A Mulligan for The American Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Despite the brilliance of Noomi Rapace in the original Swedish Film version of Stieg Larsson’s THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, it seems that Producer Scott Rudin and Director David Fincher have cast British actress Carey Mulligan as Lisabeth Salander in the US remake, reports The Sunday Times this morning –

FOR Carey Mulligan, who sprang to fame last year in the hit British film, An Education, Hollywood has come knocking. She is set to play Lisbeth Salander, punk heroine of the bestselling thriller The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Mulligan has won the approval of David Fincher, the director, and also the family of the late Stieg Larsson, the Swedish author who created Salander. The choice follows weeks of casting rumours, with producers sifting through nearly 5,000 potential candidates.

Hollywood insiders say Mulligan can expect to be paid up to £10m for the three films covering Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, which has sold 1m copies in Britain and 25m worldwide. This will make her one of Britain’s best-paid actresses.

Mulligan has made no secret of her desire to play Salander, a fierce “biker chick” computer hacker who helps an out-of-luck journalist investigate a long-missing woman in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the first book in the trilogy.

“I am obsessed with those books,” she said last month. “I would love to do them. I am not going to lie about that. I would love to play Lisbeth Salander.”

Since then Scott Rudin, the Hollywood producer who shared an Oscar with the Coen brothers for No Country for Old Men in 2008 and been nominated for 13 other Oscars, has won over the family of Larsson, who died in 2004. They had been wary about the prospect of a Hollywood film.

“They now understand what kind of film he is making and they like Carey,” said an industry source last week.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo has already been filmed in Swedish under its original title, Men Who Hate Women, with Noomi Rapace, a stage actress, playing the bisexual Salander. It was popular in Scandinavia but its subtitles have prevented it becoming a mainstream hit in America, where it opened last month.

The new version may be relocated to Canada as a compromise for American audiences. It will not reach cinemas until all three books have been turned into Swedish-language films by the team behind the television hit Wallander.

The final decision on casting will be made soon by Fincher, director of Fight Club, Se7en and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. He has been talking to Mulligan’s representatives at Creative Artists Agency in Los Angeles, which has been seeking a “breakout” role for their young British client.

Read More from The Sunday Times Here

Bookseller Industry Awards Shortlists Announced

The Bookseller announces it’s first Industry Awards -

The first Bookseller Industry Awards shortlist has been announced with 16 categories covering the publishing and retail industry.

The awards combine the British Book Industry Awards, also known as the trade Nibbies, and TheBookseller's own Retail Awards.

Neill Denny, editor-in-chief of The Bookseller, said: “The shortlist represents an exceptionally strong group of people and companies, all of whom have inspiring stories of excellence and creativity. We will be telling them over the next few weeks, ahead of unveiling the winners in May. We wish them all good luck.”

Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on 17th May at the Royal Courts of Justice.

Champagne corks must be popping at Quercus Publishing as both Christopher MacLehose and Quercus Publishing have nominations no doubt due to the phenomenal success of the Stieg Larsson trilogy. It's great to see the breadth of the UK publishing industry being celebrated

Photo (c) Ali Karim 2008 Nicci and Lucy of Quercus Publicity celebrate the launch of the GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO at the London Press Association in January 2008 [with Ayo and Mike Stotter Editor of Shots Ezine]

The Full Nominations are –

SUE BUTTERWORTH YOUNG BOOKSELLER OF THE YEAR (HarperCollins)
Claire Boothby—Waterstone's
Georgina Hanratty—Tales on Moon Lane
Lorna Duncanson—Seven Stories
Shelly Roberts—Sainsbury's

Rachael Lloyd—Foyles

PUBLICITY CAMPAIGN OF THE YEAR (PPC and Midas)
Anna Robinson—Simon & Schuster for Lion Man by Ian McGeechan
Joe Pickering—Penguin for Legend of a Suicide by David Vann
Lyndsey Dalladay—Transworld for Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett
Mari Yamazaki—Penguin Press for The Sartorialist by Scott Schumann
Reetu Kabra—Puffin for DOT Robot by Jason Bradbury

