Book News, In Brief

A personal message to our valued customers: Try this, and we'll show you the door. Via Forbes.com: Haggling is no longer limited to used car lots...Retail prices are an artificial, arbitrary number. Ticket prices are not ordained by some almighty being. They are created by humans. Anything that results from a negotiation is negotiable.

Q: How is it that while book sales are down, poetry prospers? A: Filthy rich philanthropists. Via the AP: Poets & Writers, a nonprofit literary organization, has received a $2 million donation to support its Jackson Poetry Prize, a $50,000 award founded in 2007 for emerging American poets...The money comes from the Liana Foundation, a philanthropic organization based in N.J. and co-managed by poet Susan Jackson.

John Updike has written a promotional blurb for the first of a series of 500-word erotic e-book offerings. While Updike's 'elder statesman' status makes him an awkward choice, there's another, even less flattering reason he might want to refrain from putting his name on porn. Via The Guardian UK: What sets the story apart from other moby-lit offerings is the seal of approval from John Updike...Coincidentally or not, Updike last month won a lifetime award for Bad Sex in Fiction.

Oy vey! Hanukkah is Only Five Days Away!

Hanukkah starts this Sunday at sundown. Have you bought your Jewish friends their gifts yet? We Chosen Ones don't want to wait 'til the 25th for our presents any more than you want to wait 'til the 29th* for yours. But you jolly Gentiles needn't despair. (Despair is our thing!) Books Etc. has put together a list of Hanukkah Gifts for Adults.** You use this, and you'll go from insensitive shmoiger to goen Goy -- instantly.

*The 29th is the last day of Hanukkah, y'all.
** Don't worry about our kids. They're easy. They want video games, just like the uncircumcised ones.

10 Tips from a Former Traveling Sales Rep...Part 2!

If you missed the first half of AutumnBottom's epic, two part guest column, click here. And shame on you for arriving late to the party.

The Final Five

-Sales Pitch-
We reps think it's wonderful when buyers have looked at the catalogue before we come in and you already have an idea of the titles that interest you and the numbers you might want to order. It's amazingly, wonderful helpful. That said, stay flexible. Or at least give the appearance of flexibility. We've worked hard on our sales pitches and, chances are, the books that we actually HAVE a pitch for are important. It's just nice to have a receptive audience.

-Complaints-
Everyone loves to complain. I'd say it's the "great unifier" because nothing brings people together like kvetching. The company I worked for had a very...unique catalogue. It was about 16 inches tall, 10 inches wide, and 200 pages of flimsy newsprint. Putting a positive spin on it, I'd say something like, "It certainly is easy to spot!" But really, it was just a gigantic pain in the ass, and my buyers never hesitated to let me know.
Chances are, if you have to say to your rep, "I don't know if anyone has ever complained about this..." they have heard it a million, billion, trillion times over. At every single meeting I got a complaint about the catalogue. No, wait, I lie. There was one meeting with a design store in Beverly Hills where the buyer loved our catalogue. Silly Californians.
I'm sorry, where was I going? Oh yes. Complain about the catalogue to me all you want. Complain about having to pay freight or how we print our company's name on the cover of every book, but please, don't punish me for it. As a lowly rep I simply do not have the power to change these things. My buyers telling me that they wouldn't order books until we changed the catalogue just made me think they were jerks. But don't tell them I said that.

-Keep Your Appointments-
I toyed with the idea of making this heading "Keep your *fucking* appointments" to drive home the importance of this topic. As a traveling rep I cannot even begin to describe how annoying it is to take the time and effort to fly somewhere 1,000 miles from home and have the person you were supposed to meet cancel on you when you show up at their store. I completely understand cases of sickness or other emergencies, but when it's simply because you forgot to tell the babysitter that you needed her until 4 pm.... I had one guy in LA who would cancel on me almost every time and it was always because he'd already gone home and didn't want to fight traffic to come back "so maybe we can meet next time you're in LA". Gah!!!!

-Pass Along the Kind Words-
There is almost nothing better than praise. I loved, reveled really, in being told by my customers that they loved meeting with me. I loved that they felt taken care of by me and that I cared about them and their businesses. It was even better when I heard from my boss that one of my bookstores had taken the time to call New York to let her know that I was doing a good job. Something like that goes a long way in assuring job security and letting the muckity-mucks know that the people in the field are taking care of the customers.

