Those who watch the book deal emails from Publishers Lunch know that Chad Harbach, an editor at n+1, recently sold his first novel, The Art of Fielding, but a Bloomberg article today reveals it went for an eye-popping $650,000. The book centers around baseball at a fictional Wisconsin college, and Bloomberg pegs the deal as “one of the highest prices for a man’s first novel on a topic appealing to a male audience.” Possible buried lede: n+1 compatriots Benjamin Kunkel and Keith Gessen saw their first novels sell 48,000 and 7,000 copies respectively, according to Neilsen BookScan.
Debut Novel from n+1 Co-Editor Brings in Big Bucks
The other work of a creative
“What you might call an invisible economy of house sitters exists across the country,” writes Aaron Gilbreath in the Paris Review. His account of the generosity and clean counter-spaces of friends is a humbling reminder of the flip side of creative work.
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LeBron James, Cleveland and the Personal Essay
“No one in his or her right mind would read James’s essay in order to vouch for or against its literary quality, but I am here to do just that.” Ryan Lejarde parses LeBron James‘s “I’m Coming Home” for The Rumpus and comes to myriad conclusions about sports, literature, and what it means to love Cleveland.
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Rejoice, Ye Antiquarians
This one is for all you antiquarians out there. The oldest known draft of the most widely read work in all of English literature, the King James Bible, has been discovered in the archives at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge. William Shakespeare’s books have also sold a ton of copies, and here’s an essay from The Millions that imagines him as a kind of God, Himself.
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On Pronouns and Ownership
Dr. Dennis Ryan Storoshenko is conducting research for a Yale Linguistics project, looking to ask people about theirselves and their pronouns. Take a minute of your time to help him out.
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Larceny Lit
Recommended Reading: Sarah Gerard records her phone calls with inmate Matthew Seger as he tries to find time to write in prison. “I feel like all of these ideas I have will someday, maybe, be of some use. I don’t want to let any of them go.” We interview Matthew Parker, the author of the graphic memoir, Larceny in My Blood: A Memoir of Heroin, Handcuffs, and Higher Education.
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Man book sales are weird. I have to say I probably know personally 1% of the folks who bought Gessen’s novel. And if Indecision sold 48,000 copies it seems crazy to give an n+1 guy $650,000. Having said that, I will read it.
Wow, this is somewhat shocking. I’ll keep an eye out for the reviews on this one. An advance that high means something, but Im not sure what.
Congratulations to this guy; I hope it’s good. But how many of these massive advances for (so-called) literary novels have panned out in recent years? Charles Frazier, Reif Larson, Andrew Davidson, Audrey Niffenegger (hard to believe she’ll make up that $5 mill.), Martin Amis — the list of duds, at least as measured by sales, is long. Joshua Foer reportedly got 1.2 mill for his book in 2006, and according to Amazon, it’s not due out until 2025. Long time for the bean counters to wait.