Derek Jeter is just past the halfway point of his final season with the New York Yankees, but the future Hall of Famer has already started on his post-playing career as a book publisher and author with three books ready to launch.
“The Contract,” a novel aimed at the middle-school market, set for publication and authored by Jeter himself, is scheduled to be the first one to the plate on Sept. 23.
Simon & Schuster kicked off its trade ad campaign on Thursday.
The book is loosely based on Jeter’s childhood experience on a baseball team and at school and home but is written as fiction.
The collaborator, Paul Mantell, had earlier collaborated with former New York Giants star Tiki Barber and his twin brother, retired Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive back Ronde Barber, on several youth football books titled “Kickoff!,” “Wild Card” and “Go Long!”
Two other books are already on deck for Jeter Publishing: a photo book on Jeter’s final season, scheduled for later in the fall, and a nonfiction adult book, “The Ed Lucas Story,” scheduled for spring 2015.
That book follows the career of Lucas, who went blind at age 12 when he was hit in the face by a line drive the same day the New York Giants defeated the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1951 playoff for the National League championship.
Baseball stars reached out to him, and he went on to earn a degree in broadcasting and became a sports commentator for the Yes Network and other outlets.
Jeter said in a prepared statement his goal is “to develop a wide-ranging catalog of interesting books” and to do a series of youth-oriented books that “teach children fundamental life lessons through engaging and fun content.”
Aiming his first book at the youth market is probably shrewd, since youth and young adult books are booming in an otherwise lackluster book market.
In the first half of 2014, 17 of the top 20 best-selling books were young adult books, according to Publishers Weekly, citing data from Nielsen’s BookScan, which tracks about 85 percent of the market.