Category: Books

Publisher Revs Up Promotion for Potter
NEW YORK – Think you’ve seen a lot of hype about “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”? Just wait until the book comes out.
Billboards. Baseball parks. A countdown in Times Square. Scholastic, Inc., the U.S. publisher of J.K. Rowling’s mega-selling children’s series, has planned a $3 million-$4 million marketing campaign, more than doubling its budget for the release of the last Potter book, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” in 2000.
“I can’t think of anything that compares to the budget for the new Harry Potter book, except for the budget for the last Potter story,” says Laurie Brown, a vice president for sales at Harcourt Trade Publishers who over the past 20 years has also worked for Random House and Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Timed to the midnight June 21 release of “Order of the Phoenix,” the show gets rolling on what could be called “Harry Potter Eve,” Friday night June 20, with a countdown in Times Square. A billboard on Sunset Strip will announce the news in Los Angeles.
“You can never take anything for granted,” says Michael Jacobs, a senior vice president at Scholastic. “There’s a lot of noise in the world and you have to do everything you can to get attention, especially after a three-year wait.”
Starting in July, billboard ads will appear in Atlanta, Chicago and several other cities. Scholastic will also take its campaign to baseball parks. The publisher has reached agreements with the Seattle Mariners, Baltimore Orioles and other teams for “Harry Potter” days, featuring costume contests and scoreboard promotions.
“Reaching out to kids is very important to us because they’re our future season ticket holders and our future fans,” says Marco Gentile, the Orioles’ corporate promotions manager.
The publisher already has distributed 3 million bumper stickers, 400,000 buttons, 50,000 window displays and 24,000 stand-up posters with countdown clocks. Last weekend, logos could be found on badges throughout the Los Angeles Convention Center, where BookExpo America, the publishing industry’s annual gathering, was held.
Scholastic has also sent more than 15,000 “event kits” to bookstores and other retail outlets, where parties are planned all over the country. The kits include stickers, buttons, a trivia quiz and suggestions for how to handle long lines of impatient fans:
“You can start a game of what Muggles call `Telephone.’ Start the message with Dumbledore’s line from `Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’: ‘It is time for me to tell you what I should have told you five years ago, Harry.’ Then people whisper the message from person to person. Let the person at the end of the line shout out what he thinks he heard.”
Rowling’s four previous Potter novels have worldwide sales of more than 190 million and Scholastic has commissioned a record 8.5 million first printing for “Order of the Phoenix.” Within hours of the announcement in January that “Order of the Phoenix” was coming out, the book topped best seller lists at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com and has remained steady for months.

