James Franco signs publishing deal with Amazon

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James Franco, the actor-writer-producer-graduate student, has signed a publishing deal with Amazon’s fledgling publishing house, the Observer reports.

It will be Franco’s first novel, tentatively titled ‘Actors Anonymous,’ and said to be loosely based on his own life. Franco has been nominated for one Oscar, two Emmys, three MTV Movie Awards, three SAG awards and a couple of Golden Globes. He’s won one Golden Globe and two Independent Spirit awards. He co-hosted the 2011 Academy Awards, which were watched by millions of people worldwide. Maybe he should consider taking the ‘anonymous’ out of the title.

That’s something to take up with his editor, Ed Park. Park, a former L.A. Times book columnist, is now fiction editor of Amazon Publishing.

Park was in the publishing spotlight earlier today as the new issue of the Believer hit stands. He was a founding editor of the magazine, which in this issue bids him farewell.

And then there’s Franco, an unstoppable creative force with a million-watt smile. He acts in blockbusters and indie films. He was a regular on the soap opera ‘General Hospital.’ He earned his MFA in creative writing from Columbia and is an English doctoral student at Yale. He directed and starred in ‘The Broken Tower,’ the biopic about poet Hart Crane. He has optioned books by Steve Erickson, Stephen Elliott and D.J. Waldie and has said in interviews he was working on writing an adaptation of Charles Bukowski’s ‘Ham on Rye.’ He has been reported to be in the process of getting a poetry degree from Warren Wilson College, a creative writing degree from Brooklyn College and a doctorate in creative writing from the University of Houston. He published a book of short stories, ‘Palo Alto,’ with Scribner.

He’ll turn 34 in April.

Franco made headlines shortly before Christmas when former NYU professor José Angel Santana said he was fired for giving the actor a ‘D.’

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-- Carolyn Kelllogg