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June 23, 2008
Welcome to Spiegel & Grau, a division of the Doubleday Group. On this site you'll find the latest information on our titles, including original content from our authors and Spiegel & Grau staff. Current Features: Reading List - Janelle Brown gives us a list of her favorite books about suburban angst that informed her novel All We Ever Wanted Was Everything. Multimedia - Watch Artie Lange discuss his memoir, Too Fat to Fish. First Person - Read Julie Grau's remarks at the New York Public Library's tribute to Nuala O'Faolain. Dispatch - View the trailer for The Beautiful Struggle. Posted in Welcome | Link | Print  June 5, 2008
Welcome to Spiegel & Grau, a division of the Doubleday Group. On this site you’ll find the latest information on our titles, including original content from our authors and Spiegel & Grau staff. Current Features: Reading List – Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of the The Beautiful Struggle, has been called the “James Joyce of the hip-hop generation” by Walter Mosley—shares eight hip-hop gems that inspired his flow. Multimedia – View the trailer for The Great Derangement. First Person – Petite Anglaiseauthor Catherine Sanderson explains how an online diary helped her reclaim her identity and reinvent herself. Dispatches – Karen Connelly explains how her travels in Burma and Thailand inspired her novel, The Lizard Cage. Posted in Welcome | Link | Print Enter to Win Petite Anglaise by Catherine SandersonJune 1, 2008
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Visit Catherine's blog and the Petite Anglaise fan page on Facebook. Buy Now! About the Book When a faithful reader (who happens to be an attractive, charismatic Englishman) tries to get close to the girl behind the blog, the lines between Catherine’s real and virtual personas blur, tempting her to leave Mr. Frog and the life she has worked so hard to construct, in pursuit of l’amour fou. Propelled by her intoxicating alter ego and cheered on by thousands of readers, Catherine’s life spirals to exhilarating highs and dizzying lows as her life and her creation collide head-on and she must somehow make peace with both. Fizzing with the vitality and allure of Paris itself, Petite Anglaise offers a fresh twist on the classic story of reinvention abroad: how a young woman transforms herself, wielding the power of a mouse. About the Author Author photo © Lauren Tattias Posted in Welcome | Link | Print March 1, 2008
I am writing this sitting in bed next to my sleeping infant daughter who will soon wake up demanding food, while stacked around me are piles of laundry (clean but not folded), my three-year-old son’s collection of Mardi Gras beads (his grandmother sent him fifteen dozen bags for fun), a collection of caffeine-laden beverages (all empty), and one old cat with bad breath, an even worse attitude, and a nervous scratching disorder. When you read this I will be back at work with the rest of my beloved Spiegel & Grau colleagues whom I missed terribly during the almost 7 months I was out of the office on pregnancy related bedrest and maternity leave. While I am sure to suffer the usual separation anxiety that comes with returning to work, I’m excited to get back into the routine of being the publicity director for a new house. Although I’ve been in the book publicity business for eighteen years I have never had the good fortune to come into a venture at such an early stage. It has been truly thrilling to watch Spiegel & Grau go from publishing two books in 2007 (two hugely successful books, I might add) to launching their first full list in 2008, and I can’t wait to hear about all of the books that were bought while I was on leave. I have loved watching the development of this Web site from afar (aka my bed) and was glad to discover that it is an excellent place to keep track of what we are publishing. One of the aspects I love most about my job is helping to launch the careers of talented new writers, and this month on our site we will hear from four young, debut novelists. Liza Monroy writes our dispatch this month from her recent trip back to Mexico City. This June we will publish her debut novel, Mexican High, about the intense culture shock a high school senior suffers after being transplanted to an elite international school in Mexico City. This month’s First Person comes from Saher Alam, author of the forthcoming July paperback original The Groom to Have Been, a moving debut about young lovers thwarted by the restrictions of their community and the fears of a world suddenly defined by tragedy. This month’s multimedia features a video from another of our debut novelists, Steve Toltz, whose book, A Fraction of the Whole, was just published last month to rave reviews. Three more first-timers discuss the task of writing a memoir in this month’s Roundtable—Jessica Queller, Ta-Nihisi Coates, and Piper Kerman. Well that’s all from me for now. I look forward to welcoming you again in the future. Thank you so much for visiting our new site and come back often for updates. Best regards, Gretchen Koss Posted in Welcome | Link | Print February 1, 2008
