4 Notable January 2022 Book Deals

January brought numerous book deals for authors of children’s and adult titles across a range of genres and topics.

Bestselling children’s picture book author Mo Willems signed with Union Square Kids, according to the Associated Press. Willems’ The Pigeon Will Ride the Roller Coaster! will be published September 6 by the imprint, Union Square & Co., part of Sterling Publishing, which Barnes & Noble acquired in 2003. Willems’ popular Pigeon series titles have sold over six million copies. “I am excited to embark on new publishing experiments while working with a team I’ve known and trusted for over a decade. The goal is to surprise and delight without losing sight of a fundamental truth: The Pigeon is not going to get to drive that bus,” said Willems in a statement.

Macmillan Children’s Books publisher Samantha Smith and associate publisher Sarah Hughes acquired UK and Commonwealth rights in a joint acquisition with St Martin’s Press to author Casey McQuiston’s young adult debut, I Kissed Shara Wheeler, reports The Bookseller. McQuiston’s debut novel, male/male romance Red, White & Royal Blue, is being adapted for Amazon Studios, with Tony Award-winning Matthew López directing. Smith is quoted by The Bookseller praising the YA novel, which will be published May 12 in the UK and May 4 in the U.S. “This funny and frank romantic comedy is about breaking the rules and finding love in unexpected places. A month before graduating from Willowgrove Christian Academy, the principal’s perfect daughter, Prom Queen Shara Wheeler, kisses Chloe Green and vanishes, leaving only a trail of clues. On a furious hunt for answers, Chloe discovers she is not the only one that Shara kissed, and she starts to suspect that there may be more to this small town than she thought. And maybe—probably not, but maybe—there is more to Shara too.”  

Bloomberg reports that Kellyanne Conway’s book deal with Simon & Schuster imprint Threshold Editions for memoir Here’s the Deal was “worth seven figures, according to a publishing official with knowledge of negotiations.” In a statement released by the publisher, Conway, the former Trump campaign manager and senior counsel during the Trump administration, said, ““Long before I joined the Trump campaign and White House, I’d made a career out of calling things as I saw them, with no notes in front of me and no net beneath me. I brought that same approach to this book, which should engage, engross and entertain plenty of people.” Conway will narrate the audiobook for the May 24 title.

Another political memoir book deal announced recently was William Morrow’s acquisition of former US Attorney General William Barr’s One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General, out March 1. Washingtonian quotes a publisher press release saying, “takes readers behind the scenes during seminal moments of the Bush administration in the 1990s, from the LA riots to Pan Am 103 and Iran Contra. With the Trump administration, Barr faced an unrelenting barrage of issues, such as Russiagate, the opioid epidemic, Chinese espionage, big tech, the COVID outbreak, civil unrest, the first impeachment, and the 2020 election fallout.” Conway is also the co-author, with Celinda Lake, of 2005 book What Women Really Want: How American Women Are Quietly Erasing Political, Racial, Class, and Religious Lines to Change the Way We Live (Free Press).