Doubleday, Penguin Try to Revive Bond Series With New Author

By Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg & Aaron O. Patrick writing in The Wall Street Journal ,May 8, 2008;

In the 44 years since the death of writer Ian Fleming, his character James Bond has flourished as a movie star. As a literary figure, however, Bond has looked more like Inspector Clouseau.
Ian Fleming's first James Bond book, 'Casino Royale,' was published in 1953; the latest, Sebastian Faulks's 'Devil May Care,' comes out this month.

In the decades following Mr. Fleming's fatal heart attack, his family trust has commissioned 22 new books about the debonair British spy. Sales have dwindled: The last Bond novel, "The Man With the Red Tattoo," published six years ago, sold only about 5,000 copies in Bond's British homeland and a disappointing 13,000 hardcopies in the U.S., according to Nielsen BookScan.

But never say never again: Doubleday on May 28 will release a new Bond novel, one of the most ambitious of the post-Fleming works. "Devil May Care" will be written by a well-known and well-respected literary author, Sebastian Faulks, with a large, initial U.S. print run of 250,000 and a lavish marketing campaign. Penguin, a unit of Pearson PLC, plans a print run of 100,000 in the United Kingdom.
The novel coincides with the 100th anniversary of Mr. Fleming's birth, which should generate free publicity for the book. Even so, it is a gamble for Doubleday and Penguin.

Aside from the desultory history of previous nouveau-Bond books, the latest version will hit U.S. book stores about the same time as new novels from an array of best-selling authors, including Patricia Cornwell ("The Front"), Dean Koontz ("Odd Hours") and James Rollins ("Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull").

Read the complete story at the WSJ here.