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Mindy Kaling from The Office

Entertainment Weekly- The Office fans have further reason to smile today. In addition to being a few hours away from the new episode “Secretary’s Day,” Random House’s Crown imprint has announced plans to release a book  by Mindy Kaling in fall 2011. Kaling plays the boy crazy yet lovable Kelly Kapoor, who often steals scenes with her ridiculously inappropriate office behavior (lying about being pregnant, performing as a member of the diva duo “Subtle Sexuality”). She is also co-executive producer ofThe Office and has written 18 episodes of the show over the course of its six seasons.

Titled The Contents of My Purse, Kaling’s collection of comic essays will detail moments from a woman’s life, including everything from relationships to fashion. Crown describes Kaling’s collection as a mix between Kaling’s own blog Things I Bought That I Love and Nora Ephron’s popular Broadway play Love,  Loss, and What I Wore. (Kaling appears to be a fan of Ephron’s, signing her blog posts “Mindy Ephron” and listing the writer-director’s You’ve Got Mail as her favorite film). Kaling took to her Twitter account earlier today to describe the book in her own words: “My book will be essays and personal anecdotes, pictures, fashion, and general opinionated bossiness about how women should live” and “My book will be about being over 30 and settling. ‘Find the Right in Mr. Wrong.’”

With a deal to write and star in a new NBC comedy, as well as being in the process of writing her first feature-length film, The Low Self-Esteem of Lizzie Gillespie, Kaling is poised to become a new version of Ephron for the ’10s. Her rabid fan base (which includes over 1 million Twitter followers) revels in her quirky thoughts and silly comments, as well as smart criticism on the portrayal of women in film and television (“NO MORE TYPE A PERSONALITY WOMEN IN ROMANTIC COMEDIES WHO HAVE TO LEARN TO PUT THEIR CAREER ASIDE TO FIND TRUE LOVE”). 

The success of female comedic authors like Chelsea Handler, and the popularity of The Office and Kaling herself, leads me to believe that The Contents of My Purse will be a surefire hit, or at the very least an enjoyable read. I’m already planning on pre-ordering. What do you think, Shelf Lifers? Interested in reading Kaling’s book? Or are you holding out for Dwight Schrute’s Memoirs from a Beet Farm?

• The colors being used in the images must reflect the appropriate tone of the manuscript. They used an upcoming picture book called Alligator Wedding by Nancy Jewell, illustrated by J. Rutland, to make this point. Initially, the illustrations were filled with colors that were a little too dark despite the bayou setting. The illustrator was asked to brighten them, as to more accurately convey the mood created in the text and the results are fantastic.
• There is definitely a lot of back and forth, at least at this publishing house, in the illustrating process before it seems to be just right. They try out a variety of cover images, fonts, colors, and layouts before committing to anything. I gained a whole new appreciation for their pursuit of perfection.
• The text shouldn’t hamper the image. In one of their books Life in the Boreal Forest by Brenda Z. Guiberson, illustrated by Gennady Spirin, they made the decision to move the text into a column off to the side so it was not overlapping the image at all. That way, the integrity of the image remained pure. Even on the cover, the shadowing behind the title allowed for it to pop.
• This may seem obvious, but the image should reflect the text. They mentioned in a few books that what was being said in the text was not coming through in the pictures. Sometimes objects were missing or other times, things were not drawn accurately. Revisions had to be made to fix these problems.
• The importance of the cover was emphasized heavily as being something that must draw the reader in and appeal to kids. If you provide ample images and they would like to showcase them as much as possible, they can choose to put one image on the jacket flap and an entirely different one on the hardback case itself.
• They referred to “the gutter,” or the place where a book will be physically bound in the center. They advised leaving 1/4” space in the center of the image, where if it gets slightly tucked down into the binding, the image won’t be heavily affected.
• They strongly advised against submitting as an author/illustrator. The problem is that they may like one aspect of your work over the other. You may then get a  “no” because it’s difficult for them to tell you that one aspect is okay, but other is not. Stick to your strengths.
• If you submit a dummy, they recommend including mostly sketches and maybe  one or two finished pieces to demonstrate the final products you’re capable of.
• Finally, 8 1/2” x 11” are standard trim sizes. This goes back to the all-mighty dollar and the idea that bookcases in bookstores only accommodate a certain size. Once again, don’t give them a reason to reject you that’s easy to avoid.

{image via Patrick Schumaker}

Maxim.com senior editor Justin Halpern sold his popular Twitter postings–turned–book, Shit My Dad Says, to Kate Hamill at It Books, who took world English rights at auction. The collection of gruff, funny and sometimes sneakily heartfelt musings from the author’s 73-year-old dad got Halpern an online audience of more than 300,000 as well as press hits from papers like the Wall Street Journal and L.A. Times. Agent Byrd Leavell of the Waxman Agency said the book, slated to pub next Father’s Day, will also feature “longer stories in a David Sedaris, Chelsea Handler vein.”

