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News & Reviews
WORD:
O.J.’s ‘If I Did It’ gets second life on judge's ruling, publishers
ready auction
Publishers, start your engines -- and get your pocketbooks ready. Just
four months after HarperCollins put O.J.
Simpson’s book ‘If I Did It’ on the chopping block along with Judith Regan’s
head, a judge reportedly ordered that its rights must be sold at
auction to help satisfy a civil judgment against the alleged killer.
It’s not
immediately known who would handle the auction, since a manuscript
doesn’t exactly auction itself, but either way the title could end up
at your local Barnes & Nobles quicker than anyone had expected. We
can’t wait to hear which literary agent brokers the deal, which
publishers bid on the manuscript, who buys it, and at what price.
‘If I Did It’ is O.J.'s account of how he might have killed ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman that was initially
approved by Rupert Murdoch,
head of
HarperCollins’ parent company News Corp, but later canceled during
public outcry about the book. But
like a zombie that won't die, outside publisher interest is likely to
fuel a seven-figure deal that would keep the media tycoon from killing
the project.
That's because Los Angeles
Superior Court Judge Gerald
Rosenberg's decision came at the request of Ron Goldman's
father, Fred Goldman, who
ironically could end up being responsible for putting the manuscript
into bookstores, according to Reuters.
Naturally, the market participants in an auction for this manuscript
will want to keep their involvement quiet, but that’s not likely going
to happen in today’s Internet-driven media landscape.
‘If I Did It’ is potentially the second of two canceled books brokered
by former publisher Judith Regan that could now see print. The second
book, 7: The Mickey
Mantle Novel, has already been sold to Globe Pequot Press
imprint Lyons Press and is slated for publication on April 3.
Regan was fired and saw her HarperCollins imprint, ReganBooks,
dissolved.
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