Our very first book, Suze Orman's Women & Money, an instant New York Times bestseller with over 1 million copies in print, has made history: More than 1.1 million copies of Women & Money were downloaded after the announcement on The Oprah Winfrey Show on February 13 that the e-book edition would be available for free on the show's Web site, www.oprah.com, for a period of 33 hours. More than 19,000 copies of the Spanish language edition were downloaded too. The offer marked the first time that Winfrey has extended a giveaway to her home viewing audience. The phenomenal response was widely reported in the media and excitement for the book reached across all formats. One year after publication, Suze's book reenters The New York Times bestseller list on March 2nd at # 2. This is a celebratory moment for us. We are officially launched. We have books in the bookstores, we've hired our last editor, Tina Pohlman, who comes to us from Harcourt as Senior Editor, hardcovers, and Editorial Director of our paperback list. We're thrilled to have her with us. We held a memorable and spirited party to commemorate the launch, attended by our authors, their agents, and other industry folk. It was a tremendously moving experience, after two years of building a list of books, to stand among so many friends and colleagues. But what made it particularly special was that so many of our authors were able to attend. Iain Pears (and his agent Felicity Bryan), Rebecca Stott (and her son Jacob), and Jane Kamensky flew in from England; Janelle Brown came from L.A. via Sundance; Dan Baum and Marianne Szegedy-Maszak from D.C.; Jill Lepore and Saher Alam from Boston; Mary Johnson from New Hampshire; Philipp Meyer from Austin; Aviya Kushner from Iowa; and Suze stopped in before her Larry King appearance. Sara Gruen, who'd bought her plane ticket and packed her bag, unfortunately came down with the flu and couldn't make it. We're trying to create an online community of authors and readers with this Web site, but the night of the party was a moment of real (not virtual!) community. Click here to view party pictures. But even authors who couldn't attend in person were with us, as you'll see in this month's multimedia feature: we debuted our "I Am Spiegel & Grau" video at our party but it's up in perpetuity on our site. The message of the video is clear: Our authors are what make us possible; they inspire us daily. We're glad to have the opportunity to introduce you to some of them now. Posted in Welcome | Link | Print January 1, 2008
January 2008 marks the official launch of our publishing program. We have arrived—expect thirty new hardcovers a year over three seasons, paperback editions of our hardcovers, and some paperback originals. In the annual cycle of publishing, we are already well into the preparation of our Fall 2008 list and in the early planning stages of Spring 2009, even as our first books go on sale and our summer books enter final stages of production. As publishers we always work with an eye on the present and our sights on the future—books that are often years away. (We just signed up a book with a delivery date of 2012 . . . ) In the coming months you’ll meet some of our authors on this site whose books aren’t due out for some time, but who have something interesting to weigh in on right now. They will file Dispatches from their far-flung locations—whether it be Beijing or Budapest, the Sudan or Cambodia, New Orleans or a town called Utopia. This month on our site, Adam Langer, author of Ellington Boulevard, takes us on a tour of the neighborhood around West 106th Street where his novel is set. Catherine Sanderson, aka Petite Anglaise (www.petiteanglaise.com), reports on what January brings to her culturally diverse Parisian neighborhood. Lee Siegel, our favorite outspoken critic and author of Against the Machine, files a shortlist of his favorite books to reread. The roundtable features our talented stable of art directors, who provide insight into the process of jacket design. And no January posting would be complete without a To Do list that seizes this moment of best intentions. Ours comes from none other than Suze Orman, who has a few things she’d like you to take care of so that you—and she—will sleep better this year. All of us at Spiegel & Grau wish you a year of peace and joy. Posted in Welcome | Link | Print December 1, 2007
