News & Reviews

WORD: When Lotto strikes literature -- publishers go 'Ape' over Sara Gruen’s new novel

You just knew author Sara Gruen was hot when her latest novel Water For Elephants (Algonquin Books) started getting press in just about every newspaper across America. Little did we know that her breakout work would end up on the New York Times’ best sellers list for 22 weeks and counting, and result in what’s likely the biggest fiction deal of 2006: a cool seven figures for Gruen’s next two books.

Literary agent Emma Sweeney closed the seven-figure deal for Gruen’s upcoming novel The Ape House and one additional title with publisher Spiegel & Grau at auction, the author confirmed with WORD’N’BASS.com. The Ape House is slated for publication in 2008.

Let’s not harp on the rumor floating around that Gruen’s two books garnered a whopping $5 million. Seven figures for two literary novels is mind boggling regardless of how you cut it. While most expected the success of Water For Elephants would make Gruen a sought-after commodity, she was just as surprised as the rest of us when the auction for her upcoming work blew through the roof.

"When Emma called to tell me about it she first asked if I was sitting down. I’m glad she did -- we’d already had some mighty big offers that day, but this one made my limbs go numb," said Gruen. "After a few minutes I told her I had to go lie down."

Cue up the sound of slot machine bells. Weeks after striking the book industry’s equivalent to the Lottery, is Gruen readying a jet-setting lifestyle of parties, towel-bearing cabana boys, or buying a palm tree laden estate? Not quite. The down-to-earth author, who lives in the Chicago area, says she won’t change a thing.

"I haven’t let myself think about how this will change our lives yet," said the married mother of three children. We’re still trying to absorb it, and until we do I want to keep everything about our lives the same as it was before."

Unlike most literary authors, Gruen’s breakthrough deal doesn’t make the difference between full-time novelist and daytime hack writer. For the past five years she made her living writing fiction with novels like Riding Lessons and Flying Changes, which more or less replaced her previous salary as a technical writer.

Water For Elephans, about a 23-year-old man who joins a traveling circus during the Great Depression after his parents die, appears to have captured America’s nostalgia for simpler times. Gruen said that Algonquin editors knew the novel could take off months before publishing it back in May, noting "they were out there in the industry listening to buzz."

With a deal in hand that allows the Canadian-born Gruen (who is now a U.S. citizen) the financial freedom to pick and choose where her career takes her, Gruen said she’s ready to settle into writing ambitious novels: "I want to tell stories that entertain but also have layers. I also like to incorporate non-fictional aspects so that readers can come away knowing more about something but without feeling they’ve had a lecture."

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