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Ted Weinstein Literary Management January 2006 Newsletter

Here are highlights from the past year at Ted Weinstein Literary Management, including recently released books by our clients, new book deals and other agency news.

Recent Releases

A number of our clients had great success with their new books in 2005. Craig Conley's The Dictionary of One-Letter Words, acquired and edited by Alison Callahan at HarperCollins, is a surprising and fascinating compendium of 1,000+ definitions of the 26 letters of the alphabet and an essential desk companion for puzzle lovers, wordsmiths, trivia buffs, know-it-alls, armchair linguists and all kinds of word lovers. Craig says the book was originally inspired by the White Queen from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, who exclaimed to Alice, "I can read words of one letter!" Publishers Weekly said "anyone fascinated by language (and especially fans of word games like Scrabble) will be thrilled with this unique resource," and the book has been featured by NPR's All Things Considered, the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Raleigh News & Observer. Open Doors: Vietnam POWs Thirty Years Later, by Taylor Baldwin Kiland and Jamie Howren, is the companion volume to a traveling museum exhibit profiling and celebrating the personal triumphs of 30 Vietnam-era POWs. Open Doors takes an intimate look at these men - the longest-held group of POWs in our nation's history - as husbands, fathers, sons and brothers. Open Doors has been featured on the NBC Nightly News and CNN and received widespread media coverage at every stop along the exhibit tour. The project is a tribute to these veteran's individual persistence in the pursuit of personal and professional happiness since their return from Hanoi, echoing the comments of Commander Paul Galanti, U.S. Navy (Ret.): "There's no such thing as a bad day when you have a door knob on the inside of the door." Beloved interior design and decorating expert Kitty Bartholomew released not one but two books this year. As host of HGTV's Kitty Bartholomew: You're Home, one of the network's longest running shows, she has spent nearly a decade sharing her expertise with devoted viewers. She is also well known for her six-year stint as the resident interior designer and decorating correspondent for ABC's Home Show, along with numerous appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Kitty Bartholomew's Decorating Style: Affordable, Beautiful and Comfortable Decor for Real People Living with Real Budgets, published by Rodale, offers a wide range of her clever, creative ideas. And while Kitty is best known for her affordable and inventive interior decorating style, she is also known for her wardrobe of more than 70 stylish one-of-a-kind sweaters, hand knit by her. Designer Knitting with Kitty Bartholomew, from Chapelle/Sterling, teaches her own unique, fast, and easy knitting style. Ann Larabee's The Dynamite Fiend: The Chilling Tale of a Confederate Spy, Con Artist, and Mass Murderer, is a fascinating historical true crime story about a former Confederate secret service agent who later went on to terrorize the Atlantic shipping lanes and cause one of the bloodiest catastrophes of the nineteenth century. Publishers Weekly praised Ann's "historical sleuthing" and said the book "will appeal to those curious about the antecedents of modern terrorism," while the New York Times called it "one of the strangest, most twisted tales of deceit and daring that the 19th century has to offer." Not surprisingly, a movie deal is in the works. 50 Simple Ways to Live a Longer Life, by the husband-and-wife team of science and health journalist Suzanne Bohan and Glenn Thompson, is an incredible resource packed with the most effective life-extending strategies known to science. Each chapter of the book, acquired by Peter Lynch at Sourcebooks, presents a different way to extend your life, plus a "Making It Real" section that teaches readers what they specifically can do to achieve these benefits. Publishers Weekly called the book a "compact but informative guide to longevity... [that is] insightful and accessible, combining hard scientific facts with practical advice." The Math Instinct: Why You're a Mathematical Genius (Along with Lobsters, Birds, Cats, and Dogs) is the most recent book by Stanford mathematician and NPR's "Math Guy" Keith Devlin.  An accessible, entertaining look at the instinctive math used by dogs, cats, birds, bees and, yes, even humans, it was acquired by publisher John Oakes at Thunder's Mouth Press. The Math Instinct explains and celebrates the innate math sense of all kinds of animals and gives even the most number-phobic readers greater confidence in their own mathematical abilities.

