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Is Huffington Puffing? Ariana Huffington continues to play out her big “scoop” on Judith Miller, and has upgraded the Huffington Post’s standard of proof: Yesterday’s third-hand report (“sources tell me that Judy Miller is telling friends”) has been emphatically refined to definitive second or third-hand confirmation. To wit: “Miller has absolutely, positively been telling friends that she has a $1.2 million book deal. Period. The end.” Yesterday we made the mistake of assuming that Huffington’s “update” on a conversation with Simon & Schuster president Carolyn Reidy was complete and accurate — when it was apparently presented to serve Huffington’s ends, […]

Miller Might; Cooper Will; Chandra and Others Did Yesterday Ariana Huffington reported in the Huffington Post: “Sources tell me that Judy Miller is telling friends that she has made a $1.2 million book deal with Simon & Schuster. I’ve heard from senior editors at the publishing house that the deal is still so hush-hush that word of it has not appeared in the memos that circulate among the editorial staff, keeping them updated on pending deals and acquisitions.” Then Huffington said in a subsequent conversation, S&S president Carolyn Reidy told her: “There is no signed deal for the book — […]

Deals Done, and One In Progress Already in new deal reports on top of last night’s big round-up, two more from David Mitchell again to Random in the US and UK; Ian Falconer’s fourth OLIVIA is set for next June; Norman Pearlstine writes on “the use and misuse of anonymous sources” for Nan A. Talese; Tish Cohen’s first novel goes to Harper at auction; and more rolling in. Meanwhile, an auction for world rights to Eric Clapton’s memoir is set to close on Wednesday — and he has reportedly turned down an offer of 2.5 million pounds. Agent Ed Victor, […]

Place Your Nobel Bets It’s time for the annual rumors about who will win the Nobel Prize for Literature — but since the Swedish Academy does such a good job of keeping quiet (and such a good job of picking obscure writers), the rumors are modest. British bookmakers have Syrian poet Adonis as the 2-1 favorite, followed by South Korean poet Ko Un and Swedish poet Thomas Transtromer. As is often the case, Joyce Carol Oates and Milan Kundera are also among the betting favorites. The winner will be named on October 6. Also on the never-ending awards front, the […]

Covering the Used Books Coverage Following yesterday’s preview of the BISG study, here are short glimpses of how the traditional press positioned the results: The WSJ focuses on “slightly used books” that are highly visible on Amazon.com — though the BISG study offered no specific data on these offerings. As usual, agents would like to see payments made to authors on these sales (which will never happen) and publishers wish Amazon wouldn’t push “used” sales of new titles so much (which will also never happen). WSJ The AP goes for the big overall number of $2.2 billion even though that’s […]

Used But Not Discarded At the BISG’s annual meeting today, the marquee event was the presentation of summary data from their Used Book Study (the full study is still being prepared, and will not be released until next month). The best part of the study, conducted by market research firm InfoTrends and presented by Jeffrey Hayes, was sealed from the beginning: Hard data was gathered from essentially all of the major players in this emerging business: Amazon, eBay, Abebooks, Alibris, Barnes & Noble, Biblio, Powell’s and others, combined with surveys of booksellers, industry groups, and consumers. The broad strokes didn’t […]