Books: Cover Stories
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Your support makes all the difference.SCARCELY A year passes without Yoko Ono releasing some unpublished work by her late husband, John Lennon. Her last literary endeavour was the ragbag of fiction and non-fiction pieces plus drawings, Skywriting By Word of Mouth, published by Cape. This autumn comes Real Love: the drawings for Sean. The title comes from a song written in 1979 and released in 1996 on Anthology 2. When Sean was born in 1975, Lennon became the world's most famous house husband. Drawing was one way, says Ono, of "connecting" with Sean, who was soon drawing himself. Ono hopes that the book, to be published by Little, Brown, will "bring joy to many parents... The playfulness of John is very important."
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BILLBOARDS ACROSS the country are this week advertising Penguin - not book-by-book, but as a brand. Under a new leadership, the firm has reinvented itself for the new millennium and, last year, commissioned NOP to carry out research. As a brand, Penguin was "spontaneously recognised" by 39 per cent of respondents - indeed, it is the world's 10th most recognised media brand. Second came HarperCollins with 12 per cent, a fact explained by the timing of the survey, which coincided with that company's "sacking" of Chris Patten. Respondents felt that Penguin represented quality and consistency - but also that it "needs to update its image". Hence the first pounds 250,000 phase of Penguin's campaign, which emphasises its familiarity and authority without mentioning the name: that loveable logo is enough.
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COOKERY WRITER and bon viveur Paul Levy is preparing to embark on editing the Lytton Strachey letters. He will work with his wife Penny, a former publisher's editor, and expects to auction the book from New York over the next few weeks. Levy is co-executor of the Strachey Estate with biographer Michael Holroyd. The Bloomsburyite, who enjoyed a menage a trois with Dora Carrington and her husband Ralph Partridge, was a prolific letter writer.
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AS THE world waits on George Lucas, publishers are pumping out those film tie-ins. And it has emerged that more millions were spent on merchandising Star Wars material than on Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" defence research. A Star Trek book is sold somewhere in the world every 13 seconds.
The Literator
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