Okay, I probably shouldn't care. It shouldn't matter. But it really bums me out when I hear about book deals like this one:

Book Deal for College Kids' "Twitterature"
The Twitter revolution continues apace as two 19-year-old college freshman just sold "Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books, Now Presented in Twenty Tweets or Less" to Penguin.

Penguin's John Siciliano bought the book, and the deal was brokered by Brian DeFiore at DeFiore and Company. According to LA Observed, the book will be "a humorous retelling" of literary classics in 140-characters or less. The book was pitched by Emmett Rensin (who is the son of David Rensin, a LA Observed writer) and Alex Aciman. (from GalleyCat)

Like the pet rock and those yellow "Baby on Board" signs, it's the kind of thing I look at and think, "Wow, I can't believe someone thought of a way to make money off of that!"

One the one hand, I can see why the "twitterization" of a book like War and Peace could be funny. With just 140 characters, you really have to boil the plot down to its essence.

BUT...as a writer I'm thinking, holy crap, can someone do that to my book after it goes into the public domain? Ick! Not cool, on so many levels!

Would YOU like it if your book became Twitter fodder?

{image via getty images}

According to The New York Observer:

John McCain’s 24-year-old daughter Meghan has a book deal! Sources say Hyperion has prevailed over at least three other publishers in an auction that began earlier this week, following a round of meetings during which the in-your-face young conservative and the literary agent she shares with her father, Sterling Lord Literistic president Flip Brophy, discussed a number of possible approaches to the book with editors around town.

Several sources said the advance Ms. McCain will receive from Hyperion, which is owned by the Disney Company, is in the high six figures.

While we haven’t quite nailed down what Ms. McCain’s book will be about—no one at Hyperion nor Ms. Brophy returned calls this afternoon—if her recent columns for Tina Brown and Barry Diller’s Web site The Daily Beast are any indication, it will probably have something to do with the future of the Republican party, and how it must change to attract the votes of modern young people.

Ms. McCain has flexed her essayist muscles on The Beast in pieces like Why Republicans Don’t Get the Internet and Looking for Mr. Far Right. Mostly, she’s used the site to wage a few battles, as in My Beef With Ann Coulter and her response to Laura Ingraham’s jibe about her being a ‘plus-sized model’, headlined, Quit Talking About My Weight, Laura Ingraham. She’s also used it to prop up some friends, like Louisana’s First Lady Supriya Jindal and G.O.P. “hottie” Aaron Schock.

This will be Ms. McCain’s second book. Her first, a biographical picture book about her father entitled My Dad, John McCain, was published last September through the Alladin imprint of Simon & Schuster.

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I suppose I shouldn't be shocked after the whole nasty sex-tape debacle, but reading about this book deal was like losing a tiny part of my own innocence:

Dustin Diamond's BEHIND THE BELL, with Alan Goldsher, a tell-all account of Diamond's life as Samuel "Screech" Powers on the set of the TV show "Saved by the Bell," including sexual escapades among cast members, drug use, and hardcore partying, to Patrick Mulligan at Gotham, in a pre-empt, by Jarred Weisfeld of Objective Entertainment (world).

(from Publisher's Marketplace)



Maybe I'm just jealous. If only I lead the type of lifestyle that people paid huge sums of money to read about....

Nah.
And, ick.

WAKE, FADE, ?

NYT bestselling author Lisa McMann's third and final installment in the series that began with WAKE, to Jennifer Klonsky at Simon Pulse, for publication in Spring 2010, by Michael Bourret at Dystel & Goderich Literary Management (World).

No title yet.

“That handwriting—careful, shaky, spiky, every letter distinct, straight up and down, like it took hours to etch, and that was with her good hand. The poem was about watching the stars fall from the back of a pickup truck, hitchhiking by the constellations. You could feel every bit of it: the piney smell of the Oregon trees, the jolt of the rocks in the road."

That’s a gorgeous bit of prose from Janice Erlbaum’s memoir, Have You Found Her. In that passage, Erlbaum reflects on the writings of a teenaged runaway that she befriended in New York City.

The pair bond over writing—two struggling authors trying to make sense of the world—and I think their friendship will be familiar to most of our readers. Today, Erlbaum explains the ups and downs of negotiating her two book deals.

Welcome to my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality conversations with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.

Jason Boog:
You've now published two books. Which mistakes did you avoid the second time around? More specifically, could you describe the process of publishing this memoir--how did the looking for an agent/publisher process change the second time around?

Janice Erlbaum:
Again, I’m a lucky bastard, because I sold Girlbomb in June of 2004 as part of a two-book deal. Continue reading...

Well, I step away from the computer for a few days and a blogging friend gets a book deal!

Our fearless leader and Cybil Nonfiction Picture Book Wrangler, Chris Barton has sold his book, S.V.T. to Little, Brown.

Chris blogs at Bartography and he will give away a free copy of the book (when it comes out) to the first person to guess what S.V.T. stands for. He says people see it as a "boy" book so I am thinking the "S" has to be "slime" or "super." The "v" could be "vomit" but on reflection that is a little strong for a title, it is probably a noun... I'm thinking "t" is for "team" or "terror" or "turbulence."
Slimey Vulture Terror -- Super Vacuum Team?