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BEA Show Daily 2011: Overlook's First 40 Years
Despite a inauspicious start, Overlook Press has thrived for the past four decades. Founded in 1971 by Alfred ("Fredy") Mayer, a retired glove manufacturer, and his son, Avon Books head Peter Mayer, Overlook's first office was an apple shed in Woodstock, N.Y. Its inaugural list contained a single title, in German. But on the strength of that one book, Aufbau, Penguin agreed to distribute Overlook, which it does to this day, and Fredy was encouraged to ask his son, "Aren't there some other books we could do together?"
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BEA Show Daily 2011: William Joyce Is Back
More than a decade has passed since William Joyce, author and illustrator of George Shrinks, Santa Calls, and other titles, has published a children's book. His fans will be pleased to learn that he is back. The Guardians of Childhood, a series of seven picture books and six chapter books that tell the formative stories of such childhood icons as Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Sandman, debuts in September from Atheneum. The inaugural releases are a picture book, The Man in the Moon, which has a 350,000-copy announced first printing, and a chapter book, Nicholas St. North and the Battle of the Nightmare King, coauthored by Joyce and Laura Geringer and illustrated by Joyce, which has a 150,000-copy initial print run.
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BEA Show Daily 2011: Movie Time for Judy Moody
Judy Moody's humorous mood swings and adventures have won her many fans since her first appearance in 2000. Published by Candlewick, Megan McDonald's original Judy Moody spawned eight subsequent novels starring this character, plus three featuring her and her spunky brother, Stink (who is featured in his own series, now totaling eight books); two activity books; a coloring book; and a journal—all illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds. The series is now available in 22 languages, has won more than 30 awards, and has a worldwide in-print tally of 14 million copies.
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BEA Show Daily 2011: Storey Time for Kids
Best known for its adult titles for DIYers on gardening, crafts, animal raising, and cooking, Storey Publishing in North Adams, Mass., has begun introducing project-driven books in the same categories for kids. Rather than create a separate children's imprint, Storey's books for kids are catalogued and sold alongside those for their adult counterparts. "The big premise for us," says Storey president Pam Art, "is that we're not going to diverge too far from adult categories. If we stay in the same categories, we can sell them into the same accounts and keep them in alignment with our message: practical information in harmony with the environment."
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BEA Show Daily 2011: Browsing the Booths, Chapter 2
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (3438) welcomes Chris Van Allsburg to its booth today, 11 a.m.–noon, to sign limited-edition posters from The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: Fourteen Amazing Authors Tell the Tales (HM). Also available are ARCs of this October release, which compiles stories written by children's book luminaries to accompany Van Allsburg's illustrations from his 1984 picture book, The Mysteries of Harris Burdick
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BEA Show Daily 2011: Lisa Bloom Women: Get Your Smart Back
It's one thing to report on Supreme Court cases, but quite another to cover celebrity sex tapes and drunken starlet antics. When television legal analyst Lisa Bloom—who has worked for such networks as Court TV, CNN, and CBS News—saw the changing paradigm of what news directors thought their women viewers wanted, she decided it was time to write a book that would be a wakeup call for women across the country. "Most women are pretty conversant about lip plumpers and wrinkle fillers, but they're not knowledgeable about the things that most of us would agree are important," Bloom tells Show Daily. "So rather then just throw up my hands and say, ‘Well that's just the way it is,' I thought somebody has to do something about this. So I decided to write a book."\
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BEA Show Daily 2011: Ruthe Rosen A Journey of Loss and Hope
When Ruthe Rosen, author of Never Give Up: Finding Hope and Purpose in Adversity (Cypress House, June) lost her teenage daughter to brain cancer in 2006, she turned away from despair and chose instead to use the experience to create the Let It Be Foundation, which assists families facing similar circumstances of terminal illness in young people.
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BEA Show Daily 2011: Rebecca Coleman Lust over Romance
Despite The Kingdom of Childhood being her third novel, 34-year-old Rebecca Coleman is far from jaded. She describes everything that's happened in the past few months as "the powerball jackpot of getting a book published." After her new novel was named a semifinalist in the 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest, she found agent Stephany Evans, president of FinePrint, who sold it to Mira, which is putting a lot of muscle behind it, including a 50-foot banner in the main hall at the Javits Center.
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BEA Show Daily 2011: A Chat with Eloisa James
Think fairy tales are only for children? Bosh—not when bestselling romance writer Eloisa James is telling the tale. Her latest series for Avon, based on classic fairy tales, began with A Kiss at Midnight (a Cinderella story) and continued in January with When Beauty Tamed the Beast. James has loved fairy tales since she was a child and spoke with Show Daily about the unlikely inspiration for the series.