Hillary Clinton Book Details Betrayal
WASHINGTON – Hillary Rodham Clinton, acknowledging tirades and tears over her husband’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, says former President Clinton lied to her about the relationship until the weekend before he admitted as much to a grand jury.
The New York senator vividly describes her pain over the betrayal in “Living History,” her new memoir covering her eight years in the White House. A copy of the book, which goes on sale Monday, was obtained by The Associated Press.
“The most difficult decisions I have made in my life were to stay married to Bill and to run for the Senate from New York,” she writes.
She says she accepted her husband’s story at first √≥ that he had befriended the White House intern when she asked for job-hunting help, “had talked to her a few times” √≥ and that the relationship had been horribly misconstrued.
“For me, the Lewinsky imbroglio seemed like just another vicious scandal manufactured by political opponents.”
More than six months later, with the president preparing to testify before a grand jury, Mrs. Clinton was still adamant that her husband had done nothing wrong and was the victim of a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”
Then, on the morning of Saturday, Aug. 15, 1998, he woke her up, paced at the bedside, and “told me for the first time that the situation was much more serious than he had previously acknowledged.”
“He now realized he would have to testify that there had been an inappropriate intimacy. He told me that what happened between them had been brief and sporadic.”
He was ashamed and knew she would be angry, she recounts.
“I could hardly breathe. Gulping for air, I started crying and yelling at him, ‘What do you mean? What are you saying? Why did you lie to me?’ I was furious and getting more so by the second. He just stood there saying over and over again, ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I was trying to protect you and Chelsea.'”
Mrs. Clinton’s 562-page book has been highly anticipated. Simon & Schuster, expecting large sales, ordered an extraordinary first printing of 1 million copies.
The first lady-turned-senator was paid a $2.85 million advance toward the $8 million book deal. Foreign rights have already been sold in 16 countries. List price is $28.
The publisher billed the book as a complete, candid accounting of her years in the White House.
Mrs. Clinton said that up until that August morning when her husband confessed, she believed he was being railroaded and had merely been foolish by paying any attention to Lewinsky. She was incredulous that he would endanger their marriage and family.
“I was dumbfounded, heartbroken and outraged that I’d believed him at all.”
She said the president’s eyes filled with tears when she told him he would have to confess to their teenage daughter as well.
She ultimately decided she still loved her husband, although “as a wife, I wanted to wring Bill’s neck.”
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She describes in bitter terms the months of chill between them, never more painful than when they went to Martha’s Vineyard for vacation right after his testimony.
“Buddy, the dog, came along to keep Bill company. He was the only member of our family who was still willing to.”
While on the island, she felt “nothing but profound sadness, disappointment and unresolved anger. I could barely speak to Bill, and when I did, it was a tirade. I read. I walked on the beach. He slept downstairs. I slept upstairs.”
She said her decision to run for a Senate seat from New York provided a healing bridge for them. “Bill and I were talking again about matters other than the future of our relationship. Over time we both began to relax.”
She was the first first lady to run for elected office, defeating the Republican candidate, former Rep. Rick Lazio, in 2000. She was sworn into the Senate the same month her husband left office in January 2001. She recounted their last day at the White House, waltzing down a long hallway in her husband’s arms.
She concludes that what her husband did was morally wrong but not a betrayal of the public.
On the Whitewater matter that dogged much of their time in the White House, the former first lady acknowledges only “public relations mistakes in how we handled the growing controversy.”
“Whitewater never seemed real because it wasn’t.”
Mrs. Clinton portrays Whitewater partner Jim McDougall as an embittered man who threatened her several times when she tried to file overdue tax returns for the property.
The payback came, she said, when her husband decided to run for president in 1991 and McDougall planted “false information about our relationship” in the press, claiming he had refused favors from Clinton when he was governor.
The final report on the Whitewater investigation questioned the first lady’s truthfulness. Independent Counsel Robert Ray’s report concluded that the Clintons’ mid-1980s Arkansas land venture benefited from criminal activity and that the president and his wife gave factually inaccurate testimony, but there was not enough evidence to prove the former first family engaged in wrongdoing.
Mrs. Clinton’s political stock is on the rise, although she insists she will not consider entering the race for president this year. She has not ruled out a run in 2008.
She is among the Democrats’ top fund-raisers. She has raised more than $3 million for her political action committee, HILLPAC, which she uses to support other Democrats running for office.

Copies of New ‘Harry Potter’ Book Found in Field
LONDON (Reuters) – Publishers of the best-selling Harry Potter books launched an investigation on Tuesday after a newspaper reported that advance copies of the long-awaited fifth installment were found dumped in a field.
Bloomsbury Publishing said it suspected first editions of author J.K Rowling’s latest boy wizard saga, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” had been stolen from a nearby printworks.
“The matter is currently under investigation, with the suspicion that theft is involved,” Rowling’s publisher and agent said in a brief joint statement.
The fifth Harry Potter installment is due out on June 21 and is expected to smash publishing records.
Bloomsbury said it had yet to report the matter to police and declined to give more details.
The Sun newspaper reported that a man stumbled across the books on Monday as he walked near a printworks in the small town of Bungay, in Suffolk, eastern England.
It said the 40-year-old father-of-two had contacted the paper and handed over the books.
The copies will be returned to the publishers and no details of the closely-guarded plot will appear in the paper, the Sun said.
Printer Clays Ltd, which is churning out hundreds of thousands of the books, declined to comment. News International, the Sun’s publishers, said it would release a statement later on Tuesday.
The first four books about the teenage wizard have now sold almost 200 million copies in 55 languages and 200 countries.
The last Harry Potter book, “Goblet of Fire,” broke records everywhere and is still on bestseller lists around the globe.
Rowling, who wrote the first book as a penniless single mother in an Edinburgh cafe, is now richer than Queen Elizabeth with a personal fortune put at 280 million pounds ($450 million).
The teenage wizard has also taken to the silver screen, grossing more than $1.7 billion in two films.