-Always Use a GPS-
So this one has no bearing on you, the bookstore, whatsoever. But should a new traveling sales rep happen upon this list, this is the most important thing ever. Buy a GPS and take it with you wherever you go. Expense it, write it off on your taxes, or just eat the cost of it, but it is the most valuable tool in your arsenal.
The first three or four trips I went on, I printed out a veritable encyclopedia of MapQuest Maps and spent all my time in the rental car with my head buried in those print-outs and a map provided by the rental car company. I didn't see any of LA, Calgary, or Portland. But on a fateful trip to Denver I was offered a GPS unit at the rental counter and my life changed. I was able to drive around the city admiring the buildings and the mountains and avoiding pedestrians while a pleasant Englishwoman fed me turn by turn directions. I stopped at Best Buy on my way home from the airport and picked up one to take with me wherever I went.
It made my travels so much easier knowing that when I stepped off an airplane in a strange city I could just plug in my little friend (God that sounds dirty) and I could navigate the city like a native. My greatest fear while traveling was not that the planes would crash and burn or my buyers would block the doorways of their stores (that did happen to a fellow rep of mine) but that I would forget my GPS at home and be completely, utterly lost. See what technology hath wrought?! Anyway. GPS is a gift from God. Go buy one.

Again, if you dug what Autumn wrote, PLEASE CHECK OUT HER LIVEJOURNAL! Homegirl is mad funny and she posts regularly. Oh, and if you work in a bookstore, make sure you print this out and show it to your travelling sales reps. It'll make them feel loved.

Book News, In Brief

Local city makes good. Boston has been named one of The 3 Best Cities for Bookworms. MSNBC explains why.

Bottomless Belly Button author/artist Dash Shaw has been crowned one of The Top 100 People of 2008 by USA Today. Pop Candy's Whitney Matheson has the accompanying interview.

Dorothy Sterling, author of perennial classroom favorite, Freedom Train: The Story of Harriet Tubman, died December 1st at her home in Welfleet, MA. The self-described "accidental historian" was 95.

The Washington Post pulls no punches with this one: Most Textbooks Should Just Stay On the Shelf. This is a follow-up to an article they did about the $8 billion-a-year textbook industry's unwillingness to include any science breakthroughs post-Einstein.

10 Tips from a Former Traveling Sales Rep

Ah, a guest column. These are always fun. Fun for me, the blogger, because I get to slack off in my duties. Fun for you, the reader, because my shtick is getting stale and y'all have been craving something better...you ungrateful bastards. Anyway, today's column was written by former traveling sales rep and current bookseller AutumnBottom. (That's her LiveJournal name, anyway. Witness Protection rules prohibit us from divulging her true identity.) If you like what you read here, make sure to check out her LJ. She's funny as f*ck and a brand new mom. Oh, and she's got cool hair, too. The trifecta!

Autumn's caveat: I was only a sales rep for 1.5 years with one smallish publisher, so I can't say for sure if this list would apply to a seasoned veteran of Random House or Simon & Schuster. Besides, I wasn't a particularly successful rep having had a bit too much empathy to push hard for the big sales. But anyway....

- Sales Numbers-
As reps, we're the low-man on the sales chain totem pole which means that we report to sales managers who, in turn, report to points higher on. I was constantly struggling with trying to please my bosses whose sales mantra was "Don't take no for an answer," and trying to maintain my trusting relationships with my bookstores. I guess what I'm trying to say is when your rep is trying to convince you to take a display with 20 copies of a $50 book and seems to keep circling back around to it after you thought you'd moved on, it's because of the pressure from "on high" and not because your rep is an asshole.

-Freebies-
Ask your rep for sample copies. Always. It never hurts to ask and, more often than not, they can get it for you. And, as was often the case with me, remind your rep about your request after a couple of weeks if you still haven't seen your freebie. It's totally not that we don't like you. It's just that we're busy people and things sometimes slip through the cracks.

-Loneliness-
Being a traveling sales rep is a lonely, lonely experience. It only took one week of business travel for the luster to wear off. Sitting in a restaurant by yourself is fun on occasion but when you do it for two to three weeks out of every month.... I was eternally grateful for the few buyers that I became friends with and could count on socializing outside of a business context with when away from home. If you like your rep, and you're willing, invite them out for a beer after work. They'll love you for it and be even more willing to go the extra mile for you.

-High Heels and Weak Arms-
I am all of 4 feet 11 inches tall. For my job I carted around a suitcase filled with 60 lbs of art and architecture books. By the time I finished hauling it out of the trunk of my rental car, dragging it through the gravel of the parking lot, and bouncing over the sidewalk into a store, the last thing I wanted to do was carry it up three flights to the buying office. If you are a brawny buyer and your rep happens to be wearing high heels or shops in the petite department please, please, please, offer to carry their suitcase.

