Authors - Want A Corporate Sponsor To Pay For Your Book Promotion?
Discover how on Wednesday, November 19th from an author who's done it
What do you do when you don't have a big budget to promote your book?
Answer: get help from corporate and non-profit promotional partners. To
discover how, join us for a free telephone seminar on Wednesday, November
19th with a non-celebrity author who's done sponsorship deals with major
companies like Wachovia, Coke, Toyota, and Sony Pictures. You'll hear how
in just 18 months, his partners have agreed to buy 50,000 copies of his
self-published book, allowed him get over $500,000 in advances for his
second book, paid him high fees for 65 speaking engagements and helped him
reach over two million people a month while raising $250,000 for
charity.
www.MillionDollarAuthorClub.com/call281
Among
yesterday's 29 new deals: Allison Winn Scotch's latest novel, to Shaye
Ayreheart Books; Sarah Silverman's humorous essays, to HarperCollins; how
the hunt for natural gas is transforming small town America, for Random
House; Barrett Brown takes on the gurus in HOT, FAT & CROWDED, for
Cambridge House; a fashion and beauty guide from the WhoWhatWear.com
founders, for Abrams; and still many more.
New
deals page
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Deal Reports
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Redstone
Has to Keep Reassuring Investors
Shares of CBS
and Viacom have continued to fall recently as investors remain concerned that
Sumner Redstone will be forced to sell some of his shares in order to
refinance his $1.6 billion in debt. In a self-fulfilling spiral, the market
worries that "further weakness would undermine Mr. Redstone's talks
with lenders and force him to sell stock in the two companies he
controls." The WSJ adds: "Redstone is expected to have to sell
some assets to get bankers to agree to a restructuring. Advisers are
combing through the family's holdings to assess their value and ease of
sale, according to people familiar with the situation. But the two sides
are exploring a longer timetable to sell any assets in an effort to avoid
fire-sale valuations, the people said."
Redstone said once again in a statement that his holdings exceed his debts
and he has no plans to sell shares in either CBS or Viacom. Despite a big
rally yesterday, CBS shares have fallen another 21 percent this weekend.
Yesterday the board approved the continuation of their 27 cent per share
dividend (which represents an annualized yield of close to 17 percent.)
WSJ
Quercus
Raising More Capital; Cheetham Steps Down
Shut out of
traditional credit markets, Quercus is planning to raise 1.75 million
pounds "in additional working capital and to strengthen its balance
sheet," nearly all of which will come from Pentland Group, which
currently holds almost 20 percent of the company's stock. Shareholders must
approve a waiver from the takeover code, however, to allow Pentland to
increase their stake to more than 30 percent. The thinly-traded company
currently has a market cap of 3.1 million pounds, with the stock having
fallen over 71 percent in a year.
The immediate need is to refinance 775,000 pounds in loans that have been
used to fund the publisher's development during "prevailing economic
and stock market conditions" and the directors "believe that the
loans are no longer a viable source of ongoing funding."
The company says they plan to continue to acquire and grow aggressively.
They note that "approximately £650,000 of the funds raised will be
used for advances to authors and to expand the company's list of
contracts," while another 200,000 pounds will go "to strengthen
the publishing teams and the foreign rights team."
Additionally, executive chairman (and holder of over 9 percent of the
stock) Anthony Cheetham will become non-executive chairman immediately,
which he calls "a natural progression to ensure a stable transition
into the next stage of the group's development."
Proposal
More
UK Credit Insurance Worries
Credit
insurance seems to be a more standard feature of doing business in the UK
than it is in the US, and the FT reports on growing concerns that "the
drying up of credit insurance could herald a wave of insolvencies in the
troubled sector with the weakest stores and suppliers driven out of
business."
Entrepreneur Luke Johnson, whose company owns Borders UK, says: "This
is a lubricant that is vital for everyday transactions. I think if
necessary the government should step in to replace the capacity
collapse."
An anonymous executive adds: "If credit insurance gets pulled it can
be more serious than bank debt having to be renegotiated because working
capital is something that a lot of businesses regarded as being for free.
If credit insurers say they are no longer going to cover suppliers, you've
got three months of cash flow to find and that is very destabilising."
That process can be seen at Woolworth's wholesaling subsidiary EUK (whose
customers include ASDA and Borders UK). As the paper reported yesterday,
"EUK would normally give wholesale customers weeks to settle bills.
But in a step that underlines fears over Woolworths' creditworthiness, some
of its own suppliers have begun to demand that it pay them cash
immediately. This has forced EUK to insist some of its customers also pay
cash in advance."
FT
NY
Considers Library Funding Cuts
One more story
on the economy: New York's budget division has recommended to the governor
a $20 million cut in library support as part of proposed statewide
reductions of expenses. That represents about 20 percent of the currently
allocated $99 million, a number already slimmed by $4 million from the 2007
allocation. The NY Library Association says the proposal "would bring
library aid down to a level not seen since 1993." Executive director
Michael Borges says in a statement that "no other educational
institutions have been targeted for a 20 percent cut in state funding.
There seems to be no recognition by state budget makers that library usage
has skyrocketed over the last year as more people turn to libraries for
finding jobs, improving their literacy skills and for free reading
materials and programs for their families."
NYLA
RDR
Appeals Rowling Ruling
Facing a fine
of just $6,750 and free legal defense, why wouldn't they? Michigan's RDR
Books
filed a notice of appeal last week against Judge Robert Patterson's
September ruling in favor of Warner Bros., blocking publication of RDR's
HARRY POTTER LEXICON.
Grand
Rapids Press
December's
Chicago Magazine will carry a story called Bagging the Media Queen, looking
at Kitty Kelley's research and forthcoming book on Oprah Winfrey. The
Sun-Times says the article "makes it pretty clear Kelley's
long-anticipated book about the TV queen will not be a puff piece. Kelley told all of the people she's
interviewed that her Oprah project will not be a hatchet job.... Yet the
Chicago mag story points out that even after spending a hour or two
listening to glowing tales about Oprah, Kelley eventually gets around to questions about sex, drugs
and old boyfriends."
Sun-Times
How
to Keep Cooking Everything
Mark Bittman's
HOW TO COOK EVERYTHING has sold over 2 million copies in 10 years and now
Wiley is releasing an announced 300,000-copy printing of a substantially
revised edition. The author tells the WSJ, "there is a lot less meat
in this edition. We made a decision to increase recipes for vegetables,
fruit, beans, grains and salads. The balance has shifted. I looked at the
old edition and thought, 200 chicken recipes, who needs that?"
WSJ
Namrata Tripathi will join
Atheneum Children's as executive editor on December 8. She has most
recently been senior editor at Hyperion Children's.
Additionally, associate editor Lisa Cheng
will move from Margaret K. McElderry Books to Atheneum, reporting to
Tripathi.
Filipino
author Miguel Syjuco has won the Man Asian Literary Prize for ILUSTRADO, a
about "a young Filipino caught within a notorious scandal spanning
over the Philippine history." The judges said it "seems to us to
possess formal ambition, linguistic inventiveness and sociopolitical
insight in the most satisfying measure. Brilliantly conceived, and stylishly
executed, it covers a large and tumultuous historical period with seemingly
effortless skill. It is also ceaselessly entertaining, frequently raunchy,
and effervescent with humor."
Prize
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