Great moments in embargoing: buttertart edition

Publishers will often embargo a book – that is, make it unavailable to reviewers and the media, and occasionally even booksellers – if they feel it contains information or revelations so sensitive that, were they to get out, they would imperil the book’s sales potential. Most often the books in question are highly charged political books, works of investigative journalism, or memoirs that dish the dirt. (Embargoing novels – just cuz – is much more rare, but not unheard of.)

The best ever example of this practice, however, has to be the note we found in the copy that was sent to us of Marty’s World Famous Cookbook by Marty Curtis, published by Whitecap Books:

A little closer:

Our sense of journalistic integrity compels us to reveal that the secret ingredient is… TLC.

“Disgruntled” former White House spokesman writes tell-all memoir

From MSNBC.com:

In a shocking turnabout, the press secretary most known for defending President Bush on Iraq, Katrina and a host of other controversial issues produced a memoir damning of his old boss on nearly every level — from too much secrecy to a less-than-honest selling of the war to a lack of personal candor and an unwillingness to admit mistakes.

In the first major insider account of the Bush White House, onetime spokesman Scott McClellan calls the operation “insular, secretive and combative” and says it veered irretrievably off-course as a result.

The White House responded angrily Wednesday to McClellan’s confessional memoir, calling it self-serving sour grapes.

Wait, McCLellan’s saying governments manipulate information and lie to the press? Hang on while we pick ourselves off the floor….

And Canada’s not much better, by the way, at least according to Donald Savoie, author of the recent Court Government and the Collapse of Accountability (U of T Press). Savoie is interviewed in the Toronto Star for its continuing series on the secrecy and obsession with message control of the Harper government.

Attack of the robo-authors

Philip M. Parker is the (computer-aided) author of more than 200,000 books. And, thanks to the wonders of print-on-demand, he has yet to lose money on a single one. His work represents the tip of a very long tail.

From the New York Times:

Among the books published under his name are “The Official Patient’s Sourcebook on Acne Rosacea” ($24.95 and 168 pages long); “Stickler Syndrome: A Bibliography and Dictionary for Physicians, Patients and Genome Researchers” ($28.95 for 126 pages); and “The 2007-2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats and Sets That Measure 6-Feet by 9-Feet or Smaller in India” ($495 for 144 pages).

But these are not conventional books, and it is perhaps more accurate to call Mr. Parker a compiler than an author. Mr. Parker, who is also the chaired professor of management science at Insead (a business school with campuses in Fontainebleau, France, and Singapore), has developed computer algorithms that collect publicly available information on a subject — broad or obscure — and, aided by his 60 to 70 computers and six or seven programmers, he turns the results into books in a range of genres, many of them in the range of 150 pages and printed only when a customer buys one.

If this sounds like cheating to the layman’s ear, it does not to Mr. Parker, who holds some provocative — and apparently profitable — ideas on what constitutes a book. While the most popular of his books may sell hundreds of copies, he said, many have sales in the dozens, often to medical libraries collecting nearly everything he produces. He has extended his technique to crossword puzzles, rudimentary poetry and even to scripts for animated game shows.

All we need now is a machine that reads for us, and we’ll finally be free of the oppressive shackles of literate culture.

Burning books for bilingualism

From CBC.ca:

A surge of bilingualism in Quebec has one of the province’s most popular writers threatening to burn his entire body of work if something isn’t done to stop it.

Victor-Lévy Beaulieu, the author of some 70 works of fiction, non-fiction, drama and poetry, is giving the province two months to correct what he considers its errant linguistic ways, or the books will burn.

Beaulieu, 62, started making good on his symbolic ultimatum earlier this week by tossing a copy of his most recent novel, La Grande Tribu (The Big Tribe), into the wood stove at his remote cottage northeast of Quebec City.

Tabarnac – il lui manque des bardeaux!

U.K. library patrons love Patterson

In literary circles, there is probably no author more loathed than the U.S. thriller writer James Patterson, who freely admits to writing his books – which he pumps out at a rate of eight or so a year – with the assistance of a large stable of co-writers. Not that Patterson gives a fig. His books have sold 130-million copies worldwide, and now, according to The Independent, a survey has found that U.K. libraries lend more of his books than those of any other author.

Titles by the author were lent more than 1.5 million times between July 2006 and June 2007, an annual survey found. Such is his popularity that he has ousted the children’s writer Jacqueline Wilson from the number one spot, according to the Public Lending Right figures.

His primacy in the world of book lending is bound to reignite the debate on the “consortium style” working practices of some popular writers, where teams of co-writers help with the process of putting together a novel.

[...]
When Random House took over as his publisher last year, Patterson was referred to as a “company”, according to Joel Rickett, deputy editor of The Bookseller. The publishing house also claimed that he has had more number one bestsellers around the world in the past five years than Dan Brown, J. K. Rowling, Tom Clancy and John Grisham combined. Mr. Rickett said while his collaborative way of working may be frowned upon by some, it was a more common way of working in the thriller genre.