Recent Deals

The past year also brought some wonderful new deals for clients. One of the most important emerging health topics is "probiotics," the powerful health-promoting and life-extending bacteria that reside in each of us. Gary Huffnagle, Ph.D., of the University of Michigan Medical School, is one of the world's leading experts on the subject, and his research with colleague Mairi Noverr, Ph.D., about the immune system, inflammation, and the microbes that live inside us has made headlines worldwide. Now, with best-selling health writer Sarah Wernick (Strong Women Stay Young), they are writing The Probiotics Revolution: Using Beneficial Bacteria to Fight Inflammation and Chronic Disease – and Live a Longer, Healthier Life. Toni Burbank acquired it for Bantam Dell/Random House in a very good deal after a hotly contested auction. Microsoft personal finance writer and finance consultant Sally Herigstad, CPA, is hard at work finishing Help! I Can’t Pay My Bills: Surviving an Immediate Financial Crisis, which Ethan Friedman acquired for St. Martin's Press. Over a million people will declare bankruptcy this year and many more are struggling to make it from day to day. Sally's book is the only guide that teaches readers how to take control of their finances in the worst of times. She shares her insights and experience to help people face their financial challenges head on, make a plan to overcome them and learn to live without dreading their bills or feeling anxious about money. Blake Edgar at the University of California Press acquired national science journalist Susan Freinkel's A Perfect Tree: The Death and Rebirth of the American Chestnut, a book that asks what happens when a species vanishes. Once gone, can it be brought back? A Perfect Tree explores these timely questions through the story of the American chestnut, one of this country's most important native trees until it was obliterated in the early 20th century by chestnut blight. Now, a handful of hardy optimists are working to resurrect the tree, some relying on age-old breeding methods and others using modern gene-splicing techniques. Weaving science, history and personal reflection, A Perfect Tree tells how the life and death of this once grand tree continues to reflect, as well as shape, America's relationship to nature. Susan also received one of journalism's most sought-after fellowships, an Alicia Patterson Foundation grant, to support her work on the book. John Parsley at Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press obeyed author James Rogauskas' edict: You! Read this poem! Buy this haiku collection -- Or the puppy dies! and acquired his wry and witty poetry collection Office Haiku: Poems Inspired by the Daily Grind at auction. In this spare, refined art form, the author takes aim at daydreaming, boredom, co-worker jealousy, and the innumerable little annoyances of 9-to-5 life, with sections including "Monday Mornings Suck," "Paper Cuts, Office Equipment, and Other Maladies," and "Departmental Meetings." For every Dilbert strip taped to a filing cabinet or pinned to a bulletin board, there is a haiku from this collection waiting to take its place alongside. Bob Welch's American Nightingale is the heart-wrenching and inspirational true story of the first American nurse to die after the WWII landings at Normandy Beach. Published by Atria Books/Simon & Schuster in time for the 60th Anniversary of D-Day, the book has been a remarkable success.  Newspapers and radio stations around the country as well as Good Morning America have featured American Nightingale, and James Bradley, best-selling author of Flags of Our Fathers and Flyboys, said "Bob Welch has done the country a service by recalling Frances Slanger's story... enrich your life and read this touching story." Now a movie in the works, as Sal Chala at Relentless Entertainment optioned film rights. Last but certainly not least, Steve Suo and Erin Hoover Barnett, veteran reporters at the Portland Oregonian, had a big year, receiving many awards for their incisive reporting on the country's devastating methamphetamine epidemic. Based on more than three years of work, their series "Unnecessary Epidemic" showed how the federal government and profit-driven pharmaceutical companies long ago could have contained the spread of the drug that has become to rural America what crack cocaine was to inner cities in the 1980s. The series was one of three finalists for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting and a finalist for Harvard University's 2005 Goldsmith Award for Investigative Reporting. Media critic Jack Shafer of Slate.com called the authors "intellectually honest and intrepid reporters" and urged his colleagues "don't, don't, don't write a column inch on the subject before you read the Oregonian's comprehensive methamphetamine package from head to toe." The Washington Monthly called Steve and Erin's series "one of the best pieces of reporting anywhere this year."

Other Agency News

This past year Ted attended a wide range of writers' conferences and academic programs, conducting one-on-one sessions with authors and teaching his popular workshops on "The Business of Publishing: What Every Author Needs to Know," and "Writing a Nonfiction Book Proposal That Sells." In addition to offering his regular classes for Book Passage and MediaBistro, Ted appeared at events sponsored by the Northern California Science Writers Association, Women's National Book Association, San Francisco Writers Conference, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, several chapters of the California Writers Club, and the Society of Southwestern Authors. A frequent media commentator, he was featured in the San Jose Mercury News, San Francisco Chronicle, and SFist.com. Thanks for reading this update. Best wishes for a happy and successful year. Click here to read the previous newsletter.

©2006 Ted Weinstein Literary Management New York • San Francisco