Just because she thinks Beaufort Books isn't a "real publisher" doesn't mean that Publishers Weekly editor-in-chief Sara Nelson is done lamenting the resurrection of If I Did It. "What worries me now is what will be revealed about our readers, our marketplace, the people who keep all of us in business," Nelson editorializes. To which the reaction around this GalleyCat outpost was, simply, "Oh, please." "Dog the Bounty Hunter" tops the NYT nonfiction list the second his memoir comes out, and OJ Simpson might reveal that the American bookbuying public isn't a host of angels? (And don't even get me started on the significance of The Secret nestling atop the advice list...)

Whenever I start feeling too fuzzy about the American bookbuying public, I think back to that moment during Oprah's evisceration of James Frey when the audience turned on him after he admitted that his girlfriend hadn't really hung herself, the way he wrote, but had in fact slit her wrists. Their vocal outrage at having been "cheated" out of their realistic death scene reminded me that people devoured A Million Little Pieces as much to take a cheap holiday in someone else's misery as to celebrate his redemption. Frey wasn't interesting to Oprah's audience because he was clean and sober, but because they could, at least metaphorically, stick their fingers in his gaping cheek wound, and they only turned on him when they found out the details weren't as gory as he'd said. Now many of those same readers are ready to move on to Nicole Brown Simpson's nearly severed head because, as much as they may say they hate him for it, they're fascinated that, as far as they're concerned, OJ got away with murder. Don't believe me? As of 1 AM, If I Did It was #35 on the Barnes & Noble website, and had leapt more than 400,000 rungs up the Amazon.com ladder.

So, yes, let's pat ourselves on the back for appreciating Khaled Hosseini, and take comfort in the faith-based sales of Tony Dungy and Denise Jackson—but let's not pretend we don't know what other impulses drive the book economy. At least now, having gained control of the infamous manuscript, the Goldmans can take what they see as their only opportunity to publicly eulogize their son—and if it takes throwing "OJ's confession" into the mix in order to get people (but not you or me, of course not you or me) to buy the thing, then I can't imagine it says anything about "our readers" that we didn't already know.