Even beyond the top authors, Brown said, she has often advised Burnham about what to publish and about how to present it to the public and the news media.
"I have been able to really boost the women's angle in the house," she said, alluding to successful Talk Books like Ice Bound, by Dr. Jerri Neilsen, about treating herself for breast cancer at the South Pole, and Creating a Life, by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, about professional women having children.
Indeed, Burnham described a pattern among its successful books that resembled films shown on the Lifetime channel: "real stories about women who are able to overcome adversity."
In several cases Talk Miramax Books has enjoyed some lucky breaks. The company paid what looked to many like an excessive US$3 million for the rights to the memoirs of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. After Sept. 11, the payment suddenly looked like a bargain.
The newsletter Publishing Trends has noted that many of Talk's biggest successes have come from paying big advances for splashy books by one-time authors -- the riskiest course for a publisher. It is also a far cry from the way Weinstein said he intended to build his new book publishing company, by signing up writers and books that will sell for years to come, as Bennett Cerf did at Random House.
But Burnham, the company's president, said he is working on cultivating authors like Christopher Rice, the son of the best-selling author Ann Rice, and Helen DeWitt, author of the novel The Last Samurai, for the long-term. (DeWitt, whose book was very well reviewed, also happened to work as a secretary to Weinstein's brother-in-law before her book's publication.)
For his part, Weinstein suggested that he has also played a dominant role at Talk Books. "Every final decision is mine," he said. "John and Tina have very strong input into the creative side, and I have strong input into the creative side, too."
"When I meet with people who I find interesting or innovative and there is a concept for a book," he said, "Tina and Jonathan can execute it brilliantly."
Weinstein noted that several of Talk's books were developed by him personally or through his connections, including DeWitt's novel, Giuliani's memoir and a forthcoming book by the lawyer David Boies. He said that several other books were acquired at the same time as the film rights, like the best-selling children's novel Artemis Fowl, by Eoin Colfer, which was published by Talk Books after Miramax Films found the manuscript. The company has also acquired the book and film rights to two sequels, and Miramax will begin producing a film version of Artemis Fowl this fall -- as Weinstein's answer to Harry Potter.
"That will be the property that pays for everything," Weinstein said, covering even the US$27 million in losses on Talk magazine with the proceeds from the books and the films. "We will have the sequel rights for years, and we own the whole kit and caboodle."
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