Book Deal Season Begins

With summer officially over and the annual Frankfurt Book Fair set to open in the middle of next week, publishers and agents are dealing at full speed, and announcing more sales than usual as they try to stir interest in selling rights to other territories.Recent big money nonfiction sales have included Oxford history professor Diarmaid MacCulloch’s sweeping history “Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years,” which the Penguin Group bought for their American and British imprints for over $1 million.New York Times editorial page editor Gail Collins got to high six-figures in an auction for her untitled follow-up to last year’s “America’s Women.”The new book is described as a social and political history of American women from 1960 to the present. William Morrow published the first book, but Little, Brown won the rights to this one.While it may not resonate with foreign publishers, the book trade here should take well to Kathy L. Patrick’s “The Pulpwood Queen’s Tiara Wearing, Book Bearing Guide to Life.” The Pulpwood Queens are a group of book clubs that have grown to encompass 40 chapters in seven states, and Ms. Patrick is the founder and proud owner of “America’s only bookstore beauty salon.” (It’s only fair to note, however, that among the latest MacArthur Foundation “genius award” honorees announced earlier this week is Rueben Martinez, who began a bookstore in his Santa Ana barbershop.) Warner Books will publish Ms. Patrick’s celebratory story of “how her love of books changed her life, and took her to places she never dreamt possible.”For younger women, the author of the hit young adult series “Gossip Girl” Cecily von Ziegesar has signed a contract to write three more books in that series, as well as launching a new spinoff series. “The It Girl” is based on one of the lead Gossip Girl characters, who ventures off to a top East Coast boarding school.A teenaged author has also won a six-figure contract, as 15-year-old Shauna Fleming will compile “A Million Thanks” for Doubleday’s religious imprint. Ms. Fleming will tell the story of her campaign to gather a million letters to U.S. troops in Iraq, and share some of the letters she compiled.

Book Deal Season Begins

Book Deal Season Begins

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