When I was asked to join Spiegel & Grau as Director of Marketing in the spring of 2006, I had been at Penguin (and had worked with Julie and Cindy at Riverhead) for nearly nine years. Admittedly I was ready for a change. But did I really want to uproot everything, leave my friends behind, and be the new dork all over again? And with all the inherent uncertainties of a start-up to boot? I certainly was comfortable where I was. Maybe too comfortable. And a bit bored. And perhaps a little disgruntled. The question quickly mutated from “Why?” to “How could I not?” So I took the leap. And I’ve never been happier. Aside from dreaming about opening a waterfront café with my husband in our retirement, helping to shape a brand new company is not something I ever anticipated being a part of. To have the that start-up situated within the framework of a powerhouse like Random House—and the amazingly expert and adroit Doubleday Broadway group in particular—is a real luxury. With a list that is so manageable in size, I am able to take part in the publishing decisions about our books from the very beginning of the process and to contribute to each and every one of them along the way. Add to this the chance to work closely again with people whose taste and instincts I admire, and I can describe my position only as once-in-a-lifetime. As for ever having been even the slightest bit nervous that this thing wouldn’t get off the ground, I am happy to report that the fifty or so books that S&G has under contract thus far are so impressive—intelligent, insightful, and fun—and I eagerly await the opportunity to share each of them with you. I’ve even made a few new friends—ones who, though my children may beg to differ, make me feel like less of a dork every day. One part of my job that has been particularly fun and rewarding was helping to craft this Web site. All of us at S&G wanted to create an environment in which we could reach out to our readers and colleagues, one that provides more insight into our books and affords the opportunity to get to know our authors a bit better. When I look at the content we have up for the month of December, I feel like we are accomplishing just what we set out to do. In FIRST PERSON, we hear from Adam Mansbach, author of The End of the Jews, which comes out next month. In this intimate and thoughtful piece, Adam shares with us what it means to be a part of a family as he anticipates the publication of his novel about family. In MULTIMEDIA this month we have a video featuring Suze Orman. After its impressive debut in early 2007, Women & Money has just landed back on the New York Times bestseller list, continuing the juggernaut of the book Suze calls her most important yet. This month’s READING LIST comes to you from Karen Connelly. S&G is proud to be the paperback publisher of The Lizard Cage, which was published by Nan A. Talese in hardcover. Though it received rave reviews and won the prestigious Orange Broadband Award for New Writers, hardcover sales were modest. We relish the opportunity to reinvent this book in paperback at a time when political unrest in Burma is making front page news. Given Karen’s wisdom, empathy, and love for the written word, it is no surprise that her list is as inspiring as it is insightful. The December DISPATCH is filed by Jessica Queller, author of the forthcoming memoir Pretty Is What Changes and writer/producer of the CW’s latest hit TV series Gossip Girl. We had intended for Jessica to send her far-flung correspondence from the writer’s room on the set of Gossip Girl. As it turns out, she comes to us instead from the picket line. In this piece—as in Pretty Is What Changes—we see first-hand how Jessica is a true survivor who can handle anything that is thrown her way. And in the Contact Us section, check out the December ROUNDTABLE where the more junior members of the S&G team talk about what it’s like to break into the publishing industry. Thank you for visiting our site. I hope you enjoy what you see here and I invite you to sign up for our newsletter so we can stay in touch about any new developments at S&G. I welcome your feedback, so please feel free to reach out to me at any time at mwalker@spiegelandgrau.com or at spiegelandgraumarketing Yours truly, Posted in Welcome | Link | Print November 1, 2007
A year and a half ago, when we arrived at the Random House building, we were terrifically excited to be starting a new company. To be honest, we were terrified, too. We started out here on day one on a nearly empty floor, just the two of us and a temp, with a row of empty offices and desks between us and what felt like miles of empty bookshelves to fill. We had no books under contract, no editors, no backlist to float us. We’d been through this drill before and we knew that it would take a good, long while, but that there would come a point in time when the promise would start to materialize. And then it did, in the best possible way, with the publication of Suze Orman’s Women & Money, which instantly hit the New York Times’s bestseller list, where it remained for 19 weeks, and has been