Happy Labor Day weekend—see you Tuesday morning.

(Vacashun Kat is…Spot, who looks like a cutie but, according to Dutton/Gotham publicity manager Beth Parker, is actually a terror.)

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Two warnings: The soundtrack is incongruously loaded with what Stan Freberg used to call ‘pling pling pling jazz,’ which I suspect is a deliberate bid for irony, and there’s a simulated scene of natural childbirth that might be NSFW if you’re in a particularly uptight workplace. But then, you shouldn’t be watching five-minute videos when you’re at work anyway, should you? Oh, go ahead; we all know you’re just killing time until you can bail for the three-day weekend, and I bet your boss didn’t even come in today.

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YouTube doesn’t seem big enough for Amber Madison, a 23-year-old author who turned the experience she gained writing sex advice for the campus newspaper at Tufts into Hooking Up: A Girl’s All-Out Guide to Sex & Sexuality, published earlier this year by Prometheus. In addition to her standard website, Madison is collaborating with Weller/Grossman Productions, a TV production company specializing in reality-based programming for networks from CNN to Animal Planet, and Permission TV, a technology firm which has provided broadband video capabilities for clients like Mitt Romney and Activision, on AmberMadisonTV.com. The website debuted last month with thirty widescreen “episodes” of The Talk With Amber Madison, a series of short videos—with larger “screens” than YouTube and better image quality—featuring advice on everything from how to deal with undesired “hair down there” to extracting yourself from an abusive relationship. New episodes are added weekly, and viewers are able to email their own questions to Madison or participate in the site’s other online forums. (There’s a long disclaimer video before you get to the content, explaining why visitors shouldn’t post their personal information, how Madison’s not a doctor, and so on.)

The press release about the website is careful to note that this isn’t intended to promote Madison’s book, but is “a genuine new media venture” reaching out to its own audience. But of course there’s a consideration towards her publishing career, if only in the sense that the young author is assembling her own “platform,” as the industry experts call it. Although the production values could still use a little work; between that backdrop and the fake plant, the clips still have a slight aura of public access about them…or, ironically enough, a porn studio in the Valley.

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Of course, even while spinning in the opposite direction, she hits the same James Atlas essay for the New Yorker Donadio did; you can’t write a piece about book parties without acknowledging its existence. After that, it’s all “you should’ve been at Elaine’s, back when we were all poor but we could smoke in bars, so we were happy, and now we have parties in rich people’s apartments, and that’s pretty sweet, too.” Basically, my one takeaway from this article was that I need to be doing more outreach, because I wasn’t at any of the fancy parties Kuczynski writes about, and I’m not exactly a wallflower. “I had a book party last year at 21 Club,” she confides halfway through her spiel, “and I paid for it, and it sure was expensive, and only about 90 people came, and no one wrote a single peep about it.” I would’ve, honest!

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“I’m a lawyer and proud of it,” he told Nawotka. “I bill my clients an hourly rate; I don’t agree with taking a percentage for someone’s creative output.” (An agent typically takes a 15% to 20% commission as payment.) At $900 an hour, Barnett’s attention doesn’t come cheap. But when it’s a question of a multimillion-dollar contract, Barnett’s hourly rate can offer a client a massive savings over an agent’s commission. In an example Barnett cited, he billed a client $150,000 for negotiating a $3-million book contract — a substantial discount from the $450,000 to $600,000 an agent would customarily charge. Discounts for authors – but not for publishers. Knopf Publisher and President Sonny Mehta said to Nawotka that the upside of working with Barnett “is that when he calls about a client, it’s always someone you will want to take a meeting with. The downside is that he’s an expert on valuation, and as such I can never quite negotiate the deal I’d like.” An understatement to say the least…

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Before turning her talents to fiction, M.J. Rose was once a creative director at an ad agency; so was fellow thriller writer Chris Grabenstein. Between the two of them, they created this 15-second spot for Rose’s new novel, The Reincarnationist, and got it slotted into next Monday’s season premiere of the History Channel show Digging for the Truth. Over the next five days, it will also air on four other shows on the History Channel and A&E. Rose breaks down the details on her media buying strategy on her blog, but the meat of the story may lie in how she convinced her publisher, MIRA, to work the cable angle rather than taking out an NYTBR ad. “This whole package, production, media everything is less than 1/4 of a page in the Times,” Rose informed us yesterday, elaborating on her public discussion of how the nine airings she purchased may reach many more readers than an ad in even a heavily read book review section.

