Smatterings

USA TODAY's Binzesheimer, along with AP's Hillel Italie and David Segal, NY1 and the NYT, cover yesterday afternoon's loooooooooooong Norman Mailer tribute at Carnegie Hall. Both reports get a lot of the good stuff - Stephen Mailer channeling his dad in voice, style and ability to say "ratfuck" and mean it, Mailer's last drink being a rum and orange juice, Kate Mailer's hilarious monologue about teenage rebellion in the Mailer household (though I think she probably wanted to memorize the speech and couldn't) - but it's worth highlighting the most egregious clunkers of the evening, like Sean Penn delivering his "speech" on a Blackberry (WTF? And dude, "Norman Mailer is dead" is not so profound. Not as much as you think it is) and Joan Didion's stupefyingly stultifying remarks about THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG.

The Washington State Attorney General is looking into the Amazon/Booksurge/POD mess. Oh, this should be fun and a good lesson in antitrust, I hope.

Speaking of Amazon, they will be required to collect sales tax from customers based in New York State.

Reginald Hill explains his writing process to the Guardian's Sarah Kinson.

Bob Minzesheimer also examines Sophie Dahl's transformation from model to novelist.

Here are your Nibbie award winners. Patricia Cornwell took the crime/thriller award, fwiw, and these pictures are rather hilarious.

The Britannica blog is hosting an online symposium on the non-death of reading.

Leon Neyfakh discovers that Bob Miller's "studio" idea for HarperCollins is pretty much what various small presses have been doing all along.

And finally, sometimes it doesn't pay to open up a bedroom closet.

Comments

[Kevin Wignall]

The chap holding JK Rowling's cleavage (who looks bizarrely like Tony Blair) is described as "Rowling's agent". Well, I'm not sure who it actually is, but I've sat opposite Christopher Little at dinner and it certainly isn't him.

[Graham]

"Her bosoms made a bid for freedom." God, why can't the American press be more like this?

[Stacey Cochran]

The Washington State Attorney General is looking into the Amazon/Booksurge/POD mess.

One of the things Amazon states in the article is that "publishers can use their own printing service to sell books through other venues."

However, Amazon, made a move late last year (at least with Lulu) that forces publishers to charge the same price that Amazon sets on a book. For example, a book sold through Lulu's site has to sell for the same price as at Amazon. If publishers didn't comply?

Amazon cuts them.

At Lulu, this shook down with a 3-day threat from Amazon that went something like this: Get your price for a book at Lulu up to what the cost for the same book at Amazon is, or we'll cut every book that Lulu has available on Amazon from our system.

Amazon gave Lulu 3 days to comply.

So all of this is to say, if you're a publisher and you wish to sell through other vendors (B&N, Powells, your own site), the price on those sites has to match the price at Amazon.... or Amazon will remove all of the publisher's books from their system.