Report: Saatchi Tried to Game His Book's Best-Seller Status

Charles Saatchi and Nigella Lawson,
in presumably happier days
(photo: dailymail.co.uk)

Charles Saatchi casts a long shadow in the global advertising game and the big-time contemporary art world. Befitting one of such stature, he published a book and shared his thoughts with a global audience. Saatchi, who understands publishing's inside game, desired best-seller status. According to a report in today's Los Angeles Times, the British ad/art maestro was not leaving his book's sales fate entirely to the vagaries of public taste. The story, noting highly public and nasty Saatchi-Nigella Lawson divorce court proceedings, cited Saatchi aides allegedly being directed to purchase their employer's books. The notion was to game the best-seller list.

There's something naive in the belief that cash purchases of a number of books could generate sufficient sales to achieve best-seller levels. It's more likely that Saatchi wanted to create "buzz" that would create the impression of a fast sales start for his tome.

More dippy than Saatchi's concern about his book's performance is the notion that anyone would care about the work's "best-seller" halo. The idea that readers' choices need to be guided by the supposed popularity of a book denigrates the quality of its prose, the substance of its ideas, the delivery of its entertainment values. You don't need an egotistical ad man's chutzpah, manufactured online "reader comments," or sales popularity charts to help you draw your own conclusions about what book makes sense for you.

Jennifer 8. Lee vs Full Disclosure

Earlier this week, digital publishing evangelist Jennifer 8. Lee had an opinion piece published in The Seattle Times. The article appeared just prior to the Frankfurt Book Fair, an event where small, medium, and big-league international publishing insiders buy, sell, or trade assets as well as gain (hopefully) useful information. Lee's piece doesn't say anything new or illuminating about the publishing biz. However, the article's appearance, and what it does not say, are curious. Let me elaborate.

Seattle is home base for Amazon, far and away the most disruptive force in publishing's often insular world. What goes uncited in Lee's piece is her enterprise's connection to Amazon, even though the Seattle-based firm is mentioned twice in the story.

Lee co-founded and runs a self-defined "literary studio" called Plympton. Its vision, according to Plympton's website, is to reinvent "how people experience literature by combining serialized fiction and digital platforms." A little over a month ago, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos launched a line of serialized fiction books that would appear on -- drumroll, please -- Kindle gadgets. Three of the ten titles were from Plympton's stable of assets. Supposedly, according to a Boston Globe story, Plympton and Amazon inked the deal 24 hours before Bezos announced it before a very high-profile audience in Santa Monica. Some have strongly doubted the public version of this story, specifically noting that Amazon's profound lust for secrecy and control would have ruled out any initiative that hadn't been thoroughly calculated for intention and impact.

Lee's Seattle Times opinion piece doesn't mention the Amazon-Plympton dots, never mind bother to connect them. This disingenuous stance, from a former New York Times technology writer, makes me wary of the writer's intention. Just what was the point of this piece? Who was its target? (C'mon, you know in your heart it wasn't the subscribers of The Seattle Times.) According to the thumbnail bio at the end of the piece, she "splits her time between Boston, San Francisco and New York." Hmmm.....no second home in The Emerald City.

There are many unanswered questions in the publishing world. These are just a few of them.

Twitter Co-Founders Launch "Medium"

Biz Stone (photo from mediabistro.com)

Evan Williams and Biz Stone, fresh from their stunning success with Twitter, have taken aim at publishing. Their most recent endeavor is called "Medium." According to a story in siliconvalley.com, the new venture is a "publishing tool" that sounds like a cocktail of social media initiatives. The idea, in its simplest form, is the formation of "collections" of text and photos. You'll have to read the siliconvalley.com piece to find out more. And, no, I haven't put my post into "Medium" yet.

From Russia With Love

A well-told spy story takes craft, research, and brains. Such tales also sell; publishers can't get enough of the good ones. So it made sense that two people recently arrested for allegedly being Kremlin spies lived in publishing-rich Montclair. The Russian agents already knew their trade; perhaps their true cloak and dagger work was getting inside the publishing network honeycombing the New Jersey suburb. After all, in the publishing business as well as for the spy world, it's who you know that counts.