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FULL NELSON Little, Brown has acquired Nelson Mandela's memoirs. South African photographer Peter Magubane, among others, helped arrange a meeting between editor-in-chief Bill Phillips and Mandela at Mandela's Soweto home 11 days after his release. ''I don't know by what magic we got in there,'' Phillips says, ''but we did and Mandela liked our approach.'' The book, ''both a political memoir and his personal story,'' will be based in part on the many letters Mandela wrote from prison. Mandela may have a ghostwriter. ''He writes beautifully, but he's a very busy man,'' Phillips says. The book is scheduled for publication in 1992.
SIBLING RIVALRY Random House has just signed Joan Collins to a $4 million deal for two as-yet-unwritten novels. That may be enough to keep her in mink and diamonds for a while, but it lags far behind the $4 million her sister, Jackie, reportedly receives for each of her books.
NEW KIDS ON THE BOOKS Some people are calling the New Kids on the Block the hottest pop property since the Beatles. Three New Kids books are on the paperback best-seller lists — The Lives and Loves of the New Kids on the Block, New Kids on the Block Scrapbook, and New Kids on the Block. The last, a Bantam title, was assembled in three weeks. ''We had the idea in September and had books out by Halloween,'' Bantam vice-president Stuart Applebaum says. ''At rst, some of our booksellers didn't even know who the New Kids were, unless they had teenage daughters.'' That soon changed. With over 2 miilion copies in print, New Kids on the Block is the second best-selling ''instant'' book of all time (after The Simple Solution to Rubik's Cube, which sold 7 million). And Bantam has just brought out the band's official autobiography: Our Story: New Kids on the Block, ''by Joseph, Jonathan, Donnie, Danny, and Jordan.'' The Kids will promote Our Story while touring this summer for their new album, Step by Step. ''The Kids' emcee will pitch the book at concerts,'' Applebaum says. ''He did it a few times at some of the late spring shows. . . .I saw him do it once, at the Meadowlands, and the result was incredible.'' Our Story, which had advance orders of 430,000, is undoubtedly headed straight for the best-seller lists.
