July 11, 2006
How We Got Insipid

Jonathan Lethem, one of my favorite authors, has a short story collection coming out, How We Got Insipid. What's odd about this is that the publisher can't promote the book in the press:

[A]ccording to the press release accompanying the book, Subterranean is contractually obliged not to promote the work via the usual channels -- it can't send the book to newspaper or magazine reviewers or to the trade magazines like Publishers Weekly or Booklist. This is apparently an attempt to make sure Insipid doesn't cannibalize the sales of Lethem's big publisher work (although since Insipid has a print run of just 1500 copies it's hard to see why that's a real worry), or cause the newspapers and magazines in question not to review Lethem's other work because they just reviewed this.

Very odd, but I can't imagine they'll have trouble selling out the print run.

Posted by Bill Stilwell at July 11, 2006 08:49 PM