Our sister site, FishbowlNY, passes along a story from a writer who got burned by William Morris Agency...or maybe "scalded" is the more appropriate verb. You see, Michael Levy told the media insider's blog that when he heard William Morris is partnering with Starbucks to select books (as well as albums and movies) that could be marketed and distributed in all those coffee shops, he submitted some of his books for consideration—and was told quite promptly that Ultra-Violet Haiku Delights and The Joy of Live Alchemy didn't really suit their needs.

The only problem? The books clearly, to Levy's eyes, hadn't even been opened. So he got on the phone with the agency, and was eventually put through to an agent who told him "they had not yet decided which type of books or genre they wanted to include" in the Starbucks program, then admitted, "In a perfect world we would have read some part of the books before rejecting them." (I tried to confirm the incident with the agent in question, but my call has so far gone unreturned.)