INNOVATION IN THE PUBLISHING SUPPLY CHAIN (IBS)
Bertrams
Hachette—Printer Direct Delivery Solution
Macmillan Distribution—MDL Midas System
Nielsen
SBS Worldwide

CHILDREN'S INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLER OF THE YEAR (Walker Books)
Book Nook
Children's Bookshop Edinburgh
Children's Bookshop Muswell Hill
Mainstreet Trading Company
Norfolk Children's Book Centre

RIGHTS PROFESSIONAL OF THE YEAR (Frankfurter Buchmesse)
Alex Nicholas—Orion Children's Books
Andrea Joyce—Canongate
Andy Hine—Little, Brown
Graham Cook—Haynes
Jason Bartholomew—Hodder & Stoughton

MANAGER OF THE YEAR (Wiley)
Gemma Barry—Waterstone's, Lancaster
Sion Hamilton—Foyles, Charing Cross Road
Steve Orchard—Blackwell, Charing Cross Road
Susan Sinclair—Foyles, Royal Festival Hall and St Pancras

LITERARY AGENT OF THE YEAR (Orion/Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
Jo Unwin—Conville & Walsh
Jonny Geller—Curtis Brown
Luigi Bonomi—LBA

DIRECT BOOKSELLING COMPANY OF THE YEAR (BDS)
Amazon.co.uk
Book Depository
Play.com
Scholastic Book Clubs

DIGITAL INNOVATION (Futurebook)
Accent Press—Xcite Books
Bloomsbury—Bloomsbury's Public Library Online
Ebury—Tess Daly Baby Diaries
Enhanced Editions
Harlequin Mills & Boon
HarperCollins—Authonomy.com

IMPRINT AND EDITOR OF THE YEAR (The Bookseller)
HarperCollins—Lynne Drew, HarperFiction
HarperCollins—Nicholas Pearson, Fourth Estate
Little, Brown—Lennie Goodings, Virago
Orion—Gollancz Team
Penguin Group—Stuart Proffitt, Allen Lane
Quercus—Christopher MacLehose, MacLehose Press

CHILDREN'S BOOKSELLER OF THE YEAR (Usborne)
Asda
Foyles
Play.com
Sainsbury's
W H Smith

MARKETING CAMPAIGN OF THE YEAR (Nielsen)
Hodder & Stoughton—Under the Dome
Orion—True Blood
Puffin—The Very Hungry Caterpillar 40th Anniversary
Quercus—Stieg Larsson Millennium Trilogy
Titan—Watchmen
Transworld—Dan Brown
W H Smith—Times Recommended Read

INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLER OF THE YEAR (Gardners Books)
Kemptown Bookshop
Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights
One Tree Books
The Chepstow Bookshop
White Rose Books

INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER OF THE YEAR (Lightning Source)
Constable & Robinson
Hay House Publishers
John Blake
Kyle Cathie
Quiller Publishing
Search Press

GENERAL OR CHAIN BOOKSELLING COMPANY OF THE YEAR (Martina Cole)
Asda
Blackwell
Foyles
Sainsbury's
W H Smith

PUBLISHER OF THE YEAR (Publishing Technology)
Faber & Faber
Little, Brown Book Group
Orion Publishing Group
Quercus Publishing
Simon & Schuster UK
Transworld

Read More from The Bookseller

Shots passes our best wishes to all the nominated considering what a tough year we’ve all endured.

Gone Baby Gone in the UK

The Bookseller reports some big news for British Dennis Lehane fans –

Little, Brown has fought off com­petition from four other publishers to acquire the rights to the next two titles by American author Dennis Lehane. Deputy publisher David Shelley bought UK and Commonwealth rights from Sarah Nundy, deputy managing director at Andrew Nurnberg Associates, sold on behalf of Ann Rittenberg of Ann Rittenberg Literary Agency.

Lehane's previous nine novels, including Shutter Island and Mystic River, have been published by Transworld in the UK. Both novels, along with Gone, Baby, Gone, have been made into films.

Shelley said: "He has actually been one of my favourite authors and it has always been a dream of mine to publish him and, when the opportunity came up, I jumped at it. It's like a dream come true. We've got fantastic plans on how to break him through to the next level."

