 in November.
A novel for children set in Vienna just before the Holocaust isn't so unusual, but Emil and Karlis notable for having been penned during that time. Written in Yiddish by Yankev Glatshteyn and published in the U.S. in 1940, the book was recently rediscovered by Jeffrey Shandler, professor of Yiddish literature and Holocaust studies at Rutgers, who translated it into English. Agent MiriamAltshuler sent it to NealPorter at Roaring Brook Press, who will publish it next April. Word is spreading quickly on Yiddish listservs, among other places. "The story anticipates the Holocaust before it happens in an extraordinary way," Porter says. "It's a terrific read as well as having all of this historical significance."
Serious nonfiction readers watch C-SPAN2's Book TV because it fills the gap left by more celebrity-driven media. Among publishers, the cable channel's author interview series,AfterWords, is developing a reputation for delivering a solid sales pop. The series pairs authors with guest interviewers with whom they share a common thread, such as Dr. Bruce Chadwick, author of First American Army (Sourcebooks, Oct.), who was interviewed by University of Virginia history professor Edward Lengel on November 26. Sales of Chadwick's novelistic account of the Revolutionary War jumped from 221 units the previous week to 505 units the week after the show aired.