changing women’s lives ever since. “Changing lives” is a phrase publishers use liberally—after all, we’re in this business because we believe that books have the power to change us. In the case of Women & Money, though, we speak with confidence: Suze’s book changed our lives! (Read the introduction of her book to find out more.) In the spring, we published our second book, Ghostwalk, at once an extraordinary novel of ideas and a tantalizing literary thriller involving Isaac Newton that reminds us of Iain Pears’s Instance of the Fingerpost. Ghostwalk became a national bestseller, received glowing praise across the country, and has just been nominated for its first international prize. After a long wait with no books at all, it feels great to be off to such a promising start. Now, as we launch our website, we are also preparing to launch our first full season of books. Our Spring 2008 list is a small one, but the books reflect the personality and range of Spiegel & Grau and suggest the shape of things to come. Our first book out in 2008 marks the fiction debut of a young Australian, Steve Toltz, whose wild, real-life adventures (he’s worked as a private eye, an English teacher, and a telemarketer, among other jobs, in Barcelona, Madrid, Montreal, Sydney, New York, and Paris) pale in comparison to the unusual lives of his characters. His novel is truly brilliant and a genuine discovery: a wild philosophical romp across three continents, charting the tortured and hilarious escapades of a father and son. And there are more books to come. Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi’s The Great Derangement is a frightening yet hilarious exposé of the dangerous convergence of politics and religion in this unsettling American moment. Jessica Queller, a young L.A.-based screenwriter (she’s currently locked in a writer’s room creating episodes for Gossip Girl) writes poignantly about discovering that she has the gene for breast cancer and her radical decision to take her health and destiny into her own hands—a subject that’s been the topic of much media attention recently. Adam Langer, whose Crossing California was chosen by critics across the country as a favorite novel of the year, is back with a hilarious novel about New York real estate that Barbara Corcoran writes “has captured all of Manhattan's quirky insanity with great style and a huge amount of fun” (and she would know). Adam Mansbach, author of Angry Black White Boy, has followed his editor Chris Jackson to S&G to write his most ambitious novel yet, a generational story called The End of the Jews. And the provocative cultural critic Lee Siegel has written a searing critique about the dangers of the blogosphere to our very humanity. We see this website as a way to communicate more personally with our readers, to give you a sense of who we are and what we are thinking as we choose which books to publish. We also will use it to share with you the thoughts and experiences of our authors as they work on their books. This month, Lee Siegel inaugurates our “First Person” feature—a forum for writers and publishers to air their current preoccupations. Rebecca Stott, the author of Ghostwalk, shares her reading list with us and it’s predictably fascinating—what one might expect a masterful storyteller and scholar reads on holiday. Matt Taibbi’s travels across Iraq are recorded in this month’s video offering. And our far-flung correspondent Steve Toltz sends in a dispatch that assesses the Manhattan he visited as a struggling writer ten years ago with the Manhattan he (temporarily) resides in today as he awaits the publication of his first novel. Of course all the usual elements one would expect to find on a publisher’s website (reading group guides, links, author listings, etc.) are lodged in our nav bar—and some things you might not expect. We are including a monthly roundtable discussion (see under "About Us") in which we and our colleagues discuss relevant publishing issues. We hope you’ll take a moment and join our mailing list, too. We feel incredibly lucky to have populated the desks between us with wonderful colleagues, to have found such talented writers to introduce, and re-introduce, to you, and to be starting a collaborative enterprise that makes us eager to get to the office to begin work each day. We look forward to the months and lists ahead and thank you for your interest and your faith in us, past and present. Publishing books is teamwork on a large scale, beginning with the author-editor relationship and then branching out to involve the in-house support, booksellers, and finally our readers. We’re grateful to have you on our team and hope our relationship will be long-lasting, rewarding, thought-provoking, and most of all, enriching for all of us. Yours, Cindy Spiegel Posted in Welcome | Link | Print |
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