A celebrity gossip site called 24/Sizzler ran an item yesterday about a cancelled memoir from Anna Nicole Smith‘s bodyguard, which blogger David Caplan then spun into a referendum on the alleged failures of Lisa Sharkey (left), the former television producer hired earlier this year to, as industry watchers saw it, find books in the classic Judith Regan mold of pop culture and celebrity. (When reached for comment about the article, HarperCollins spokesperson Erin Crum told me that Sharkey was not hired to replace Regan, but because her television background would help to “bring in books from outside the usual channels.”)
But Caplan’s beat isn’t the publishing industry, so there’s a lot in this story that simply doesn’t ring true—so much so that, frankly, you have to start asking yourself who at HarperCollins has it in for Sharkey so bad that they’d try to spin the story this way. Caplan claims, for example, that “the book’s demise is a massive setback for the publisher’s celebrity and personality driven imprint, which has been struggling to find an identity since publisher Judith Regan left and was replaced by former Good Morning America producer Lisa Sharkey.” Not true: HarperCollins no longer has a celebrity and personality driven imprint, because ReganBooks doesn’t exist anymore. Also, Sharkey’s role as a vp-level director of creative development—which is elaborated upon in a profile in this week’s PW—isn’t tied to any particular imprint. You could debate whether HarperCollins on the whole is struggling to reclaim the success Regan regularly achieved with that kind of book, but that’s a different argument.
Sharkey wasn’t even attached to the book deal that fell apart: If you check the deal listings at Publishers Marketplace for Baby Girl, you’ll find that Mauro DiPreta is the editor who acquired the book; Crum confirmed late Tuesday afternoon that Sharkey was never involved with the project. (And for Caplan’s source to tell him “Lisa brought the book to Regan” doesn’t even make sense—Regan the publisher was plainly long gone when Sharkey arrived, and so was Regan the imprint.) One more nail in the coffin: Caplan claims “the halls of HarperCollins [were] buzzing” after the book deal fell apart, but when I called my own highly-placed insiders yesterday, they’d never heard of Baby Girl or its cancellation.
That leaves the suggestion that the book’s failure somehow not only throws doubt on Sharkey but executive editor Cal Morgan; Caplan’s “loose-lipped insider” suggests that Harper allowed Morgan to help throw Regan overboard and is now wondering what they have to show for it. “Cal Morgan had nothing to do with Judith Regan’s departure,” Crum emphasized when I asked about that angle on the story. “He’s currently thriving and doing well.” So whoever this disgruntled employee might be, perhaps he or she is nursing two big grudges…