Friends of the Parrot

Editorial Blogs

Tony Miksak

WORDS ON BOOKS by Tony Miksak for KZYX&Z-FM, 90.7 Philo CA
Airs Sunday, October 8, 2006 at 10:55 am, repeated Wednesday, October 11 at 1 pm

Title: Publishers, Rend Your Tweeds

(MUSIC UP) This is Tony Miksak with a few Words on Books.

Headline in Publisher's Weekly Daily Edition (and don't ask me to explain that):

"Penguin Clings to Fiorina Embargo Despite Times Leak"

"For the second time within a week, The New York Times has managed to find a store selling an embargoed book. After running a story based on Robert Woodward’s (embargoed) 'State of Denial' last week, the paper has a lengthy article today on Carly Fiorina’s memoir 'Tough Choices' which is not supposed to go on sale until next Monday. In the piece, NYT reporter John Markoff says the paper bought a copy of the book at a bookstore."

At a BOOKSTORE! Horrors!

"(A Penguin spokesman) said that despite the NYT article, the company is sticking to its Oct. 9 retail embargo; any store found in violation of the embargo will be required to remove the title from its shelves."

How likely is it, really, that someone from Penguin will see "Tough Choices" on sale too soon in some bookstore in, say, Albuquerque, or, say, Mendocino, and even if that unlikely event were to happen, just how would the Penguin person "require" the bookstore to "remove the title from its shelves?"

(How in fact would a Penguin get a human to do anything? Flap wings and squawk? Regurgitate a fish on the counter?)

If there is going to be a pre-publication leak, it's the publisher who will do the leaking. Not the bookseller. Got it?

That's why publishers make booksellers sign affidavits (in blood if possible; red ink acceptable) swearing we wouldn't dream of, can't, won't, shan't, sell a book before the official on-sale date.

In the meantime, the intrepid, perhaps aggressive reporter goes out and finds an underfed bookstore clerk who either is not aware of the embargo, or is induced to ignore it with the offer of food – an ice cream cone in Albuquerque, or bootleg organic spinach in Mendocino. There goes the surprise.

It's good publicity either way. If the embargo holds, Oprah gets her exclusive and 60 Minutes gets a ten minute story. If the embargo is broken, publishers rend their tweeds, and that makes good copy, too.

The vast majority of booksellers, those who not only signed and returned the paper but kept the promise, can't actually PROVE they obeyed. Now everyone's under a cloud.

No one in bookselling is quite sure what particular axe might fall were one, heaven forbid, to actually break or bend the requirements of a book embargo. It's not likely we're going to find out because booksellers, like teachers and librarians, are notoriously law-abiding, and nice.

Would Scholastic really cease shipping books to us if we released Harry Potter before midnight? Carly Fiorina a day early?

By the way, this kind of thing happens all the time. Last year, eight days before publication, Arianna Huffington in the online Huffington Post revealed the provocative contents of Gerald Posner's then new book "Secrets of the Kingdom: The Inside Story of the Saudi-US Connection" from Random House.

By contrast, this September HarperCollins successfully embargoed a book that prior to publication was sold to booksellers without a title, an author, or even a subject.

No bookseller who signed on to carry this book, including me, had any idea what they were buying, and the book when delivered turned out to be another butler-tells-all on Princess Diana. It's not doing well. Not only the publisher is disappointed on this one. (The book turned out to be Paul Burrell’s "The Way We Were.")

And so it goes. Look for a tweed rending photo in tomorrow's Times.

(MUSIC UP) You can subscribe to the email version of Words on Books by writing to amiksak@mcn.org. Transcripts are available on the KZYX web site.

Notes:

Read the Huffington semi-legal 8 day exclusive here:
www.huffingtonpost.com/2005/05/09/huffington-post-ex_n_480.html

Slate Magazine published a good article on why publishers embargo books: www.slate.com/id/2084160

back to the top