We all know that publishing is an unpredictable business. Who would have imagined, a year ago, say, that a self-help book based on an obscure Australian video would become one of the most successful books of the year? (See The Secret, on the Nielsen BookScan charts, pages 4 and 5.) Or that books by such beloved authors as Jonathan Lethem and Alice Sebold would get relatively cool receptions? Nobody—not even the most experienced and hopeful editors and agents and booksellers—that's who. Yet that's what we like about the book business: it is the unknown, the sense of magic, that keeps us signing contracts, stocking shelves and turning pages year after year.
Of course, it's silly to try to predict what will happen to books, their folk and the biz, in the coming year—beyond the unavoidable fact that James Patterson and/or his staff will have another bestseller in 2008. But hope springs eternal, they say—and what I hope for is prescience. Here, then, are some of my predictions for 2008:
1 Congress will pass a law requiring that everyone who has ever run for, held or fled from public office must be represented by Robert Barnett. The Williams & Connelly attorney made famous by his representation of memoirs by both Bill and Hillary Clinton has become completely politics-blind now that he has represented Lynne Cheney and Karl Rove, thus prompting bipartisan agreement on the measure. The only bold-faced holdout has been Al Gore, who forsook the Barnett route years ago and got himself a couple of bestsellers and a Nobel Prize, to boot. Luckily, he's gone global and is not much in Washington anymore.
2 Thomas Nelson Inc. will again delay, then re-announce, then eventually cancel its publication of Lynne Spears's book about being a celebrity parent. (Perhaps Beaufort, known for its canniness about American reading appetites, will pick it up.) By the time this book actually gets to the stores, Jamie Lynn's “baby” will herself be a teenager with her own TV show on Fox, and it'll be a grandparenting book.
3 The HR departments of most New York publishing houses will amend their employee vacation policies to allow for Judith Regan Deposition days. Anyone even remotely connected to her alleged cabal—Jewish or otherwise—which is to say anyone who has ever met, worked with or even heard stories about the difficult but brilliant editor fired by HarperCollins last year, may be called to testify in her $100-million lawsuit. The number of JRD days one can take depends on where one works: Harper employees are allowed the most, and it looks like I might have to take a few.
4 Speaking of Judith Regan, she will surely resurface in 2008 as more than a litigant. But I no longer fantasize that one of her wealthy publishing success stories—think Howard Stern—will bankroll her in the book business. She'll end up in TV, you just watch, especially if the writers' strike continues. Regan was never afraid to diss the establishment and find her own brand of material. Maybe she'll even team up with her friend Bernie Kerik's beard for The Judy and Rudy Show; if nothing else, Giuliani's numbers might go up.
5 Thanks to the writers' strike—not to mention the success of Beowulf—filmmakers will increasingly turn to serious, impenetrable classics for material. Look for TheIliad, The Odyssey and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in a theater near you. But I doubt even a pixilated Angelina Jolie or a presidential Mitt Romney could turn the Book of Mormon—Mark Twain tagged it “chloroform in print”—into a blockbuster.
6 Jessica Seinfeld will publish another book—this one a fashion tome about hiding figure flaws in clothes. But this time she'll borrow just the title:Skinny Bitch. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
7 The master-editor of the nonfiction bestseller, Twelve's Jon Karp, will score again with an expensive memoir from longtime Massachusetts senator Edward M. Kennedy. In the time-honored tradition of Kennedy memoirs (see Caroline Kennedy's recent collection of anecdotes, including a letter she wrote as a five-year-old to Santa), it will say nothing. But it will say it oh-so-well. Long on intimate, anecdotal memories of his martyred brothers but short on personal revelation, the book will not, as rumored, be called If I Did It.
8 The Sony Reader and the Kindle will continue to battle it out for digital supremacy. While my money is on the wireless Kindle, it remains to be seen which, if either, of the two devices will avoid becoming the Betamax or eight-track tape of its generation.
9 The 2008 election will suggest a connection between what Americans read and how they vote. Consider: lifetime sales of Hillary Clinton's Living History and Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope so far way outstrip the sale of books by any of the Republicans, including John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. Does this predict a Democratic victory? Maybe, unless... can you say “Swift Boat”?
10 Scholastic won't cease to exist, even in a J.K. Rowling—fallow year, or decade. Not, that is, if its aggressive and indefatigable publicity department has anything to say in the matter.
11 Publishing folk will continue to pay too much for books at auction, ignore the midlist and lament such quaint customs as the returns system. The number of books we publish will continue to go up as the number of readers go down. But we really wouldn't have it any other way now, would we? Because the book business wouldn't be the book business without the Sturm und Drang.
12PW will be here, chronicling it all as it happens and weighing in all through the year. Notice, for example, how in this issue we've recapped our very popular United States of Bookselling series and re-gifted its highlights. Next week, a new series, 50 Under 40—about the publishing world's up-and coming younger folk—will debut and run throughout 2008.
And of course, you'll continue to look to our reviews, our features, our news and our growing, expanding Web site for everything you need to know about the business that, against all odds, we all seem still to love. And if that's not exactly a prediction, it is truly my fondest wish.
Happy New Year.
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