Read More Here

Newsy Stuff

Crimefest have announced their Awards shortlist –

The awards will be given out at Cimefest during the Gala Dinner at the Bristol Marriott Royal Hotel on Saturday, 22 May. The Awards are as follows -

eDUNNIT AWARD
The eDunnit Award is for the best crime fiction ebook first published in the UK in 2009.

The award is sponsored by Reader from Sony and the winning author receives £1,000 and a Sony eReader. The winner also receives a commemorative award provided by Bristol Blue Glass.

eDunnit Award nominees:
Josh Bazell for Beat The Reaper (Random House)
Steve Berry for The Charlemagne Pursuit (Hodder & Stoughton)
Juan Gomez-Jurado for Contract With God (Orion)
Bernard Knight for Crowner Royal (Simon & Schuster)
Carol McCleary for The Alchemy of Murder (Hodder & Stoughton)

Eligible titles were submitted by publishers for the longlist, and leading British crime fiction reviewers voted for the winning title from the shortlisted entries containing additional econtent.

One CrimeFest delegate whose vote coincides with the winning title will be randomly selected and receives an eReader courtesy of Sony.

THE LAST LAUGH AWARD

The Last Laugh Award is for the best humorous crime novel first published in the British Isles in 2009. The £500 award is sponsored by Goldsboro Books, Britain's book collector's bookseller. The winner also receives a commemorative award provided by Bristol Blue Glass.

Last Laugh Award nominees:
Colin Bateman for The Day of the Jack Russell (Headline)
Josh Bazell for Beat the Reaper (Random House)
Chris Ewan for The Good Thief's Guide to Paris (Long Barn Books)
Suzette Hill for Bone Idle (Constable & Robinson)
Malcolm Pryce for From Aberystwyth with Love (Bloomsbury)
Len Tyler for Ten Little Herrings (Macmillan)

Eligible titles were submitted by publishers for the longlist, and leading British crime fiction reviewers voted to establish the shortlist and the winning title.
One CrimeFest delegate whose vote coincides with the winning title will be randomly selected and receives copies of the shortlisted titles.

SOUNDS OF CRIME AWARDS


The Sounds of Crime Awards are for the best abridged and unabridged crime audiobooks first published in the UK in 2009 in both printed and digital formats, and available for download from the Audible UK website. The Bristol Blue commemorative award goes to both the author and the reader of he winning entry.

The Sounds of Crime Awards are sponsored by Audible UK, the Internet's leading premium spoken audio source.

Nominees for Best Abridged Crime Audiobook:
Dan Brown for The Lost Symbol (abridged by Karen DiMattia). Reader: Paul Michael (Orion)
Lee Child for Gone Tomorrow (abridged by Carolanne Lyme). Reader: Kerry Shale (Random House)
Peter James for Dead Tomorrow (abridged by Kati Nicholl). Reader: William Gaminara (Pan Macmillan)
Stieg Larsson for The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (translated by Reg Keeland; abridged by Isabel Morgan). Reader: Martin Wenner (Quercus)
Stieg Larsson for The Girl Who Played with Fire (translated by Reg Keeland; abridged by Isabel Morgan). Reader: Martin Wenner (Quercus)
Ian Rankin for The Complaints (abridged by Kati Nicholl). Reader: James Macpherson (Orion)

Nominees for Best Unabridged Crime Audiobook:

Dan Brown for The Lost Symbol. Reader: Paul Michael (Whole Story Audio Books)
Michael Connelly for The Scarecrow. Reader: Peter Giles (Orion)
Peter James for Dead Tomorrow. Reader: David Bauckham (Whole Story Audio Books)
Stieg Larsson for The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (translated by Reg Keeland). Reader: Saul Reichlin (Whole Story Audio Books)
Stieg Larsson for The Girl Who Played with Fire (translated by Reg Keeland). Reader: Saul Reichlin (Whole Story Audio Books)
Ian Rankin for The Complaints. Reader: Peter Forbes (Whole Story Audio Books)

Eligible titles were submitted by publishers for the longlist, and Audible UK customers and recipients of the CrimeFest newsletter voted to establish the shortlists and winners. One Audible UK customer or CrimeFest delegate whose votes coincides with the winning titles will be randomly selected and receives an iPod and the shortlisted titles. More info about the conference can be found here.

