Princess tide of ’17
New wave of Diana books set for 20th anniversary of tragedy
TWENTY years after her death, Princess Diana is still publishing royalty.
Magazine and book companies have unleashed plans for an avalanche of hardcover and paperback books, bookazines and regular magazine issues tied to her fatal car crash in Paris on Aug. 31, 1997.
Us Weekly was one of the first to jump into the Diana anniversary market with a special $12.99 bookazine that hit newsstands earlier this month.
“It came out on time,” according to onesource, who said the aim was not necessarily to beat the weekly’s sale to American Media Inc. but rather to be “first to market.”
It was the last Us Weekly project to be produced by Wenner Media.
AMI, owner of Star and the National Enquirer, is not shut out entirely. It is working with the Weinstein Co. to produce an August cable special for TLC.
People is planning its $13.99 collector’s edition bookazine for July 21, closer to the tragedy’s anniversary.
It will remain on sale for about three months and tie in with a fourhour, two-night ABC documentary in August.
ABC aired a special, “The Last 100 Days of Diana,” earlier this month.
“I really think Diana gets moreimportant, not less, over time,” said Tina Brown, the British-born editor who knew the Princess of Wales and probably chronicled her more closely than anyone, as editor of Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Talk magazine.
Brown’s 2007 bio, “The Diana Chronicles,” was a No. 1 best seller.
“She was really the first global hu- manitarian celebrity,” said Brown. “She did what many celebrities want to do — use their fame to change the world.”
Brownwill appear on a host of TV specials and has written the forward for a National Geographic book, “Remembering Diana: A Life in Photographs” (above left), whichwill drop 40,000 copies on Aug. 1.
NatGeo Books Deputy Editor Hilary Black said the book marks the imprint’s first excursion into celebrity popularculture. She said that following its deal with Twenty-First Century Fox, NatGeo “is trying to broaden its commercial appeal” beyond the sturdy eyes of science and adventure travel/exploration.
“It’s a picture book, but because Princess Diana means so much to so many people, we wanted to bring in Tina to give it some historical perspective,” said Black.
The book — which carries reflections from celebrities who knew her, everyone from Elton John to Nelson Mandela — costs $30 and is being distributed by Random House.
Simon & Schuster is publishing a revised version of Andrew Morton’s book “Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words” (above right).
The original — shocking because royals rarely give interviews — was released in 1992 and sold more than 1 million copies.
This time, S&S is distributing a 75,000-copy first printing of the book on June 27, with a new foreword and afterword and some never-before released material that Morton recorded with Diana while working on the first book.
Across the pond, the many book projects include an update of “Diana: The People’s Princess” by Nicholas Owen, with a foreword by Sir Trevor McDonald, due out June 2.
Royal bodyguard Inspector Ken Wharfe and writer Robert Jobson reissued “Diana: A Closely Guarded Secret” in April.
Random House chose not to reissue Sally Bedell Smith’s best-selling 1999 bio, “Diana in Search of Her- self,” but instead released a new bio, “Prince Charles: The Passions And Paradoxes of an Improbable Life,” which obviously plays heavily onhis ex-wife’s role in the life of Charles and their children.
There is even a 112-page children’s book, “Who Was Princess Diana?” by Ellen Labrecque, Nancy Harrison and Jerry Hoare, introducing a new generation of readers to the mum of Prince William and Prince Henry.
“Imagining Diana”( above, center) by Diane Clehane is a fictionalized e-book in which Diana survives the crash in Paris but suffers some life-altering injuries.
Clehane also has some past Diana cred with her 1998 book, “Diana: The Secrets of Her Style,” about the princess in her capacity as a trend-setting fashionista. She also interviewed Diana’s brother, Charles Spencer, for her popular “Lunch” column in Ad week while he was on a publicity tour for his history tome “Killers of the King.”