‘Oh yeah, Daniloff . . . ‘

As yet, said Houghton Mifflin editor John Sterling, the book scheduled for publication two years from now is listed simply as “untitled book on Russia.” “You think it will sell?” quipped Sterling. Certainly, Sterling conceded, the fact that the book is to be written by former U.S. News and World Report Moscow Bureau Chief Nicholas Daniloff, recently released from 13 days in a Soviet prison and 17 days in the custody of the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, may influence those sales. But, he insisted, that fact was not enough to make Houghton Mifflin offer a “significant six-figure” advance to a book that at least one major publisher rejected as potentially exploitative of his prison experience and lacking in general interest otherwise. “Let’s face it,” Sterling said from his office in Boston. “Three months from now people are going to say, ‘Oh yeah, Daniloff,’ but it’s not going to be a big deal. They’re going to remember him, and they’re going to remember that it was an extraordinary incident. But he’s not going to be a celebrity two years from now. He’s right now something of a celebrity. He’s had his 15 minutes in the spotlight.” In short, Sterling went on, “We’re not saying, ‘Great, Nick Daniloff, in the headlines--let’s get him to write a book about those 13 days, and let’s get it out in eight or nine months.’ ” Daniloff’s original manuscript arrived in the office of New York literary agent Esther Newberg three days before Daniloff was arrested by the KGB. At that time, the proposed book dealt with the story of Daniloff’s great-grand-father, Alexander Frolov, sentenced to Siberia for participating in the failed uprising against Czar Nicholas I in 1825. Once the journalist was himself incarcerated, a new focus was added to the manuscript. But while stressing that it will offer “a detailed account of his recent experience, especially of his 13 days in jail,” Sterling said the book Houghton Mifflin intends to publish will weave the two stories together: “One, the dramatic story of his imprisonment; and two, the remarkable story of his search for his Russian roots.” In fact, said Sterling, although Daniloff began seriously working on the story of his Russian heritage more than five years ago, “really he’s been working on it all his life.” What will emerge, the editor said, “is not going to be a book about ‘how I survived my time in jail at the hands of the brutal KGB,’ ” but rather “a book about the old Russia and the new Soviet Union unlike anything anyone else has written.” Nonetheless, coinciding as it does with the appearance of a spate of Soviet dissident/Soviet defector books, the Daniloff deal does seem to reflect a growing interest among publishers in Soviet events. “I think we are a bit Russia-happy,” Sterling said. “I’m happy about that. There’s a fascination with (Soviet leader Mikhail S.) Gorbachev right now, and the longstanding interest in dissidents seems to be reaching a peak.” As for his newest writer, Sterling said, “Nick Daniloff’s feeling is that we just need to understand each other better if we are going to get along in a world that’s threatened.” Daniloff, said his editor, “is not talking about the evil empire. He’s saying ‘I left the Soviet Union in sorrow rather than in anger.’ ”

KNOCK, KNOCK: The joke du jour at Doubleday is that in honor of the company’s $475-million takeover by Bertelsmann, Delacorte Books is about to be renamed. The new name: Delakraut Books. And as for how to say Doubleday in German, the answer is, of course, Bertelsmann.

SORRY, BUT THIS AUTHOR INTERVIEW MAY BE AWKWARD TO ARRANGE: “The Enchanter,” the “new” novel from Vladimir Nabokov, has elicited a storm of attention. Written when Russian exile Nabokov was 40, the book was crated into a trunk when the Nabokovs headed off to the United States. The story evolved, Nabokov has written, and became the seed for “Lolita,” the book regarded by many as too shocking to publish. Now that “The Enchanter” is out, translated from Russian by the author’s son Dmitri, its publisher, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, has received more than a few requests for interviews with Nabokov. Vladimir, not Dmitri. As gently as possible, Putnam’s lets it be known that Vladimir Nabokov departed this Earth in 1977.

JOINT VENTURE: In an unusual measure, author Peter Jenkins has announced that he will co-publish with William Morrow his forthcoming “Across China,” describing his trip by foot across that vast nation. From his farm in Sweet Springs, Tenn., the author also of “The Walk Across America” (now in its 21st printing for Morrow) and “The Walk West” (also from Morrow) explained he had negotiated the co-publishing arrangement because “for years, I have been very interested in every aspect of publishing, and this is the way I wanted to do it.” Specifically, Jenkins said he told his New York associates that “it was like growing up: Now I want to be a publisher.” Bearing a Sweet Springs imprint, 50 pages of pictures and 10 pages of maps, “Across China” will be out Nov. 7. Said Jenkins of his trek through Mongolia: “The loudest noise in Mongolia is the wind.”

