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Searching for Bobby Fischer... In The Bookstore? 

# posted by Paul Collins @ 11:50 AM 
Book Ends # posted by Paul Collins @ 9:57 PM 
Can Running Mates Be Predicted By Cover Art? ....Probably not.

# posted by Paul Collins @ 1:45 AM 
Greetings From Israel

Weirdly fascinating for no particular reason: US states renamed for comparable GDPs. # posted by Paul Collins @ 1:35 PM 
Proust's Stereo 

Here, by the way, is that picture: # posted by Paul Collins @ 1:07 PM And They All Swiped Happily Ever After

A year ago I wrote in Slate about Google Book Search's potential to ferret out plagiarists. Although I focused on long-dead cases, the search engine has now caught a live one.

From yesterday's Times:

Allegations this week that Cassie Edwards, a popular romance novelist with more than 100 books to her name, inserted large chunks of unattributed material into her work blossomed into a controversy that led Signet Books, one of her publishers, to announce on Friday that it was examining all of her work that it has published. The controversy began when smartbitchestrashybooks.com, a blog devoted to romance novels, posted excerpts from Ms. Edwards’s novels this week alongside passages from other sources to show the similarities, which the site’s authors said they had discovered by plugging some of Ms. Edwards’s writing into Google.

So will this damage her?

Well, let's put it this way: it depends. And namely, what it depends on are Bookscan figures. Last year, after my Slate piece ran, I heard from a prof in Texas who despaired that noted authors could plagiarize and get away with it, and posited that this was indicative of a broader societal malaise regarding intellectual property. I wrote her back and agreed with her... but only about the noted authors getting away with it part:

I think the key in what you've said below is the phrase "noted authors." There is a different law for the rich than the poor in publishing, as in so many other places, and as long as Ambrose or Goodwin write bestsellers, plagiarism charges will not be fatal to them. But for writers who are not bestsellers (ie almost everyone), a charge of plagiarism is deeply damaging. And the taboo, again, is in part an economic one. It's worth a publisher's while to hire interns to vet Goodwin and Ambrose mss for plagiarism; but if you're a publisher of a book with a print run of a couple thousand copies, it's unwise to risk your reputation and possibly your finances on a known plagiarist.

As long as Ms. Edwards sells well, I'm sure some kind-hearted publisher will take an expansive view of intellectual property.

# posted by Paul Collins @ 12:38 PM I'm on this week's broadcast (and podcast) of Live Wire -- recorded in front of a full house at the Aladdin Theater a couple weeks ago -- along with Death Cab's Chris Walla and poet Scott Poole.

Questions discussed include: If you're taking a cherry syrup medication, how can you tell whether you've stopped spitting up blood?

# posted by Paul Collins @ 2:57 PM 9 for 24 for 3?

Nicholas Lezard of the Guardian treads where few critics dare: namely, into print-on-demand books, where he has apparently found a gem:

Here's a first for this column: publishing on demand. I'm not sure I quite get it. Unless I've got hold of the wrong end of the stick, it would appear that if you want a copy of this book - which, when you get to the end of this review, you should - you send off a cheque for six quid to CB Editions, 146 Percy Road, London W12 9QL, and they will print one out for you.

The novel in question is Jennie Walker's 24 for 3, and Lezard appears to be downright amazed by it:

24 for 3 contains some of the tightest, cleanest writing I have seen in a long time. Both serious and playful, this is the best example of style revealing the contours of the interior that I have seen all year. It is hard to pick on a single paragraph that shines out - which is a good sign. I could point out a few wonderful similes (such as the noise of the Welsh double L "that reminds me of when you push a clockwork toy that's stuck") but it's about more than wonderful similes: it's the running stream of thought of an intelligent woman going through a crisis.... I wonder if it's too late for it to go on the Orange prize shortlist.

So far, Lezard's find (which ran two weeks ago) seems to have attracted no notice whatsoever. Googling the author and title brings just 9 hits -- and they're mostly the Guardian's own internal links to Lezard's article.

# posted by Paul Collins @ 2:28 PM