Industry news
Simon & Schuster U.S. pays Montreal firm $500,000 for Jackson bio
Transit Publishing, the small Montreal-based firm that has been in the news of late for preparing to publish the first posthumous biography of Michael Jackson, has just sold U.S. rights to the book to Simon & Schuster for a cool $500,000, according to Transit publisher Pierre Turgeon. (A publicist at Simon & Schuster U.S. would neither confirm nor deny Turgeon’s claim, saying that it is against company policy to disclose financial details.)
The book in question, journalist Ian Halperin’s Unmasked: The Final Years of Michael Jackson, has been on auction for the past few days, and Turgeon says that he expects to announce yet another major deal – this time with a U.K. publisher – as early as tomorrow. Meanwhile, the Canadian edition of the book is on target to hit stores next week. According to representatives from Transit’s distributor, Georgetown Terminal Warehouses, the book has been ordered in large quantities by pretty much all the major Canadian retailers, including Indigo, Costco, Wal-Mart, Shopper’s Drug Mart, and many others.
In conversation with Q&Q Omni on Thursday, Turgeon could hardly contain his excitement. “I’m not sure, but [our deal with Simon & Schuster] might be the biggest foreign rights deal in Canadian history,” he said.
According to agent Hilary McMahon of Westwood Creative Artists, it isn’t the largest foreign rights deal in Canadian history, but it is certainly one of the largest. “We’ve made deals in that range, but not any time recently,” she said, adding that it’s “generally American writers who get those kinds of deals.” Meanwhile, Random House Canada director of rights and contracts Jennifer Shepherd said it was almost certainly the largest rights deal ever for a French Canadian firm, and Penguin Canada director of marketing and publicity Yvonne Hunter called it “a huge advance by any measure.”
Though Turgeon seems to have hit the jackpot with the Halperin book, he still has a few financial ghosts haunting him. Though he put the bankruptcy of his former house, Trait d’union, behind him earlier this year by pleading guilty to charges of fraud and paying a $5,000 fine, he is now embroiled in yet another potential bankruptcy, this time of his online electronic distribution company, Tonalité. According to Turgeon, two disgruntled private investors in the company have initiated bankruptcy proceedings against it, but he in turn has filed a countersuit against them. Whatever happens, Turgeon says it will not affect Transit or the publication of the Jackson bio, as Tonalité is a completely separate venture.
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