The New York Giants’ Super Bowl win last Sunday was one for the ages — and wide receiver Victor Cruz appears to be the first who will write about it.
The salsa-dancing standout player, who is repped by IMG for non-play-related activities, is said to be closing in on a book deal.
Scott Waxman at the Waxman Literary Agency is handling the book proposal in conjunction with IMG. “He’s meeting with publishers next week,” said an IMG insider. Waxman did not return calls.
Giants Head Coach Tom Coughlin is likely to jump into the book chase sometime in the next two weeks.
The biggest prize, Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning, remains as elusive in the literary world as he is on the gridiron.
“He’s turned down big money — seven figure deals — in the past,” said one publishing source. A second source close to the quarterback said he has “no interest” in a book at this time.
“Publishers are frustrated because the one they really want they can’t get,” said one top editor.
Aside from Eli’s signature on a book deal, the one project that has publishers salivating is a book by his dad, Archie Manning, who also has another famous son working in the same league, Colts’ QB Peyton.
Or perhaps a joint book by all three, one on raising kids who grow up to be Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks while keeping grounded and being real role models.
But that one isn’t happening, either. The closest publishers have come to that is a 2009 illustrated children’s book, “Family Huddle,” in which all three cooperated as co-authors.
A Coughlin book will have to shake off the memory of a lackluster memoir he wrote after the 2007-08 season, “A Team to Believe in: Our Journey to the Super Bowl Championship,” published by ESPN Books, which at the time was done through Random House.
Coughlin, still a relatively unknown entity outside of New York back then, pulled in about $400,000 for a book that basically was a disappointment.
The veteran coach did little to promote the book — but it was hardly his fault. It hit shelves just as training camp was getting underway in late summer 2008.
Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for Random House, said, “It had a modest sale. The coach’s priority understandably, but regrettably, was the team, so he wasn’t able to promote it.”
In contrast, the less successful Jets Head Coach Rex Ryan had his memoir from Doubleday, “Play Like You Mean It: Passion, Laughs and Leadership in the World’s Most Beautiful Game,” land briefly on best-seller lists this spring.
The book, written with Sports Illustrated’s Don Yaeger, landed in May and Ryan spent a lot of time promoting it in the off-season.
Working in favor of the Giants head coach this time around, is the fact that Coughlin is being mentioned as a future Hall of Famer.
Nevertheless, he is expected to steer clear of a “ winning season” sports memoir and instead focus more on a business leadership and motivational book — which takes a little longer to write but tends to have a longer selling period.
Sandy Montag, Coughlin’s agent at IMG, confirmed, “We are exploring doing a second book. Clearly, he’s a great leader and can teach a lot of people in business and in life about leadership and motivation.”
Shrinking
The pruning down to a few core magazines at the Reader’s Digest Association continued yesterday with the news that new CEO Robert Guth had unloaded the My Weekly Reader franchise of classroom newspapers to Harry Potter publisher Scholastic Inc.
The dollar amount was estimated to be below $5 million with much of the cost believed to be tied to the assumption of liabilities. Scholastic didn’t even bother to announce the deal with a press release.
A Scholastic spokeswoman said that no changes will be made for the current school year.
Operations are expected to remain in White Plains, NY and Delran, NJ for the short term while Scholastic figures out how to run it.
Guth announced the deal in a memo to RDA employees.
RDA also said last month it reached an agreement to sell off one of its biggest growth engines, Allrecipes.com, to Meredith for $175 million. Late last year, RDA sold Everyday with Rachael Ray, which was losing about $10 million a year, to Meredith.
RDA emerged from bankruptcy in early 2010 but it didn’t solve its woes as it went through a tumultuous period in which it had three different CEOs in one six-month period last year, culminating in Guth’s appointment in September.
“As you have seen, we are very deliberately moving forward with our transformation plans for RDA,” said Guth in yesterday’s memo.
Newsweek redux
Deidre Depke, former editor of Newsweek.com and a veteran of BusinessWeek, is joining as executive editor of The Daily Beast.
Depke, who had been at The Week’s Web site, succeeds Jane Spencer, who is going on sabbatical.