Forthcoming books to look forward to -

Orion are due to publish The Somnabulist the debut novel by Essie Fox. It is said to be a gripping Victorian Gothic mystery that is wonderfully commercial with shades of Sarah Waters and Diane Setterfield, along with nods to Wilkie Collins and Charlotte Bronte. Orion have also acquired the rights to the debut novel of thriller writer and ex-MI6 field operative Matthew Dunn. in a substantial pre-emptive deal for three books. All three will feature Dunn's charismatic British MI6 operator Will Cochrane. The debut novel is entitled, Megiddo after the codename of the book's villain. Megiddo will be published in hardback in July 2011. More information can be found here.

Craig Russell has been contracted to produce two more books in his Lennox series for Quercus Publishers. The first book in the series Lennox was contracted by Jane Wood back in 2008. Information can be found here. Jane wood has also acquired the rights to six of Tony Park’s African standalone thrillers. Information regarding this can be found here. The first to be published will be Silent Predator in November 2010.

The Watermen by Patrick Easter is the first of a new historical series by a debut author and is set around the London docks in the late 18th Century. The Waterman introduces Tom Pascoe a patrolman with the Marine Police, Britain's first organised Police Force and will be published by Quercus.

Poolbeg Press, Ireland are due to publish Murder at Shandy Hill by Michael Sheridan’s and is an account of a sensational Victorian murder played out with a potent mix of love, betrayal, lust and naked hatred – said to be Ireland's answer to The Suspicions of Mr Whicher

Simon & Schuster are due to publish Babylon Nights – the second novel by Daniel Depp which sees private investigator David Spandau hired as bodyguard to a Hollywood actress at the Cannes Film Festival.

The Courier by Ava McCarthy is the follow up to The Insider, which sold in 12 territories. Feisty heroine Harry Martinez witnesses a brutal murder and uncovers a trail of diamond-smuggling which takes her from exclusive horse racing society in Ireland to the brutal world of jewel mining in South Africa. The Courier is due to be published by HarperCollins. They are also due to publish The Woodcutter a standalone novel by Reginald Hill

Random House are due to publish A Dance of Ghosts by Kevin Brooks. A Dance of Ghosts introduces readers to Essex-based private detective John Craine. Brooks is better known as a young adult writer.

The debut novel by Gerry O'Carroll, a legendary Irish detective is The Gathering of Souls. This is the first in a series featuring Detectives Moss Quinn and Joe Doyle and is due to be published by Liberties Press, Ireland. The Gathering of Souls is an authentic, dark tale of obsession, revenge and redemption.

Doubleday are due to publish The Fat Years by Chan Koon-Chung. Said to be the Chinese version of Nineteen Eighty-Four it has been banned in mainland China and follows a writer, obsessed with detective stories as he goes on a quest to uncover the events of a month mysteriously absent from official Chinese records. The Fat Years will be published in the summer of 2011.

From Little Brown Publishers comes Tania Carver’s second novel The Creeper in September 2010 and in January 2011 The Stonehenge Legacy by Sam Christer. In The Stonehenge Legacy a policewoman and an Oxford historian investigate the murder of a man found at Stonehenge.

Macmillan will publish James Herbert’s Ash in October 2010 and it features his most popular character David Ash, the sceptical paranormal detective. David Jackson’s Pariah is due to be published by Macmillan and is out in March 2011. It is a slick, edgy and cinematic novel following New York Police Detective Callum Doyle as he battles to save his family – and himself – from a dangerous and mysterious killer. Also forthcoming from them is Brian McGilloway’s new novel Little Girl Lost in April 2011. Brian McGilloway who is better known for his excellent Inspector Devlin Series introduces readers to his first female lead in Detective Lucy Vaughan.

Serpent’s Tail are due to publish Falling Glass by Adrian McKinty in March 2011. In Falling Glass Killian a Northern Ireland enforcer finds himself in the world of cross and double-cross as he searches for the wife and daughter of a businessman.