“If you compare his way of working to other writing teams such as those in television, it’s not that unusual. He appears to have a keen awareness of brand and there’s a certain amount of cringing in this country but it is really about establishing a name that readers can trust”

Judith Regan settles with former bosses

Judith Regan may be sleazy, but she’s not that sleazy, at least according to Regan’s former bosses at News Corporation, the owners of HarperCollins U.S., where Regan had her own imprint.

According to Yahoo! News, News Corp. has settled a lawsuit with Regan that arose fom her firing in 2006, and has released a statement that says, in part:

“After carefully considering the matter, we accept Ms. Regan’s position that she did not say anything that was anti-Semitic in nature, and further believe that Ms. Regan is not anti-Semitic.”

That’s pretty much the least you’d want your former employers to say about you when you’re gone, isn’t it?

Unlucky strike for TankBooks

Remember that project in which classic novellas were packaged to look like cigarette cases? Well, they may have pulled it off a little too well. As The Guardian reports:

The books, released as Tales to Take Your Breath Away at the start of the cigarette ban in pubs and restaurants last July, were well received by the design press and have made popular Christmas presents. But now the publishers are having to inhale deeply themselves as British American Tobacco (BAT) claims that one of the packs, containing Hemingway’s The Snows of Kilimanjaro and The Undefeated, resembles its own Lucky Strike pack. Claiming that such an association could seriously damage the health of the brand, BAT is trying to have the works pulped.

The year in Quillblog

We are officially on holiday as of yesterday, but we thought we should end the Quillblog year with a look back at our ten most popular posts of the year.

They are:

• Secrets of the Canadian literary cabal (January 23)
• Event Photos: George Jonas launches book with a little help from Conrad Black (March 29)
• Fun with blurbs (Rebecca Eckler edition) (April 2)
• Eckler vs. Hollywood (June 4)
• Harry Potter and the Online Leak (July 18)
• Lawyers are not rats, say lawyers (July 30)
• CanLit hates youth, says young author (October 22)
• Bill O’Reilly outs J.K. Rowling as a “provocateur” (October 24)
• The Golden Compass banned by Catholic school board (November 22)
• The most influential people in the Canadian book-biz are….? (November 26)

What these posts say about our readership we wouldn’t presume to say.

All we can do is hope that all you scandal-loving, muckraking, conspiracy-minded booklovers who delight in the misfortune of others have some very happy holidays.

See you in the new year for more of this kind of thing.

Feel free to tell us in the comments what your favourite books of the year were, what books you hope to be given as presents, what books you plan to give yourself as presents, and what books you are looking forward to next year.

Oh, and tell us how you think the industry should handle the issue of pricing differentials – you know, Christmasy stuff.

$3 million for Karl Rove’s memoirs?

Maybe, according to the New York Post:

Karl Rove, the controversial and long-time senior adviser to President George W. Bush, is shopping a memoir in an auction that will kick off today and likely result in a seven-figure payday.

“It will sell for millions, but how many millions is the question,” said one publisher who is expected to bid.

“It’s going to be an interesting auction, he’s smart and he’s capable of moving beyond the cliches,” said the publisher, who predicted a $3 million sale.

Among those who have taken a pitch meeting with the man known in some quarters as “Bush’s Brain” were HarperCollins (which is owned by News Corp., which also owns The Post), the Threshold Editions imprint of Simon & Schuster and the Random House imprint of Random House, Inc.

Rove is being represented by Robert Barnett. The famed Washington, DC attorney has fetched multi-million dollar advances for everyone from Alan Greenspan to Bill and Hillary Clinton to most recently Tony Blair and Ted Kennedy. Barnett declined to comment.

When your best justification for spending a few million dollars on the self-aggrandizing recollections of one of the most hated men in America is that “he’s capable of moving beyond the cliches,” you know things have gone terribly, terribly wrong somewhere.

Bill O’Reilly outs J.K. Rowling as a “provocateur”

Here’s a shocker: Bill O’Reilly said something incredibly stupid on his show yesterday, something that would be offensive if it weren’t so laughably moronic.

This time, it was about J.K. Rowling’s recent claim that she felt Dumbledore was gay – a claim that sent a chorus of shrugs through her legions of young readers.

Here’s what O’Reilly had to say about the whole kerfuffle, according to Think Progress:

Bill O’Reilly joined in the fray, asking if Dumbledore’s outing was part of the “gay agenda” of “indoctrination” of “children.” O’Reilly claimed that by dropping “the gay bomb,” Rowling is a “provocateur” who is “going to let all hell break loose.”

O’Reilly made clear he didn’t think Dumbledore’s sexual preference was a case of just one queer apple in an otherwise unspoiled basket. “Those wizards,” he said, “I’m very, very suspicious about what they’re doing in their spare time.”

For the morbidly curious, here’s what O’Reilly gets up to in his spare time. (Not for the faint of heart.)