The Wall Street Journal has a great piece on how Penguin built on the word-of-mouth success of Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love, and turned the well-received hardcover into a paperback blockbuster.

Our favorite bit:

Dear Oprah,

Please stop it.

Now when I recommed Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex to people as one of my favorite coming-of-age novels of all time, they're going to be like, Gag, wasn't that shit on Oprah? Soon you'll put your Oprah Seal of Approval on all the new book pressings. I'll walk into the bookstore and I'll see it.

Fresh from Publisher's Lunch Weekly:

Humor
Borat Sagdiyev's BORAT: Touristic Guidings To Minor Nation of U.S. and A./BORAT: Touristic Guidings To Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, two books in one -- half a guide to America for Kazakhs and the other half a guide to Kazakhstan for Westerners, including illustrations and color photographs, to Suzanne Herz and Peter Gethers at Flying Dolphin, with Gethers editing, for publication in November 2007, by Dan Strone at Trident Media Group (NA).

From today's Publisher's Lunch:

Crown has pulled back on another high-profile acquisition, deciding not to go forward with Melissa Dumas' LIVE TO TELL: My Life as Madonna's Nanny, which had been pre-empted in a major deal. The house simply says "it will not be publishing the memoir to be authored by Madonna's former nanny, Melissa Dumas.

Didn't get a chance to post about this last week, but better late than never. Straight from Publisher's Lunch:

Children's: Young Adult

Grammy-nominated musician Avril Lavigne's MAKE 5 WISHES color manga books, in which an introverted teenager gets a series of wishes granted by a demon go bad and then meets her hero -- Avril Lavigne, who helps her find the courage to conquer her own personal demons, to Betsy Mitchell at Del Rey Manga, for publication in April 2007 and July 2007, by Terry McBride at Nettwerk Management (world).

In the spirit of politics and exhaustion, today's Publisher's Lunch newsletter threw another hissy over this brief New York Times piece on Barack Obama's "surprise best seller," entitled The Audacity of Hope.

Says the Times:

"But its rapid rise to the No. 1 spot on the New York Times nonfiction list next Sunday, placing the author, the freshman Democratic senator from Illinois, ahead of heavyweight authors like John Grisham, Bill O’Reilly and even Bob Woodward, is something of a publishing stunner."

Relax, Tim Gunn, it's just fashion!

Holler! Pardon the semi-sporadic postings up in here. Now that it's fall and Boston is a city again, there's ohsomuch more to do. Of late, we've been buried underneath an imposing stack of press releases that doesn't ever seem to get smaller -- though it does include some delicious upcoming author appearances that we'll obvs let you know about asap.

Iron Man: Where are the chapter outlines at?

We love it when this sort of thing is regulated to a mere blip in Publisher's Lunch. Way to bury the lead, guys:

"Ghostface Killah may be out $50,000 after he apparently got spooked by a deadline for his memoir. A Manhattan judge has ordered the Wu-Tang Clan member to return his advance when he repeatedly failed to give HarperCollins a manuscript, due in January 2002, The News' Jose Martinez reports.

Hey hi, did you miss us? The internerd at Phoenix HQ was all crazy and unreliable through the end of last week. Thank Christ the www is just a series of tubes. Rest easy, everything's fixed now. Here's an interesting bit from the inbox:

Via Publisher's Marketplace:

Over the weekend the Wall Street Journal looked at books that come with soundtracks--sometimes formally packaged with the book, sometimes informally posted on the web.

The United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) monitors both the number and type of books published per country per year. In 2005, the US shelved 172,000 new books. We only came in second to the UK, which printed a total of 206,000.

With numbers like that it's no surprise to anyone -- especially struggling writers -- that landing a book deal, or even just scoring an agent, has gotten harder than debuting a number one pop single without ever having released a record

We're delighted to regurgitate the completely phenomenal news that the snarky ladies behind one of our favorite blogs, the most triumphant Go Fug Yourself, have just landed book deal worth at least a quarter of the total value of Sienna Miller's capri leggings collection:

Publisher's Marketplace reports the sale of "Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan's The Fug Awards, fashion critiques of celebrity outfits from the authors of a popular website, to Jeremie Ruby-Strauss at Simon Spotlight Entertainment, in a good deal, by Scott Hoffman at Folio Literary Management (NA)."