After a seven year hiatus Tom Clancy will have his first book published in December 2010. The book Dead or Alive will be published simultaneously in the US and in the UK.

The world’s fascination with Stieg Larsson does not seem to be abating. Columbia Pictures a subsidiary of Sony Corp have bought the movie rights to Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy. They will be working alongside Yellow Bird AB who made the Swedish language versions of the films. More information can be found in the following article.

Ridley Scott the director of Gladiator is due to adapt Richard Harris’s novel Pompeii into a four hour mini-series. More information can be found here.

China Miéville’s novel The City and The City has won the British Science Fiction Award for best novel. The City and The City is story of a murder investigation in parallel worlds. The full article can be found here. The City and The City has also been nominated for the 2010 Hugo Awards Best Novel. The 2010 Hugo Awards will be presented in Melbourne, Australia during Aussiecon 4, the 68th World Science Fiction Convention. The Hugo Awards Ceremony will take place on Sunday 5 September 2010.

Roger Ellory’s Anniversary Man

It just seems like yesterday when Roger Ellory told me about THE ANNIVERSARY MAN at last year’s London Book Fair, and now I read this from Booklist –

"This is one of those police-procedural gems that come along once in a blue moon. The book is entirely free of the tired formulas that drive way too many procedurals and that often seem more oriented towardsecuring movie rights than telling a story. And what a story this is! NYPD Detective Ray Irving—overworked, underpaid, and absolutely dedicated to his job—risks his code of ethics and, ultimately, his life to track down a serial killer who is imitating the crimes of some of the worst monsters our society has spawned. An increasing number of leads begin flowing in from newspaper researcher John Costello, a psychologically damaged survivor of the “Hammer of God” killer. Two decades after that traumatic event, Costello now seems to have garnered an uncannily encyclopedic knowledge of serial murderers. Costello’s almost prescient information soon makes him Irving’s number-one resource as well as his number-one suspect. Although Ellory is widely acclaimed in his native Britain, his books have not yet received widespread distribution in the U.S. Following A Quiet Belief in Angels (2009), this could be the one to put his name in lights in this country. Expect his name to be on every crime-fiction fan’s lips in short order." — Elliott Swanson

Read More from Roger’s US Publisher’s The Overlook Press who incidentally published one my favourite US Espionage writers – Robert Littell

Shots Ezine have followed Roger’s career with great interest over the years, and we were glad to see him finally achieving a great audience – if you’ve not explored the dark and insightful mind of Roger Ellory, it’s time you did

More information here

The Girl Who Took 4% of the UK Book Market Last Week

I know I’ve been obsessed with the Stieg Larsson Trilogy from the ‘get-go’ but it seems the fever has spread throughout the UK As reported in The Bookseller -

The final installment in the late Stieg Larsson's Millennium crime trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, sold a phenomenal 98,167 copies in just three days last week. The book, which went on sale on 1st April, comfortably tops this week's Official UK Top 50.

It is one of the strongest sales from a paperback fiction title since records began, and the biggest in a single Sunday-to-Saturday week since John Grisham's The Broker (Arrow) sold 99,146 copies in the week leading up to Christmas Day in 2005. The first book in the trilogy, The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, sold 39,989 copies last week with sales split between the original mass-market edition (21,724) and the new film tie-in edition (18,265), while The Girl Who Played with Fire sold 29,271 copies. In total, just over £800,000 was spent on the three titles, with volume sales accounting for 4% of all book sales last week.While The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest débuts at the summit of the overall chart, James Patterson and Maxine Paetro's San Francisco-set Women's Murder Club thriller, 9th Judgement (Century), debuts at the top of the Original Fiction list thanks to a three-day sale of 13,159 copies.

Lee Child's 61 Hours (Bantam Press) falls one place to second position in that list while Philip Pullman's controversial re-telling of the story of Jesus, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ (Canongate), joins the Original Fiction list in third place.

Read More from The Bookseller

Photo © 2010 Ali Karim taken of Hakan Nesser, Eva Gedin, Mark Lawson, Barry Forshaw and Lynda La Plante talking at The Swedish Embassy in London