FOOD FACTS: Along with more than 140 countries around the world, the United Nations observed World Food Day on Oct. 16, and in honor of the occasion, U.N. delegates heard a speech by Frances Moore Lappe. Author of “Diet for a Small Planet” (more than 3 million copies are in print), Lappe has joined with Dr. Joseph Collins to write “World Hunger: Twelve Myths.” The Grove Press book is published in conjunction with San Francisco’s Institute for Food and Development Policy, founded by Lappe and Collins. As Lappe sees it, “The question is: What is hunger?-- Trying to get people to see it other than just as statistics and numbers that seem so remote.” Instead, Lappe tries to convey hunger as “the ultimate sense of powerlessness.” “Twelve Myths” is part of the Food First series published by Grove in association with the Institute for Food and Development Policy. Other titles issued on World Food Day were “No Free Lunch: Food and Revolution in Cuba Today” by Medea Benjamin, Joseph Collins and Michael Scott, and “Nicaragua: What Difference Could a Revolution Make?” by Collins with Lappe, Nick Allen and Paul Rice.

BOOKS ON THE TUBE: It’s only in New York--for now--but Oct. 12 marked the debut of “First Edition,” a 10-part TV series co-produced by the Book-of-the-Month Club Inc. and WNYC-TV. William Styron appeared on the opening show, hosted by Nancy Evans, editor-in-chief of the club, and Newsweek book editor Walter Clemons.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A BOOK: One photographer, Mike Yamashita, rescheduled his wedding so he could take part in the May 2 mass shooting. The result was not carnage, but “A Day in the Life of America,” the fifth in the day-in-the-life series begun five years ago by former Time photographer Rick Smolan. No one in the United States would publish Smolan’s first effort, “A Day in the Life of Australia,” but subsequent volumes were published here by Workman and by Collins Publishers. The latter group will issue the “America” book (for which 200 photographers scattered themselves around the country to record the nation’s daily life) in late October.

NOVEL APPROACH: Child sexual abuse, the subject of a spate of nonfiction books in recent years, is the focus of “Stolen Flower,” Philip Carlo’s new novel for Dutton. The urgency of the topic was in large part what prompted Champion Entertainment to snap up Carlo’s first published novel for its own first feature film. Carlo will write the screenplay.

THE DOLL HOUSE: To research her historical romance novels, Katherine Vickery (as she is known to readers of her books for New American Library)/Kathryn Kramer (as fans from Dell and Berkley/Jove will know her) uses her collection of more than 350 dolls. Kramer, an executive secretary with Ball Aerospace Corp. in Boulder, Colo., lives with her mother, Marcia Hockett, and both design and sew period costumes for the characters that appear in the books by Kramer/Vickery. As a consequence, the dolls range from Viking figures to Civil War heroes to gypsies and banditos. (We’ve heard of stranger means of achieving verisimilitude: Who can forget the historical novelist who acts out 12th-Century battles using tin soldiers on a field of Kelly green bath towels?) Apparently Kramer’s formula works, for she won the first- place award for 1986 from Romantic Times, and in the last 18 months has sold six books to three different publishers.

PRESIDENTIAL PENMANSHIP: Though some say politics is stranger than fiction, Brazilian President Jose Sarney apparently likes to occupy himself with both. His latest collection of short stories, “Tales of Rain and Sunlight,” has recently been translated from the Portuguese and published in Great Britain.

YOU CAN’T JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER--OR CAN YOU? Frequently described as South Africa’s leading poet in the Afrikaans language, Breyten Breytenbach, it seems, is an artist of many faces. At least three, anyway, if the cover illustration of “End Papers” (just out from Farrar, Straus & Giroux) is any indication. The drawing shows two Breytenbach look-alikes arm-wrestling before an open book, while a third Breytenbach-head sits beneath the table. Breytenbach frequently shows his paintings at Paris galleries.

WELL-SCULPTED WORDS: Another multifaceted artist is Anne Truitt. In this same month that her “Turn: Journal of an Artist” is coming out from Viking, Truitt and her sculpture are the subjects of three separate shows in New York, with yet a fourth scheduled later in October in Washington, Truitt’s home base.