News & Reviews

WORD: Author Batchelor ‘Cashes’ in with new BenBella series launch

In the 90's, tattooed hipsters drank Guinness in San Francisco bars to the background tunes of Patsy Cline. This decade the country singer of choice is Johnny Cash, whose popularity will come in book form after Bob Batchelor’s Literary Cash: Stories Inspired by the Songs of Johnny Cash was bought publisher BenBella.

Literary agent Erin Reel closed the sale with BenBella, and told WORD’N’BASS.com that Literary Cash will launch the publisher’s upcoming "Words to Music" anthology series. Literary Cash is tentatively slated for a Fall 2006 release, she added.

Separately, 20th Century Fox has reportedly slated the Cash biopic Walk The Line for release on November 18, which could help buoy interest in Batchelor's book.

"And yes, I do think Cash will be experiencing a major surge in popularity, especially now that Joaquin Phoenix will be playing 'The Man in Black' in the biopic about Cash," Reel said. "I'd hate to limit it to the 'hipster' crowd, though."

Reel noted that Batchelor’s book, which will be a 50-50 split between nonfiction and short stories inspired by Johnny Cash’s music, would have a broad appeal to readers and music enthusiasts because Cash was a great American lyrical storyteller who continues to inspire audiences.

Batchelor previously wrote The 1900s, published by Greenwood Press in 2002, and edited Basketball in America: From the Playgrounds to Jordan’s Game and Beyond (Haworth Press, 2005).

Reel founded The Erin Reel Literary Agency in 2003 after working with various literary agents, managers and producers in Los Angeles. "I'm one of the few under 30 who took such a leap of independence and it was absolutely the right thing to do," she said.

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