News & Reviews

WORD: Three publishers snap up Hurricane Katrina books despite media saturation

As New Orleans begins the long process of rebuilding and the American Booksellers Association rallies book industry donations for its Hurricane Katrina fund, publishers are busy cashing in on public interest in the disaster.

At least three book deals were reported within weeks after Katrina battered the Gulf Coast. According to Publishers Lunch, Random House, Morrow and Lionheart recently snapped up books on Katrina, including an untitled manuscript by local journalist Jed Horne; an unbelievably quick launch from CNN (slated for October release) called CNN Reports: State of Emergency; and The Great Deluge by Douglas Brinkley.

Collectively, the three titles are efforts at gaining "insider" accounts of the hurricane’s fallout against a political and historical backdrop. The deals were closed shortly after Hurricane Katrina became headline news, as publishers raced for their projects to hit book shelves before public interest wanes.

While publishers are evidently banking on media exposure to help buoy sales, several titles about widely publicized news in 2005 have sold below industry expectations.

The most prominent example was Bob Woodward's The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate's Deep Throat, which saw tepid sales despite being launched about a month after W. Mark Felt was identified as the reporter's secret source.

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