HILLARY SPEAKS!
“Living History”, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s memoirs, will hit book stores on June 9, her lawyer said. The Senator and former First Lady was paid an estimated seven figures to give her account of her years in the Clinton White House.

Fifth ‘Potter’ delivered on June 21
TORONTO (CP) — Canada Post will deliver pre-ordered copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix to homes across Canada on Saturday, June 21, it was announced Wednesday.
Customers who pre-order either the adult or children’s version from Amazon.ca or Indigo Books and Music, can use a select Express Shipping option to have the long-awaited fifth book in J.K. Rowling’s popular series delivered to their door the day it is released.
Tracy Nesdoly, spokesperson for Indigo Books and Music, also said the chain’s stores will be open at midnight Friday night.
“As soon as the clock turns to Saturday, we will be selling the books.”
She said Indigo had a similar arrangement with Canada Post when the fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was released.
Canada Post employees will cover some 40 cities across the country, Amazon.ca said in a news release. They will use more than 40 transportation routes and a dozen flights to deliver the pre-ordered books between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. on June 21.
“Our customers have been feverishly ordering the book since it became available for purchase in January,” said Marven Krug, general manager of Amazon.ca. “And we are thrilled to work with Canada Post to deliver it to their homes the day it becomes available.”
After the book became available for pre-ordering on Jan. 15, it quickly turned into a bestseller for Amazon and Indigo.
The special Saturday delivery does not apply to postal codes outside of Canada Post’s Saturday delivery service area, P.O. boxes, and orders of more than eight copies. Customers can use Amazon.ca’s postal code finder to determine whether they are eligible.

…The New ‘Harry Potter’ Book Will Have Two Covers, And Not Just A Front And Back
LONDON – The fifth installment of the Harry Potter books will have two separate covers, one for adults and one for children.
Bloomsbury Publishers unveiled the designs Thursday. The adult edition of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” features a somber black and white picture of a phoenix, while the children’s version of the boy wizard book is illustrated with a more vibrant red and orange bird rising from flames.
The designs will be used for editions released in Britain and other English-speaking countries, except the United States, where the book is to be published by Scholastic Children’s Books.
The latest work of author J.K. Rowling will be released around the world on June 21. Fans have waited nearly three years for the schoolboy wizard’s fifth adventure. Bookstores have already been deluged by Potter fans pre-ordering copies of the book.
Online retailer Amazon has taken more than 130,000, twice as many as were taken for the fourth book, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.” Released in July 2000, that installment sold more copies on the first weekend after publication than any other book, according to Bloomsbury.
Rowling’s four published titles have sold an estimated 192 million copies worldwide in hard and soft cover; the books have been published in at least 55 languages and distributed in more than 200 countries.

Harry Potter’s Next Adventure
Author J.K. Rowling has finished her fifth book about the young wizard Harry Potter. “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” will be published in Canada on June 21 – all 768 pages of it!
As a sneak preview, Rowling has released the first line of the book:
“The hottest day of the summer so far was drawing to a close and a drowsy silence lay over the large, square houses of Privet Drive … The only person left outside was a teenage boy who was lying flat on his back in a flowerbed outside number four.”

Harry Potter Magic! New Book Already Best-Seller
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Its magic!
The long-awaited fifth book in the Harry Potter series has become an instant best-seller less than 24 hours after the June publication date was announced, online book stores said on Thursday.
Amazon.com said it took only two hours after becoming available for pre-order for “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” to reach the top-selling spot.
Amazon.com’s British arm, Amazon.co.uk, said more than 30,000 customers had placed orders in 24 hours for author J.K. Rowling’s latest tale of the boy wizard and his adventures.
Barnes and Noble.com said orders had been pouring in since the announcement on Wednesday by Rowling’s publishers that the 255,000 word book would be published on June 21.
Harry Potter fans have had to wait three years for “Order of the Phoenix,” which was delayed by Rowling’s marriage and her subsequent pregnancy.
Amazon.com declined to release pre-order figures for “Order of the Phoenix” but said that day one figures were 100 times those for the first day of pre-orders for the last book, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” which was published in July 2000.
“Goblet of Fire” was Amazon.com’s largest book pre-order in history with more than 400,000 advance orders worldwide.
“Our customers are loyal and rabid Harry Potter fans, and we are delighted to offer them the simplest, most convenient way to reserve their copies immediately,” said Amazon.com’s book division vice-president Steve Kessel.
Barnes and Noble, the world’s largest book seller, said that its stores across the United States would remain open late on Friday night, June 20, and start selling the book at midnight. Special in-store events and parties are also being planned.
The first four Harry Potter books are still on best-seller lists around the world and movie versions of the first two books have grossed more than $1.7 billion.

