NBC Political Director and on-air analyst Chuck Todd and his colleague, the polling expert Sheldon Gawiser, are rushing to put together How Obama Won, a state-by-state guide to President-elect Barack Obama's victory that will be published as a paperback original through Knopf's Vintage imprint sometime before the inauguration in January.

According to editor Errol McDonald, who approached Mr. Todd with the idea about a month before the election, the book will be divided into four sections: Battleground states, emerging battleground states, receding battleground states, and all the rest.  read more »

It is a well-worn tradition at Knopf: a top editor or executive decides to leave or is eased out of a senior position but remains at the company in a new role, which tends to be narrower in scope and less demanding but is as distinguished as an honorary doctorate. Late late year, for instance, longtime nonfiction editor Ash Green, who'd been with Knopf since 1964, retired but retained about a dozen authors from his roster whom he meant to edit from home. Before him, longtime Knopf editor in chief Robert Gottlieb (who is this paper's dance critic) was similarly made an editor at large, a position he still holds today.  read more »

Marty Asher, editor-in-chief at paperback powerhouse Vintage Anchor, is stepping down after two decades on the job to take on a role at Knopf in which he will spend more time commissioning and acquiring books.

Vintage Anchor is the paperback division of the Knopf Publishing Group, and has been a major source of revenue for the company. Knopf chairman and editor-in-chief Sonny Mehta announced Mr. Asher's resignation in an e-mail to staff this morning, noting that more changes at Vintage Anchor, including promotions for some of the "very good people who have been Marty's longtime colleagues," will follow.

Mr. Asher has been on sabbatical since the beginning of this year. His number two, LuAnn Walther, has been running the show in terms of editorial work in his absence. 

UPDATE: Ms. Walther has officially been named Mr. Asher's replacement as editor-in-chief. The announcement was made in a memo sent to Knopf Publishing Group employees by Vintage Anchor publisher Anne Messitte shortly after Mr. Mehta sent his.

Ms. Walther will report to Ms. Messitte, rather than to Mr. Mehta directly as Mr. Asher did.  

The memos from Mr. Mehta and Ms. Messitte after the jump.  read more »

Richard Ford, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the Frank Bascombe Trilogy, has left Knopf, his home of 17 years, and signed on to write three books for Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins. The acquiring editor at Ecco was the publisher, Dan Halpern; Binky Urban of ICM, Mr. Ford's longtime literary agent, brokered the deal.

Two of the books will be novels and the third will be a collection of short stories.

According to the announcement from Ecco, the first of the novels to come out, tentatively titled Canada, will be a story of "revenge and violent retribution set on the Saskatchewan prairie, in the early 1960s." The book will be out in 2010.

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The National Book Critics Circle, an organization made up of about 700 active book critics, announced on Saturday the finalist pool for their end-of-year awards, which will be held in March.

The NBCC honors books in six categories: Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Autobiography, Biography, Criticism, and Poetry.

In industry terms, Knopf leads the pack with four nominations (including three in the biography category), followed by FSG at three. The Poetry category did not include a single book published by one of the major houses.

The full list of finalists after the jump—you’ll notice that Joyce Carol Oates rather distinguished herself, getting nods in both the autobiography category and the fiction category.

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Inspired by European publishers, renegade hopes to sell books on his house's good name.  read more »

Earlier this fall Knopf announced that Mr. Green, an exemplar of elegance, decency and seriousness, announced that he would be leaving the house at the end of December, retiring from the business after almost 50 years. Some of his writers are hiring Andrew Miller.  read more »

Knopf has won the rights to publish Tony Blair's memoirs, a Random House source said. The Blair book was the subject of an intense auction; D.C. lawyer and literary agent Robert Barnett represented Mr. Blair, and has also represented both Bill Clinton and Alan Greenspan. No word yet on the Blair advance, but we'll update you.

UPDATE: A press release from Random House announcing the deal went out this afternoon. UK rights for the book went to Hutchinson, which is part of the Random House Group.

In an interview this afternoon, Knopf editor Ash Green said he was surprised that Knopf prevailed in the auction.

“I thought Rupert Murdoch would get it,” he said. “Because Murdoch for ten years supported Blair through his newspapers, and he has the Sunday Times first serialization, and he has HarperCollins, that seemed to be a natural fit. Our English cousins have strong connections to Blair, but I didn’t think they quite equaled... I think there was some wonder here whether the agent was using us as a stalking horse to get Murdoch’s price up."