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BEA Show Daily 2011: Lillian Luterman and Jennifer Bloom Books Are Cool for School
Booksellers freely admit it: sometimes it's difficult to get teenagers interested in reading, when there are so many high-tech gadgets vying for their attention. How about if booksellers start talking up that lifelong readers typically fare extremely well in terms of college admissions? That's what mother-daughter college admissions consultants Lillian Luterman and Jennifer Bloom tell Show Daily. Luterman and her daughter are the authors of In! College Admissions and Beyond: The Experts' Proven Strategy for Success (Abbeville), a handbook that explains their strategies in the increasingly competitive world of college admissions.
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BEA Show Daily 2011: Duff McKagan Bass Guitarist Tells All
What makes a wildly successful rock star take up book writing, such a solitary and relentlessly difficult occupation? What rewards lie in store? Duff McKagan, the punk rocker revered as the bass guitarist (and cofounder) of Guns N' Roses, Velvet Revolver, and Loaded, and now the author of the tell-all memoir It's So Easy and Other Lies (S&S/Touchstone, Oct.), blames his newfound passion on the clarity the written word brings to his thoughts. His long descent into drug addiction lent an urgency to his appreciation.
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BEA Show Daily 2011: Jeffrey Lyons A Den Full of Stars
For a glimpse at the glamorous side of BEA, head to the Abbeville booth (4406) today, 2–3 p.m., for a signed copy of movie critic Jeffrey Lyons's Stories My Father Told Me: Notes from "The Lyons Den" (June).
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BEA Show Daily 2011: Jeremy Wagner From Heavy Metal to Papyrus
Jeremy Wagner does not think it's such a stretch for a heavy metal rock star to try to break into publishing. "There are so many similarities between the book industry and the music industry," the guitarist in the band Lupara explains. Soon after graduating from high school, Wagner and his first band, Broken Hope, recorded a demo tape and shopped it around, looking for a manager and a record deal. Writing a query letter, sending out sample chapters, and trying to find a publisher after writing his debut novel, The Armageddon Chord, took him right back to those early days in his career, he says.
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BEA Show Daily 2011: Tom Perrotta Life After 'Rapture'
Tom Perrotta began writing his postapocalyptic novel The Leftovers (St. Martin's, Aug. 30) during the economic crash of 2008, when Americans began a journey through psychological trauma after losing their jobs and their homes.
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BEA Show Daily 2011: Vatsala and Ehud Sperling Created Their Own Ashram
Eleven years after Ten Speed Press published Vatsala and Ehud Sperling's A Marriage Made in Heaven: A Love Story in Letters, which chronicled the couple's yearlong courtship through written correspondence, (Vatsala from her native India and Ehud from Vermont), they have revised and caught the reader up with their relationship and the parenting of a son in For Seven Lifetimes: An East-West Journey to a Spiritually Fulfilling and Sustainable Marriage (Inner Traditions, owned by Ehud).
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BEA Show Daily 2011: Kevin Sorbo A Herculean Mind Effort
Need some inspiration this morning? Then visit the Perseus booth (4106), where between 10:30 and 11:30 a.m. actor Kevin Sorbo will sign copies of his memoir, True Strength (Da Capo Press, Oct.), which chronicles a health crisis that he had to keep secret for the sake of his career.
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BEA Show Daily 2011: Susan Orlean Fascinated with Rin Tin Tin
After discovering that 1950s TV hero Rin Tin Tin was a real dog, The Orchid Thief author, Susan Orlean, embarked on what turned into a seven-year project, Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend (Simon & Schuster). "It was sort of irresistible. It's partly a curiosity about why does something get remembered," says Orlean. "I feel I have always known of Rin Tin Tin," she writes in the opening of the book, "as if it was introduced to me by osmosis. It became part of my consciousness, like a nursery lullaby you can sing without knowing why."
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BEA Show Daily 2011: Coe Booth Returns to the World of Tyrell
Tyrell, Coe Booth's first novel, centers on a teen living in a South Bronx homeless shelter who faces difficult choices. His father is in jail, and his mother is pressuring him to become involved with drug dealing to bring in money. The novel received multiple starred reviews, won a 2007 L.A. Times Book Prize for Young Adult Fiction, and was named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults. Booth revisits Tyrell's gritty world in Bronxwood, due in September from Scholastic/PUSH.
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BEA Show Daily 2011: Mindy Kaling A 'Beautiful' Person
Mindy Kaling admits to being "a little nervous" about following in Jon Stewart's footsteps as master of ceremonies for this morning's (25th) Book & Author Breakfast. A needless worry. Kaling not only has the star power for the job (she's a co-executive producer as well as playing chatty Kelly Kapoor on the hit NBC show The Office), she has some serious credentials as a writer.
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BEA Show Daily 2011: Michael Moore Life's a Box of Chocolates
Michael Moore says before he became famous as a filmmaker and author, he often felt like a real-life Forrest Gump. "I'm just a guy from Flint, Michigan," he explains, "but I've always had this uncanny knack for crossing paths with people or events that I never intended to happen." For instance, there's the time, when he was 11 years old, that he found himself trapped on a U.S. Senate elevator with Sen. Robert Kennedy.
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