Paperback rights $1.55m record

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34128, 14 April 1976, Page 1

Paperback rights $1.55m record

(N.Z. Press Assn—Copyrignt) NEW YORK, April 13. The paperback rights of “The Final Days.” the book about the last days of the Nixon Presidency, by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, have been sold for SUSI.SSm — a record for a non-fiction book, according to Simon and Schuster, the book's hard-cover publisher. The rights to the book, written by two reporters of the “Washington Post,” were purchased by Avon Books, one of seven publishers who participated in

a three-round auction conducted by Simon and Schuster that began on April 8. The previous record for a non-fiction book was held by “The Joy of Cooking,” by Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker, whose paperback rights were sold to the New American Library in 1973 for Sl.sm. Last year. “Ragtime,” a novel by E. Doctorow, was sold to Bantam Books for $ 1.85 m. “I feel elated that the merits of ‘The Final Days’

have been so recognised," said Joi Evans, vice-presi-dent and director of subsidiary rights for Simon and Schuster. Mrs Evans said that the initial hard-cover sales of the book exceeded by 50 per cent Simon and Schuster’s previous fastest-sell-ing book, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,’’ by William Shirer — by the end of this week, there will be 427.000 hardcover copies of “The Final Days” in orint. Under the terms of the sale concluded yesterday, the book may be published in paperback on May 3, 1977, or one week after it is taken off the “New York Times” best-seller list, whichever is the sooner. “The Press” has acquired the New Zealand rights to the book, and begins serialising it today, on page 13.