The Post's dog-loving grandma voices her concerns for the poor struggling book biz in her column today:

We love Page Six's patented Random Reacharounds: those inexplicably crowing, glowing items that detail the achievements of someone readers have never heard of, typically introducing zero new information and blowing several lackluster achievements out of proportion. Today's item about Rodale's Leigh Haber is a classic example:

That's right (yawn) — You again. Simon and Schuster's Touchstone imprint, freshly burned by the whole Sobol prize snafu, has decided to give the whole 'publishing a book by a contest winner' thing another shot. But this time, the contest, called First Chapters, will be judged by You, via social networking site we've never heard of Gather.com. According to the Times, this is a last-gasp attempt by the "struggling book industry," which, as ever, is "eager to tap into mainstream tastes." We'll let Michael Cader have that one. Our problem with the First Chapters contest: it's too damn complicated. Here's how it works:

Heidi Julavitz is many things to many people: she's a prolific novelist, a teacher, a founding editor of the Believer, and, with Ben Marcus, one half of our fourth least favorite literary power couple (thisclose to being third, but Waldman really cancels out anything non-annoying about Chabon). She's also the author of the infamous Anti Snark Manifesto that heralded the Believer's first issue, a footnote-rich diatribe that took mean book reviewers to task and called for a new era of experimentation, unfettered by sniping critics. And in an interview with The Morning News, she reveals that she's worried that the "Manifesto" will be the only thing she's remembered for:

"I must say that I just freaking loved this book! I didn't put it down until I was done with it, it was that awesome! If asked to describe Secrets of the Model Dorm, one word immediately comes to mind: DRAMA!"

A couple of items of bad news today for various imprints of Simon and Schuster. The more important one is that Valerie Plame's book probably won't contain much of anything interesting after the CIA Publication Review Board gets through with it; possibly endangering her big fat book deal, which had already fallen through once elsewhere before S&S scooped it up. And Galleycat reports that at Touchstone, another S&S imprint, the Sobol Awards book will be scuttled after bad word of mouth (like ours, for example) soured everyone on the idea of the pay-to-play literary contest. S&S, we know that recent publishing firings have left some big cloven hooves to fill. But let's let this stuff be a lesson, shall we? Okay, now we're getting down off our high horse and going back to scouring the internet for celebrity crotch shots.

Writer's Block: Valerie Plame Vs. The CIA [Newsweek]
Bad Word of Mouth Kills Sobol Prize [Galleycat]
Earlier: Literary Contest Winners to Be Published, Screwed

This is Susan Seligson, the author of the forthcoming Stacked: A 32DDD Reports From the Front, which is a memoir and cultural critique of big boobedness from an author who says that her "god-given" rack has "never ceased to render men instantly stupid." Does it look like she's hiding something? Gossip and randomness blogger Manny has dug up a picture of the author wherein her milkbags aren't behind a piece of cardboard. After the jump, judge for yourself.

Galleycat sniffed out a fun diatribe by Dallas Morning News books editor Jerome Weeks that starts on the hot topic of publishing-themed revenge -lit (sparked by the recent LA Times article about Blind Submission, which "isn't" about literary agent Sandy Dijkstra, and Because She Can, which "isn't" about Judith Regan) and quickly digresses into a discussion of assistant culture and the "female boot camp" of book publicity.

Because you didn't ask for them — in fact, because you begged us repeatedly not to share them with you — we're bringing you more of Transamerica possible-man Felicity Huffman's boudoir hints, gleaned from her new book, A Practical Handbook for the Boyfriend. Ever wondered whether the entity known as Filliam H. Muffman has ever invited a special guest star into their nuptial bed? Not until right this minute, eh? Well, wonder no more!

Actress Felicity Huffman, who you'll recall from her role on Desper — wait, does anyone actually watch that show or was the whole thing some weird conspiracy to fill our Us Weekly with pictures of middle-aged ladies we don't care about for a year? Yeah, thought so — anyway, Felicity Huffman, who you'll recall from her eerily convincing turn in that transsexual movie, is many things to many people. She's a star of stage and screen, one half of the Hollywood power couple Stephen Colbert has dubbed Filliam H. Muffman, and — unbeknownst to you until right now — she's also a relationship expert. Or so her soon to be published book, A Practical Handbook For The Boyfriend, would seem to indicate.

