BOOK publisher HarperCol lins, which just received the manuscript for Benazir Bhutto’s upcoming book, is now moving quickly to get it on the shelves by February following yesterday’s assassination of the former Pakistani prime minister.
The book, entitled “Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West,” was part political treatise and part memoir of the first woman elected prime minister of a Muslim nation.
HarperCollins, which like The Post, is owned by News Corp., signed up the book for an advance estimated to be around $75,000 shortly before she returned to Pakistan in October after years of living in exile.
Mark Siegel had worked with Bhutto as a collaborating writer.
“We have a finished manuscript,” said HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman, who learned about Bhutto’s murder from an e-mail alert.
When HarperCollins Executive Editor Tim Duggan sealed the deal with Bhutto, he said prophetically, “Pakistan is an increasingly volatile place, and Bhutto’s book is an eye-opening look at the mistakes we’ve made in the region and what we can do to correct them – as well as what the consequences will be if we don’t.”
Fewer mags
Magazine launches in 2007 skidded to an estimated 650 titles, the lowest tally for launches in 16 years.
Samir Husni, a University of Mississippi professor who keeps tabs on the launches and has been dubbed “Mr. Magazine,” said that the last time there were fewer launches was in 1991, when only 553 new magazines were introduced.
Though an early 1990s advertising recession was the culprit in 1991, many observers are blaming the dearth of mag launches this time on the incursions made by the Internet.
However, Husni sees a different culprit.
“I don’t blame the Internet,” said Husni. Instead, he said there are simply too many titles competing for attention on newsstands today.
“In 1980, we had 2,000 titles on newsstands,” he said. “Now there are 7,200 titles on newsstands. I think the magazine industry is still alive and kicking.”
Husni said that the number of launches was heading toward an even lower total through the first nine months, but rallied in October when 96 new titles appeared.
“The big publishers hit the brakes in the first half, but we saw a lot of small specialized publications appearing in the second half,” he said.
Publishers are being a lot more frugal in the their launch plans. Of the 650 titles, many are launching as one-offs, annuals or test issues.
“There were only 221 titles that announced they were going to be published four or more times next year,” he said.
Husni said the most popular categories for new launches this year are crafts, home and home service, and sports.
New books
Two former chief editors from the magazine world have reinvented themselves as successful novelists.
Emily Listfield, a former editor-in-chief of Fitness and features editor at Self, is working on the follow-up to her novel “Waiting to Surface,” which was published in October by Simon & Schuster’s Atria imprint and has just gone into a second printing.
“They also bought the new book I’m working on, ‘Best Intentions,’ ” she said. “I’ll deliver it in May for publication the following year.” Her new book is estimated to have scored a low six-figure advance.
“Waiting to Surface” is based on Listfield’s real-life experience losing her husband in 1999, when he disappeared while swimming off the coast of Florida.
Her husband’s body was never found and the local police refused to issue a death certificate, figuring that he had simply dropped out of sight. Eventually, he was declared dead when no sign of him ever turned up.
Listfield actually made a fairly good start as a young author before jumping into the magazine world more than a decade ago.
Simon & Schuster is now in the process of reviving two past novels she wrote to keep her name before her new fans. “Acts of Love” is slated to reappear in trade paperback this March, followed next year by “The Last Good Night.”
Meanwhile, former McCall’s Editor-in-Chief Sally Koslow, who published her first novel this year with the Putnam imprint of Penguin, has also scored big with a new two-book deal from the Ballantine imprint of Random House.
She is estimated to have fetched a combined mid six-figure advance.
Koslow was editing McCall’s when Gruner+Jahr abruptly handed the magazine over to Rosie O’Donnell in an ill-fated move to reinvent the magazine as Rosie.
Although Koslow had already been booted upstairs and was out of the line of fire, she watched much of the drama unfold and channeled a lot of it into her first novel, “Little Pink Slips,” which hit in June and is due out in paperback next year.
Koslow has already finished her next novel, which has the working title “The Late Lamented Molly Marx,” which is about a family and complex marital relationships. It’s due on shelves in 2009.
Unrest
It’s the home stretch for the three Gawker Media staffers.
Managing Editor Choire Sicha and writers Emily Gould and Josh Stein all quit on the same day, essentially wiping out half the editorial staff at Nick Denton‘s media-centric Web site.
The departures suggest some great rift or turmoil, but those leaving insisted otherwise – and to prove that point they are actually staying on until 11:59 p.m. on New Year’s Eve.
Sources say that Stein may continue on a freelance basis working the night shift.
Sicha said he admits the joint departure looked suspicious from the outside, but he insisted there was no great clash with Denton.
“We all just kind of got ‘done’ at the same time, ya know?” Sicha said. “I think it was Emily who said to me that, for one thing, she just didn’t have anything more to say on the topics she wrote about here.
Denton is expected to step in as Gawker’s acting managing editor.
“I do tease Denton all the time about how he’ll hate it and be miserable three weeks in – but secretly I think he’s going to love every minute of it,” said Sicha.
As far as what Sicha has planned, he admitted that he had nothing lined up yet other than a freelance assignment for The New York Observer – in New Hampshire.