-Free Lunches-
One of the major perks of being a buyer is having your rep take you out to lunch. There is nothing like free food in the middle of your day! However, if you've only bought three books out of the catalogue, for the love of Pete, don't order the lobster in truffle sauce. I'm not saying you need to satisfy yourself with the bar nuts, but try to order according to...well...your order.

Oh, come now. You didn't think I was going to give you all of Autumn's awesomeness in one fell swoop, did you? And rob myself of a second day of slacking off? Not a chance. If you want to read The Final Five Tips from a Former Traveling Sales Rep, your punk asses are gonna have to come back here tomorrow. Until then, you can visit Autumn here.

Added on 12/16: Link to part 2

Book News, In Brief(now with editor's notes!)

Dear Bobby Brown: Don't be cruel. Yes, it's your prerogative, but after building a buzz with those juicy, leaked portions of your autobiography, do you really think that anyone's going to buy a re-written, scandal-free edition?
(Editor's note: Wait, where's the Humpin' Around reference I asked for? That song is the bomb, yo.)

It's like the snake eating its tail...or something like that. For those who like to read about reading, USA Today has five recommendations for books about books.
(Editor's note: And don't forget about Inkwell Michelle's positive review of Shelf Life by Suzanne Strempek Shea. It's a book about bookselling, so technically its a case of 'the snake eating the snake handler'...or something like that.)

Enraged by the fact that "in 2007, one of every fifteen hardcover novels sold was a James Patterson title," Cleveland.com decided to "dig beyond the lists of what's selling the best to find what's best to read." Okay, so it's actually just another Best Of list, but at least they're honest about their superiority complex.
(Editor's note: Cleveland.com?! What, was TheMiddleOfNowhere.org down for repairs? The NYTimes just posted their official, year-end Best Of book list. You might've mentioned this instead.)

Yesterday's Telegraph UK had an interesting article about the mass library closings currently taking place in England. My fiscally-conscious first reaction was, "Those lucky British bookstores..." Then it hit me, with no libraries around to infect kids with the reading virus, there will be far fewer book buyers in the years to come. Now my fiscally conscious conscience is afraid. Very afraid.
(Editor's note: My first reaction was a selfless, "Oh, the inhumanity!" But maybe that's because I'm a better person than you.)

Book News, In Brief

The pompous PR pitch: "Book retailing giant Waterstone's will be offering personal shoppers to help you find just the right book for everyone on your gift list." The sad reality: This used to be referred to as basic customer service.

List-making and sh*t-talking are the meat and potatoes of the blogosphere. So how brilliant was it of Entertainment Weekly to mix the two, making a Shepherd's Pie they dubbed The 23 Most Disappointing Movie Adaptations? Answer: mildly brilliant.

Just in time for the holidays! Bonhams US is holding a rare books auction. Items up for bid include a first issue of Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird which includes a photograph of the author credited to Truman Capote (est. $6/9,000), first editions of the various Winnie the Pooh books with hand drawn illustrations by E.H. Shepard (est. $6/12,000), and a first edition copy of Moby Dick in what is being described as "exceptionally fine condition" ($60/80,000).

Blog-Jacking: io9

Science Fiction Novelists Reveal Their Daily Writing Routines
Originally posted by Lauren Davis on 12/10/08
Isaac Asimov awoke each morning 6 AM and worked well into the night, sometimes churning out entire books in a matter of days. Kingsley Amis’ writing binges were fueled by nicotine, alcohol, and numerous cups of tea, while surrealist Haruki Murakami claims to work himself into a routine-induced trance. Take a gander at how some of science fiction’s most famous writers have organized their days and kept their creative juices flowing.
To read the rest, click here.

Book News, In Brief

This should come as a surprise to no one but newborn babies and recently lapsed Amish: JK Rowling's latest offering, The Tales of Beedle the Bard, has broken all records to become the fastest selling book of 2008.

Abdulkarim Soroush must have a death wish, a fatal disease, or both. Why else would "Iran's leading public intellectual" publicly challenge the divinity of the Koran? Didn't he learn anything from those Danish dudes and their inflammatory (as in: houses catching fire, cars exploding, etc.) cartoons?

