The Next Wall Street Tsunami — of Financial Books

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Jeff Zelevansky / Getty

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman smiles during a press conference to announce his Nobel Prize win on Oct. 13 in Princeton, N.J.

Given the way things turned out, there was probably a better title for Amit Chatwani's first book, Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Banker. The satirical look at hotshot bankers came out on Aug. 4, "three weeks before the world fell apart," says the 26-year-old author of spoof blog The Leveraged Sell-Out. "What timing."

For authors and publishers trying to capitalize on the financial market mayhem, timing is everything — and it is nearly impossible to gauge. Currently, about 18 to 20 books on the financial crisis are either already in bookstores or are soon to be, and more are sure to follow as financial events continue to grab the headlines.

But covering a breaking crisis isn't easy, especially for book publishers, as editors call for rewrites or dramatic changes in the publishing lag time. "There seems to be two approaches: do it quickly or wait and take the longer-term view," says Will Weisser, associate publisher of Portfolio, a Penguin imprint, who says most of their business authors are being asked to expedite books already under way. One is Eric Janszen, whose The Post Catastrophe Economy, a historical account of the economy and where it is headed, was supposed to be published in August 2009. With the crisis deepening, Portfolio asked Janszen to hurry up; the book is now set to come out early next year. Robert Kiyosaki, author of the best-selling Rich Dad, Poor Dad, is working on a new crisis book that he will release online "on the fly" to keep up with changing trends.

Even the famous are working feverishly to cash in. Paul Krugman, who just won the Nobel Prize for Economics, is having one of his backlist titles brushed off and reissued with revisions. Publisher W.W. Norton & Co. is lengthening the title of 1999 book The Return of Depression Economics with an appendage: ... and the Crisis of 2008. Krugman has agreed to write three new chapters, revise two and eliminate two. He started writing two weeks ago in order to make the release date of Dec. 1.

Likewise, Vicki Robin, author of the 1992 New York Times best seller Your Money or Your Life, which preaches a more fulfilling life through simplicity and frugality, had Penguin accelerate the publishing date for an updated version of the book from one year to three months. It will come out in December. "As the due date got closer, it became clearer to the publisher they wanted to get it out faster," says Robin, who was working on the rewrite when the Fannie Mae bailout hit. As for Robins' muse: "I'm slightly mystical and believe the universe asked me to do this to be ready," she says.

Penguin Group USA seems to be leading the financial field when it comes to big bucks and celebrity authors. Within a span of 48 hours, Penguin imprints scooped up three of the hottest gets, shelling out millions in advances. Andrew Ross Sorkin will write a behind-the-scenes account of the Wall Street crisis, Too Big to Fail, for Viking, while his New York Times colleague Joe Nocera, along with Vanity Fair contributing editor Bethany McLean, will do a long-term take on the crisis for Portfolio, with their advance rumored to be as much as $1.6 million. Roger Lowenstein, contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, is writing Six Days That Shook the World for Penguin Press, which examines the week when Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, Merrill Lynch was bought and AIG received a government bailout.

Ironically, publishers don't seem too concerned that the financial crisis might clip their Christmas sales. "It's extremely logical [for us] to buy books by prominent authors about a story this major, especially if we think those books aren't competitive with each other," says Adrian Zackheim, president and publisher of Portfolio. "We'd rather have people of prominence writing for us than one of our competitors." The books will come out at different times — Nocera and McLean's book isn't due until 2010 — and the writers' voices will make them distinguishable, he says.

But what about the books that hit stores just before the financial crisis broke? "If the book is already out, you might have to market it a different way," says Weisser. That's the case for Paul B. Carroll and Chunka Mui, whose Billion Dollar Lessons, which chronicles the biggest business failures in the past 20 years, came out in September, right before Wall Street firms started collapsing. "They're seeing common threads of what got these companies into trouble, so they are applying what they know to the news headlines," says Weisser. Similarly, David Smick's book The World is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy reached shelves a month ago. The material is right on target, although the title could have used a tweak — dangers to this economy are anything but hidden.

In the end though, trying to gauge the best timing — and angle — for books about the crisis is as much a crapshoot as the market itself. "If I had had an epiphany and went with the title Damn, It FELT Good to Be a Banker, I might have been on The Today Show," says Chatwani. Still, the way the markets have been swinging, he'll probably have another shot.

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