AWARDS

AWARDS

National Book Foundation opens voting to public

NEW YORK — The National Book Awards would like your vote.

Organizers of the prestigious literary prize are asking the public to choose the best fiction winner in the awards’ 60-year history.

The six finalists, announced by the National Book Foundation, are: “The Stories of John Cheever,” Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man,” William Faulkner’s “Collected Stories,” “The Complete Stories” of Flannery O’Connor, Thomas Pynchon’s “Gravity Rainbow” and “The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty.”

Today through Oct. 21, votes can be cast through the Web site www.nbafictionpoll.org. The winner will be announced Nov. 18.

PUBLISHING NEWS

‘Symbol’ of success: Novel tops 2 million mark

NEW YORK — Dan Brown’s new novel has passed the 2 million mark, besting the 2004 release of Bill Clinton’s “My Life” in the record books.

Doubleday announced Sept. 22 that hardcover, audio and e-book sales for “The Lost Symbol” topped 2 million copies for its first week of release in the U.S., Britain and Canada. The total is “well over” 2 million for English-language editions worldwide, according to Doubleday spokeswoman Suzanne Herz, who declined to offer a specific number. She did say that around 5 percent, or 100,000 copies, were sold as e-books, released at the same time as the hardcover.

Amazon.com reported last week that first-day sales for “Symbol” were higher on its Kindle e-reader than in hard cover.

“Symbol” didn’t approach the more than 8 million copies that “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” sold in the first 24 hours, but the weekly results were an all-time high in North America for Doubleday’s parent company, Random House Inc.

“Symbol” came out Sept. 15 with an initial print run of 5 million books that was soon raised to 5.6 million. The book is Brown’s first since “The Da Vinci Code,” an international phenomenon published in 2003. “The Da Vinci Code” has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide.

‘Da Vinci Code’ publisher Stephen Rubin is resigning

NEW YORK — The man who published “The Da Vinci Code” is resigning. Stephen Rubin, a publishing executive since 1984 whose authors have included Dan Brown, John Grisham and Pat Conroy, said Thursday he was stepping down as executive vice president and publisher-at-large of Random House Inc., effective Oct. 2.

Rubin, 67, had headed the Doubleday Broadway Group before his division was dispersed last December in a corporate consolidation. After starting his new position, in February, his acquisitions included a memoir by former President George W. Bush and short stories by Grisham.

His most celebrated, and envied, release came after Doubleday signed a little-known thriller writer named Dan Brown, whose “The Da Vinci Code” was published in 2003 and sold more than 40 million copies.

COMING TO BOOKSHELVES

Wife of scandal-plagued governor plans memoir

NEW YORK — The wife of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who separated from her husband in the wake of his affair with an Argentine woman, is writing a memoir.

Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House Inc., said it will publish Jenny Sanford’s “inspirational memoir” in May 2010.

The publisher says Sanford “will grapple with the universal issue of maintaining integrity and a sense of self during life’s difficult times.” It is currently untitled, and financial terms were not disclosed. Jenny Sanford did not immediately return a telephone message.

Sanford’s husband, once mentioned as a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2012, acknowledged in June he had a yearlong affair after disappearing from South Carolina for five days.

Jenny Sanford, a Georgetown-educated, former Wall Street vice president who helped direct her husband’s political campaigns, moved out of the Governor’s Mansion in Columbia, S.C., in August, returning to the couple’s seaside home on Sullivans Island with their four sons. She said they were working on their marriage.

Shortly after the scandal broke, the governor’s own book deal was terminated. Publisher Adrian Zackheim said Mark Sanford had an agreement for a book on fiscal conservatism titled “Within Our Means.”

E-BOOKS

New deal sought in Google book dispute

NEW YORK — The authors and other parties that reached a settlement with Google Inc. to give the company the digital rights to millions of out-of-print books now say they will negotiate a new deal.

Lawyers for The Authors Guild and other plaintiffs said in court papers filed Sept. 22 that they plan to have settlement talks with the U.S. Department of Justice to resolve complaints about a $125 million deal that the Justice Department said probably violates antitrust law.

The lawyers asked a judge who was to preside over a hearing on the settlement next month to delay it for at least a month so they can reach a new agreement.

Combined dispatches

The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.