A graduation speech that David Foster Wallace gave in 2005 is going to be published posthumously as a book next year. The speech, which Wallace delivered to the graduating class at Kenyon College, Ohio, runs approximately 150 pages and will be titled, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered On a Significant Occasion, About Living a Compassionate Life. (No jokes on this one. I loved dude.)

Recommended Viewing:Michael Pollan @ Google HQ

The author of In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto and The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals talks with his mouth full.

Book News, In Brief

It's a scientific fact that even the Religious Right won't refute: Famous people's opinions are more interesting than non-famous people's. That's why Salon.com has asked a slew of A-list authors -- Chuck Klosterman, Daniel Handler and Michael Pollan, among others -- to list their favorite books of '08. Regular people can pretend to participate in the comments section.

Having just dropped $125 million dollars to keep their Book Search up and running, Google is ready to move on to magazines. Not counting the time that The Walt Disney Corporation bought the rights to The Muppets, this is the first time I've agreed with a publicly traded company about anything. After all, if you've ever worked in a bookstore, you know that this is where the average 'customer' does the bulk of their browsing.

We warned our fellow booksellers about this growing menace, but they wouldn't listen. Via E-Commerce.com: Gary Bacon II had bargain-hunting on the brain when he visited his local Barnes & Noble...but he didn't make any purchases. Instead, the Web designer whipped out his smartphone, snapped a few photos, and headed for the exit. Bacon was using a new feature, released by Amazon.com, that lets users take photos of items they want to buy, store them in an online shopping cart, and purchase them whenever they want -- typically at a discount -- via the online retailer. Our only hope now? Treat these Twitterers like the paparazzi and punch the cell phones out of their hands.

Blog-Jacking: The Guardian UK

The Digested Read: The Tales of Beedle the Bard
Originally posted by John Crace on 12/9/8
'There was once a not very good writer who got lucky. In the beginning, she realised her limitations, but then she began to take herself very seriously indeed.'
To read Crace's crushing critique in its entirety, click here.

Book News, In Brief

And the recession continues: Last week, the media was buzzing about a $126,000 Michelangelo book. This week, it's a $700 coffee table book on the making of The Godfather. At this rate, they'll be back to talking about $5 paperbacks in...three days!

What is a book dedication? The ultimate expression of an author's gratitude? A private venue for a public display of affection? The one part of a book that pretty much everybody reads? According to The Wilton Villager, it's all of these and more.

Remember the good ol' days, when brick and mortar bookstores only had to fear Amazon and the Kindle? Well, there's a new threat on the horizon, and it's-- BRRRRRRRRRRRRING! Oh, no. BRRRRRRRRRRRRING! Oh, god, no! BRRRRRRRRRRRRING! I'm too late! It's already--BRRRRRRRRRRRRING!

Your Rejection Letter Has Been Accepted For Publication!

Rejection letters. Even the kindest ones are a slap in face, a kick to the heart, a set of sweaty testicles dangled on the sleeping face of your tender ego. Until now. The voyeurs who brought you the Oprah-approved Other People's Love Letters are currently collecting rejection letters for a book -- Other People's Rejection Letters -- to be released in 2010. Don't delay. This is probably the only time you'll see your name in a book that wasn't self-published.
To share your shame, click here.

Do your masochistic tendencies have you craving more? Check out The Guardian UK's The Fine Art of Literary Rejection Letters.

Quote of the Day

"I never wanna write short stories again. They suck. They’re incredibly demanding. A story can be perfect. No novel can be perfect. Novels are awesome. Novels are like us."

That's Juno Diaz, author of the fun, factoid filled novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, from an 11/12/08 interview with the CBC.

Book News, In Brief

When it comes to quote/unquote "serious literature," the subject of love has always had its critics. Is the capital-L simply too saccharine a topic for intelligent, relevant discourse, or do the critics just need to get laid? The Australian investigates.

Quick, before he breaks them! The Washington Post's Michael Dirda has outlined the The 10 Commandments of Book Giving. Even if the list seems sorta obvious to you, forwarding it to your friends and family might make the difference between a good gift...and the kind of gift you have to fake a smile over.

Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Blink, has a new book out, Outliers. In it, Gladwell attempts to figure out what makes some people success stories, and the rest of us bums. His basic finding: Outliers are those given opportunities who have the strength and presence of mind to seize them. For an interview with the afro-ed author -- and to read what "opportunities" Bill Gates and Canadian hockey players took advantage of -- click here, ya bums.

Go, Look!

We're two days late to the party on this one, but it's so darned good we didn't want to let it pass you by. Robin in the Rye by Penrod Pulaski. Read it here.

