Omni Daily News

The Secretary’s Secret Memoir:  While living under house arrest
for more than fifteen years for his support of political reforms and
sympathizing with Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protesters in 1989,
China’s former Communist Party secretary Zhao Ziyang managed to
secretly recorded his political memoir on cassette tapes. Zhao’s
forthcoming (and strictly embargoed) memoir Prisoner of the State
(available May 19 in English and Chinese) details how the former party
chief (only a step or two down from Deng Xiaoping) was largely
responsible for shaping and setting in motion China’s massive economic
reform policies. Reporter Erik Ekholm in today’s New York Times 
and The Guardian’s Beijing correspondent, Tania Branigan report that even his family didn’t know that Zhao was secretly
recording his memoirs.  One of the book’s editors Adi Ignatius told Branigan that: “People
thought Zhao was probably broken and bitter and at the very least had
so much surveillance there was no way he could have offered his final
word on Tiananmen. But he had–and nobody knew.  It will remind people
that Tiananmen did not have to end up as it did;
it was a power struggle at the top level–nothing to do with putting
down a violent rebellion.”  [The New York Times; The Guardian]



Self-Published Teen Author Gets an Encore: As reported by Rachel Deahl in today’s Publisher’s Weekly,
Amazon announced its AmazonEncore program.  “Amazon has acquired world
English rights to a self-published novel by a midwestern teenager
called Legacy. The acquisition is the first for the e-tailer’s newly launched publishing banner, AmazonEncore.” [PW]

Children’s Book Week Update:  Kids books are topping the bestseller lists and dethroning vampires. Since its release last week, The Last Olympian–the finale to the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan has been in the top 3 on Amazon.com’s Bestsellers list, and has spent 85 days in the top 100. It has reached the top of USA TODAY’s bestseller list thereby unseating the two paranormal heavyweights Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries and Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga.  The paper’s Book Buzz reports that “Only six other young-adult or children’s writers have entered USA TODAY’s list at No. 1:J.K. Rowling, Lemony Snicket,Stephenie Meyer, P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast (writing together), and Christopher Paolini.”   [USA TODAY]

–Lauren