By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY - September 09, 2011
Talk about multi-media. Vanity Fair magazine has released an e-book, that's an expanded version of an article about the writing and marketing of a novel that's available both in print and as an e-book.
The debut novel, that's getting great reviews, is The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach, about how five lives are forever changed by the errant throw of a star shortstop at a fictional Midwestern college.
In USA Today's review, David Daley, wrote:
"The Art of Fielding is an old-fashioned novel in the very best way — unhurried, engrossing, a universe unto itself, stuffed with characters with Dickensian names such as Henry Skrimshander and Guert Affenlight. It's that rare big, social novel with the quiet confidence not to overreach for grand statements on the times, and a debut that never feels like it's straining to impress. There's just quiet confidence in honest storytelling — Harbach is all Derek Jeter, not Alex Rodriguez."
The story behind the novel — 10 years in the making — is told by Harbach's friend, Keith Gessen, in How a Book Is Born: The Making of The Art of Fielding, a 19,000-word e-book, available for $1.99. It's about 2,000 words longer than Gessen's article, "The Book on Publishing," in the October issue of Vanity Fair. The novel itself is 528 pages, or more than 150,000 words.
Gessen, a college friend and colleague of Harbach's at n+1, a Brooklyn-based literary magazine, traces how Harbach went from a struggling writer to landing a $665,000 book contract after heated bidding in what publishers call an auction.
Gessen reports the auction began at $100,000. Within a day, Little, Brown had upped that to $665,000, but a rival publisher, Scribner, came in at $750,000.
Full story at USA today.
Footnote:
Published in this market by Fourth Estate (Harper Collins)
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