In the publicity coup of the year, former White House intern Monica Lewinsky was chosen today to narrate the audio book version of Senator Hillary Clinton's best-selling memoir, "Living Oral History."
Literature Stop That Book
This season has seen more than its usual share of embargoed books, from Hillary Clinton's memoir Living History, published on Monday, to Stephen Glass' novel The Fabulist, to Jozef Imrich's account of his years in the exile, Kama Sydney. Most media junkies know that when a book is "embargoed," they can expect a Big Gossipy Event.
A publicist might calculate that embargoing his book would help build public anticipation—and that juicy tidbits, slowly revealed, might generate more media coverage and therefore higher sales. (An embargo also protects material that a publicist wants to leak to only one news outlet.) (This is part of the reason Simon & Schuster threatened to sue the AP, even though the leak generated useful free publicity.)
And of course, access to embargoed material can be a sure sign that you're in the game, in the know—true of both those who issue the embargo, and those who get the scoop.
· emBuggered & you're in the Game [Slate ]
