Publisher's Weeklyreports
that the current financial crisis has already spawned
a slew of books.
Though the situation on Wall Street continues to unfold, there's already quite a crowded field of book proposals and sales stemming from the crisis--though oddly enough, several high-profile sales thus far have all ended up at Penguin imprints. Earlier this week, Roger Lowenstein sold a book called Six Days that Shook the World to Ann Godoff at Penguin Press, and yesterday Sorkin's colleague Joe Nocera sold world rights to a proposal co-written with Vanity Fair's Bethany McLean, co-author of The Smartest Guys in the Room, to Adrian Zackheim at Penguin's Portfolio imprint; agent Liz Darhansoff's asking price during the auction for Nocera's and McLean's chronicle of the crisis was said to be more than $1 million.
As McCormick points out, there is room for a lot of different takes on the story; an apt comparison might be the number of books spawned by September 11, many of which glutted the marketplace around the one-year anniversary of the attacks. But some publishers aren't bidding on Wall Street-related projects at the moment, thinking it's too early and preferring to wait and see how the story plays out. "We were worreid about how many subjects can be published on this subject in a successful way," said one publisher who said he was 'inundated" by Wall Street proposals last week.
This story is a moving target. Until we see what kind of bailout is passed by Congress -- if a bailout bill is passed at all -- it's hard to predict what the true fallout will be. Of course, there will be lots of books placing blame for the current crisis. That's are always fun to read.