Fifth Harry Potter Book Due on June 21
LONDON (Reuters) – “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” the fifth book of adventures of the boy wizard by author J.K. Rowling, is due to be published on June 21, its British publisher said Wednesday.
“Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is absolutely superb and will delight all J.K. Rowling’s fans. She has written a brilliant and utterly compelling new adventure,” Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. chief executive Nigel Newton said in a statement.
The book, which at 38 chapters and 255,000 words, will be a third longer than the last book — “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” — is also being published by U.S. children’s book publisher Scholastic Corp.
Fans will have had a three-year wait for “Order of the Phoenix.” “Goblet of Fire” was published Saturday, July 8, 2000, and was the fastest-selling book in history on the first weekend of its publication.
Like “Goblet of Fire,” “Order of the Phoenix” is being published on a Saturday, meaning eager fans will not have to miss a day off school or work to buy the new book.
By then, most will likely know the first few sentences by heart. They are: “The hottest day of the summer so far was drawing to a close and a drowsy silence lay over the large, square houses of Privet Drive … The only person left outside was a teenage boy who was lying flat on his back in a flowerbed outside number four.”
The book may have a darker side than the earlier escapades.
Bloomsbury said Rowling also writes: “Dumbledore lowered his hands and surveyed Harry through his half-moon glasses. “It is time,” he said, “for me to tell you what I should have told you five years ago, Harry.
“Please sit down. I am going to tell you everything.”
All four Harry Potter books — “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” as well as “Goblet of Fire” — have been No. 1 bestsellers and are still on bestseller lists around the world.
Rowling has got married since “Goblet of Fire” was published and is pregnant, with the baby due this spring.

Clint Eastwood Sues for $10 Million Over Bio
SAN JOSE, Calif. (Reuters) – “Dirty Harry” star Clint Eastwood has lodged a $10 million libel lawsuit against the author and publisher of an unauthorized biography, saying the book portrays him as a wife-beater, atheist and coward, his lawyer said on Thursday.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose late on Tuesday, also contends that author Patrick McGilligan and publisher St. Martin’s Press attempted to destroy Eastwood’s reputation in the book “Clint: The Life of a Legend.”
“Clint Eastwood is not only an icon in the entertainment industry but he is also a family man,” Marshall Grossman, Eastwood’s lawyer said. “He is entitled to have what is written about him be accurate and truthful.”
The book was published in the United States in August after being available for several years in Britain. Grossman said the suit was being filed now because the book was filled with errors and was harming Eastwood’s reputation.
Paul Sleven, general counsel for St. Martin’s Press, declined to comment because the case is in litigation but said the publisher was confident the book was accurate.
Author McGilligan, who has also written biographies of James Cagney, Jack Nicholson and Fritz Lang, also declined to go into much detail but said, “The book is fair and honest to the best of my ability.”
The suit said that the book falsely claimed that the 72-year-old actor “cold-cocked” and “decked” his first wife Maggie and that Eastwood, famed for his on screen tough-guy image, was “dead scared” to go to Korea during his military service.
The suit added that the biography falsely described Eastwood as using a romance with an officer’s daughter to avoid being sent overseas during the Korean War.
“Its lies do a serious disservice to the book’s readers, the public and most of all to Clint Eastwood himself, who has spent nearly a half a century building a reputation that defendants so intently — and unlawfully — attempt to destroy,” the suit said.
Along with $10 million, the suit also seeks punitive damages for “harming Eastwood’s reputation and standing in the community, mortification and embarrassment.”
“He is not one to sit idly by and permit somebody to deal with his reputation in this fashion,” Eastwood’s lawyer said of the actor.