(A special tip of the hat to The Beat for the link & image.)

Book News, In Brief

They were racially insensitive and demeaning to women, but goddamn those old romance covers sure were gorgeous. Well, until the 80's, anyway. The art wasn't much better in the 90's, but at least they'd finally gotten around to objectifying White males.

You have to commend Penguin. When it came time to freeze pay raises, they started at the top. On behalf of low income, low on the totem employees everywhere, allow me to say: I hope this ends before I become a high income, high on the totem employee!

The New York Public Library is going to make some lucky book thief very happy. In addition to the $100,000 Michelangelo book that the library unveiled last week, they'll soon be housing one of the seven, original editions of J.K. Rowling's most recent PotterWorld book, The Tales of Beedle the Bard. 'Bard's current value? A cool $4 million.

Inkwell Michelle's 30 Second Book Review

Doctor Olaf van Schuler’s Brain
by Kirsten Menger-Anderson
This fantastic debut by Kirsten Menger-Anderson is the best book I’ve read in the past few months. In addition to using language to potent effect, the author plays with an unusual format of linked short stories: each chapter delves into the life of a different member of the Steenwyck family tree starting in the 1600s and progressing to the modern day. By pursuing the medical profession, each generation carries on the legacy of the original patriarch, the doomed doctor Olaf van Schuler. Odd lore from the history of medicine (from phrenology to spontaneous combustion) adds to the rich story of the family’s madness and passion.

...is thirty seconds up yet?

Book News, In Brief

Random House...of cards? Okay, so maybe that's being a bit dramatic, but the publishing house did just consolidate several of their publishing groups, eliminating jobs and ruining Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa for quite a few people.

Oh, f**k. There's more. Simon & Schuster announced today that it has eliminated 35 positions. According to a memo from their CEO, the cuts came in all areas, including S&S’s publishing divisions, operations and sales departments and international division.

Well, at least someone's smiling. Tina Fey's book deal? It net her a reported $6.9 million. And this is post-Palin impressions. Can you imagine how much she would've gotten had McCain been elected president? On second thought, don't imagine any such thing. I don't want to be responsible for the suicides.

Gift Tips for the Bookish

From now until Christmas, I'm going to be offering up little gift ideas at random. But unlike most bookstore blogs, I'm not going to try to recommend any actual books to you. From what I've gathered, most of our readers are in the book industry in one way or another, and between catalogs, sales reps and well-meaning/poorly-read friends/family/customers, have had all of the unsolicited book recommendations that they can handle for one lifetime. That's why these are going to be book-related items, book-themed apparel, and book-ish doo-dads. Stuff I'd like to receive (hint, hint).

Today's tip: two t-shirts. Click the pics to enlarge.










The 'Will Work For Books' Tee is available here.
The 'Read Books Not Shirts' Tee is available here.

Book News, In Brief

An unusually large, unusually old fragment of the Gospel of John will go on sale next month. Despite being available in better condition -- and for free! -- in the bedside table of every hotel and motel in the world, this battered bit of Bible is expected to fetch upwards of $460,000. Now I'm no scholar, but wouldn't your Jesus want you to give that money to the poor? (Editor's note: According to papal cannon, indie bookstores count as paupers.)

No matter how hard Britney Spears tries to save face with the media, embarrassing in-house drama inevitably gets leaked to the press, making things worse. A similar thing is currently happening to publisher Houghton Mifflin. Last week, a rumor got out that H.M. were putting a temporary hold on new acquisitions. This week, Günter Grass (the publisher of the company’s adult trade division) has resigned. Next week, who knows? A shaved head, maybe?

Were you selling newspapers on November 5th? Then surely you remember the chaos. Excited by Obama's win, folks who hadn't bought a newspaper in years were suddenly scouring their local bookstores and corner stores, looking for any remaining copies of their local fishwrap. Well, if American publisher Andrews McMeel gets their Christmas wish, December 16th will be equally insane. That's when they're releasing President Obama Election 2008: A Collection of Newspaper Front Pages Selected by The Poynter Institute, a blatant cash-in which reprints the front pages of some 70+ newspapers from around the world -- all of them announcing Obama's ascendancy.

Tuesday's Tip for Flailing Writers:Inappropriate Flair

Big Bad Book Blog offers three rules to remember regarding superfluous stylistic flourishes for the aspiring author:

1. Less is more. Like loud fabrics, loud literary devices are hard to mix and match. If you’re going to narrate in stream-of-consciousness, do not also use screenplay-style stage directions and scene breaks. Pick the device that means the most to you. Once you’ve chosen your gimmick, don’t overdo it. Think of that guy you saw last weekend wearing all hot pink plaid. Did you say, “Wow, I admire his consistency to his theme”?