Is this a genuine case of a straw breaking the camel's back, or a flimsy excuse for NewsCorp to give its employees something to celebrate right before the Christmas party? (Speaking of: we have it on very good authority that HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman belted a killer rendition of It's Raining Men at karaoke that night!) Anyway, you decide:

"Between this and James Frey, she'll never touch another Random House author," a tipster tells Galleycat. This, of course, in reference to the news yesterday that Kitty Kelley's long kicked around town unauthorized Oprah biography has finally landed at Crown, one of the publishing behemoth's zillion imprints. Though Kelly is talking like her bio will be a positive take on the Queen of All Media ("Oprah's story is one of hope, promise and realization of the American dream") we're a little skeptical. (We read that Nancy Reagan bio back in the day, and it scarred us for life a little. Kelley is the queen of 'but I didn't ever want to . . . okay, I kind of did want to know that but . . . oh god, not that! no!') So yes, we agree with that tipster: her Oness probably will be scaling back her efforts on behalf of Knopf, Bantam, Doubleday, Ballantine, One World, Villard, Pantheon, Anchor, Vintage, Spiegel & Grau, Broadway, Three Rivers, etc, etc, etc. So . . . the vast majority of all authors. Yup, farewell again, Oprah's Book Club! Well, unless this will be the next pick.



Kitty Kelley Deal Raises Eyebrows [Galleycat]

Kitty Kelley book due on Oprah [AP]

In last year's hypedest literary debut, Indecision, there's a part that the Kunk wrote when he was totally high that goes,

As we mentioned, we read Star for its incisive "Look Who's Fat Now!" pictorials, not for its words. But our eyes inadvertently grazed a sentence in this week's issue — and you know what? It resonated with us:

At the 2004 Whitney Biennial, artist Zak Smith wowed the crowd with a wall of drawings showing what happens on every page of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Small press Tin House caught wind of the drawings' popularity and decided to publish them as a book entitled Gravity's Rainbow Illustrated: One Picture for Every Pagewhich was scheduled to be released on December 30th.

TODO is one daily thing recommended for you, by us.

News today comes of a publishing scandal that's just as icky, in its own way, as the whole OJ kerfluffle. (Just trust us on this one, okay?) The people who run the Sobol Award — a highly shady contest for unpublished, unagented writers with a hefty $85 entrance fee — have made a deal with Simon & Schuster imprint Touchstone to publish the three Sobol winners' books, for $100K for World rights or $50K for North American only. The Sobol people will also "represent" the "winning" authors in these deals, meaning that they'll cadge 15% of these advances. Seems kind of okay, and kind of boring, right? Well, it's actually not normal and totally wrong. We're all out of righteous indignation for the day, so we'll let Galleycat explain why this sucks — it's their thing, anyway:

We've always found ourselves with a lot of burning questions about Tori "Dad Cast Me on 90210 And I Am Somehow Still Famous" Spelling's inner life, so it was with joy and satisfaction and not a little bit of relief that we learned we would soon be able to get the answers straight from her horsey mouth. That's right: the So NoTorious star is penning a memoir, to be published in 2008 by Simon "He's Just Not That Into You, And Some Other Books" Spotlight Entertainment. Now, some might disagree with us that Tori has a story to tell, but USA Today begs to differ:

We learned yesterday that Houghton Mifflin, the textbook publisher that also has a backlist of greats like Emerson and Thoreau, agreed to a nearly $1.8 billion buyout by Riverdeep Inc., a smaller firm whose complementary strength is in educational software. "They could have bought YouTube for that kind of . . . zzzzzzzz," we thought to ourself. Seriously, bo-ring. And then today, venerable litblogger Maud Newton shared this gem with us, courtesy of a fired Houghton Mifflin employee:

You've gotta love cranky literary gay Gore Vidal. Even though he is 80,000 years old, he isn't afraid to stir up some shit, courageously calling out people who have been dead for way too long to talk back, and celebrating the fact that (he thinks) editors don't edit anymore because editing makes writers — that hack Fitzgerald, for example — worse: