We made an agreement with Jeffrey last autumn for three books including all the rights Nothing has
Posted in General on 24. Jul, 2010
“We made an agreement with Jeffrey last autumn for three books, including all the rights Nothing has changed. I am not quite sure who started this hare but everyone picked it up and started chasing it.”So why did HarperCollins fail to scotch the rumour earlier in the week? “The report was not stamped upon earlier because it was the end of the holiday season and people were away,” Mr Proffitt said.Lord Archer was not away. Why didn’t he scotch it? “I haven’t discussed the deal with anyone and I’m not going to start with you,” Lord Archer said.Yet, according to one source, Lord Archer said last Sunday that his last book deal “had effectively been made redundant”. “I have definitely not renegotiated a new contract with Jeffrey,” Mr Bell told the Bookseller magazine on Friday. “The story seems a product of the silly season.”Stuart Proffitt, Lord Archer’s senior editor and publisher of HarperCollins’s trade division, took a similar view “I don’t know where the story started,” he said.
By Friday, however, questions were being raised about the extent – and even existence – of the new contract.Last October’s deal, for three books, was negotiated by Eddie Bell, HarperCollins’s executive chairman. HarperCollins executives in London now insist that no such deal was struck. The only contract they have with Lord Archer, they say, was signed last year. It is still in place and it is for pounds 14m.
The strange story began in last week’s Sunday Times, which quoted “a source close to the deal” as saying that it was for three books and included television movie and serial rights “It is the first book that is the key,” the “source” said “The publishers loved it. It is the subject that they have paid for.”The story was widely followed up by other newspapers, which congratulated the former Tory party deputy chairman on leapfrogging such giants as Stephen King, Tom Clancy and Barbara Taylor Bradford in the earnings league. Lord Archer was quoted as describing the first novel, due for publication next May or June, as “the best idea of my life”. A pounds 32m book deal that was to have made Jeffrey Archer the world’s highest-paid author was last night shrouded in as much mystery as one of his own best-selling novels.
Sometimes I want to go to the Black Box [council offices] and just blow the whole lot of them,” he says.”I was in care. That place was supposed to be full of qualified people to look after me and I don’t think they did So they deserve to pay, don’t they?”. The other shot a boy in the eye and blinded him.”Chris was sent to Knowl View at the age of 12 because he had been disruptive at his previous school, but he believes he was too bright for the special school. He describes the lessons there as “a joke”.He has no job and feels Knowl View deprived him of a chance in life.”Before I went there I had a life I don’t have one now. But that is difficult.”If I saw [the intruder] now I’d kill him. I’ve been close to suicide and I’m extremely lucky I haven’t gone to prison.”There were six in my dorm and two are in prison One is serving ten- and-a half years for rape.