2. Make sure someone gets it. Kurt Vonnegut recommended writing with an audience of one in mind. Whoever you’re writing for, test it out. If your audience doesn’t like your device, you may want to consider toning it down. Even if you’re not thinking of a specific person as you compose, a suitably sympathetic, unbiased reader ought to be able to get through the device without trouble. I’m thinking your editor here.

3. Most important, make sure it’s crucial and authentic to the work, not just something you’re doing to show off. Christopher Bachelder’s Bear v. Shark uses stream-of-consciousness narration with two-page chapters and commercial breaks as its main style—a highly disruptive format. But the book is a satire about a near future in which television screens have taken over all four walls of the room and no longer turn off, where advertising invades our thoughts and the attention span is a thing of the past. The method is the message—so Bachelder’s outré style doesn’t distract from his point. (Also, the book is short—the author doesn’t expect us to get through three hundred pages of this bizarre prose.) If your device isn’t integral to your work, you’re probably better off without it.

To read the whole kit-n-kaboodle, click here.

Recommended Viewing:Stan Lee & Grant Morrison

To see Grant chat with Deepak Chopra(!), click here.
(Both videos were done by Tone Milazzo.)

Blog-Jacking: Boing Boing

Best Book Covers of 2008
Originally posted 12/1/8 by Cory Doctorow
The Book Design Review blog's top book covers for 2008 are up. This is one of my favorite annual features -- and this year's includes some drop-dead gorgeous designs. I'm insanely jealous of Austin Grossman for getting that brilliant cover for his excellent book Soon I Will Be Invincible. I've mentioned Jordan Crane's wonderful cover for Chabon's Maps and Legends and the new edition of Harry Harrison's Make Room, Make Room, but why did no one tell me about the beauty that is the cover for Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me?


Want to see more? My Favorite Book Covers of 2008 (via Kottke)

Previously: Best book covers of 2007 - Boing Boing

Original Boing Boing post
(Give Boing Boing a look if you haven't already. You'll soon be blog-jacking them too!)

Tom Cruise: Either He's Censoring Free Speech, Or Nobody's Got Anything Bad To Say About Him & Scientology

Last April, we linked to an article describing Tom Cruise and The Church of Scientology's legal bullying of British publisher, Macmillan. Macmillan had been planning to release Andrew Morton's unauthorized biography of Cruise, but canceled these plans after they'd been informed of the lengthy and expensive libel lawsuits that would follow. A similar fate awaited the Morton publishers in Australia, where the book's release was called off at the zero hour.
Well, it looks like Cruise and co. might be at it again. From Rush & Molloy:
'The Complex' author John Duignan cites Tom Cruise control
Tom Cruise is denying that he pressured Amazon to stop selling a book critical of the Church of Scientology.
On Oct. 31, Irish publisher Merlin released “The Complex,” in which John Duignan, identified as “a former high-ranking member” of the church in Britain, describes his “dramatic escape” from its “elite para-military group,” the Sea Organization. Five days later, Cruise dropped by Amazon’s Seattle headquarters to glad-hand staffers and host a sneak peek at his new movie, “Valkyrie.”
A few days later, Amazon’s British Web site stopped selling “The Complex,” explaining to customers that someone mentioned in the book had alleged it defamed him with “false claims.”
“U.K. law gives us no choice but to remove the title from our catalogue,” Amazon said in a statement.
“I believe Tom Cruise influenced them,” Duignan tells us.
To read the whole article, click here.

Book News, In Brief

Horror comics are back. At least, that's what the publishers think...hope...pray. Hail Satan!

(Warning: This news item contains two tasteless, ill-timed gags.) Didja hear? William Gibson, the author of The Miracle Worker, died last week. I'm speechless.

The NYTimes has a posted a two page pick-me-up for those of us effected by the publishing world's current financial crisis. This might be more comforting if The Times -- and newspapers everywhere -- weren't facing their own financial crises.

The world's 'most expensive, most beautiful' book hit the shelves of the NYC public library last week. Costing well over $100,000, the 62-pound, velvet and marble bound book depicts the life and work of Michelangelo. What do you think the late fees on this thing will be?

Recommended Viewing:Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree

For more info on Shel, check out our old post, Making Hamburg Out of Sacred Cows #32: Shel Silverstein Was A Porn Fan.