(Disclosure: I don’t actually look at our homepage regularly, except to see what Sarah’s written about, so it wasn’t until I filed this item that I discovered Rose had bought ad space from mediabistro.com and is running the ads now.)

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The Big Read on XM will air audio versions of classic novels in 30-minute installments, courtesy of Audible. Other program highlights will include NEA-produced readings, interviews, and commentary about each novel by some of the nation’s most celebrated authors, actors, and public figures. Just a few of the notable names taking part in the Big Read are actors Robert Duvall, Cheech Marin, and Mary Louise Parker, writers Ray Bradbury, Alice Walker, and Tony Hillerman, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

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The program is part of a Channel 4 season on the state of Britain’s literacy that will run at the end of October. The week-long season will also include “Can’t Read, Can’t Write”, a series that follows a headmistress’ mission to wipe out illiteracy in her primary school with the help of literacy expert Ruth Miskin and poet Benjamin Zephaniah, and a “Dispatches” investigation in which Channel 4 News’ chief correspondent Alex Thompson investigates standards of children’s literacy in Britain and the wider social impact of poor literacy rates.

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The talk of a potential merger of Borders and Barnes & Noble comes as both firms struggle against online rivals such as Amazon.com and big-box retailers such as Target. Online stores often offer lower prices, and big-box stores are offering a much wider selection than they have in the past. Those struggles have led many industry analysts to speculate that by combining forces, the two companies might be able to better tackle the competition. Whether this happens remains in question, but it’s certainly not impossible…

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Said Simon Blacklock, Waterstone’s Supply Chain Director: “This is a very important step in the development of Waterstone’s supply chain. It will enable stores, and over 2,500 suppliers, to communicate more efficiently and cost-effectively, as well as being more environmentally sound, as it will deliver a drastic reduction in the use of cardboard and packing material. Unipart has a strong track record of innovation in the supply chain and has demonstrated a very real focus on meeting our key requirements of availability, cost-effectiveness, delivery and service quality. We look forward to the relationship producing many benefits for Waterstone’s and its suppliers.”

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Analyst Richard Ratner at Seymour Pierce described Johnson as “a good egg. He’s got a good reputation and he’s got good people with him. He’ll buy something if it’s got potential.” Insiders say that as Chair of Channel 4, Johnson has seen the potential to boost book sales through Richard & Judy. Those who know him say that he cares about books and their cultural importance, and that he sees Borders “as a business that matters.” One added: “He sees Borders as a strong intrinsic business, one that doesn’t need to be broken up. And because he cares about it, he’ll be willing to accept slightly lower financial returns than in some of his other ventures.”

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“When plans were initially announced to publish If I Did It,” says spokeswoman Mary Ellen Keating in a statement documenting the policy change, “there was widespread customer outrage and disgust. So much outrage that our buyers felt there would be little customer demand for the newest edition of the book, published by The Goldman Family.” Hence the original decision to only sell the book through their website or for in-store special orders. “Since then,” Keating notes, “we’ve been monitoring the pre-orders and customer requests and have concluded that enough customers have expressed interest in buying the book to warrant stocking it in our stores. We do not intend to promote the book but we will stock it in our stores because our customers are asking for it.”

In other words, B&N is doing exactly what Borders has said they’d do all along. Interesting how consumer interest went from “a handful of pre-orders” to “enough customers… to warrant stocking it in our stores” in just two days, isn’t it?

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In a possibly related development, Fred and Kim Goldman are expected to issue a press release later this afternoon.

UPDATE: Yep, B&N’s gonna sell it.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

But considering the essay was written ten years ago, and Lamott had no plans to talk of assisted suicide or abortion (another subject deemed too hot) then what was the problem? The disconnect helped spark outrage in Omaha among booksellers and university attendees, but it also spurred the Holland Performing Arts Center to step in. So yes, Lamott will be speaking in Omaha on September 19 after all. The kicker? The Holland Center holds 2,000 people, which will allow more people to hear Lamott. Seating at Joslyn would have allowed about 1,200 to attend. “Anne Lamott’s writing has just meant a great deal to me,” said the Rev. Nancy Brink of North Side Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) who stepped in upon hearing of the cancellation. “I think she really connects with average people who struggle with meaning and real life.”

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Remember the time when it was almost impossible to get a novel published if you were under 40? Remember when author photos were nixed if you looked too young for a serious endeavor? Yeah, I don’t either, but I have it on pretty good authority that’s what publishing was like in the thirty years after World War II. And then the photogenic boom set in and now we get articles like the cover story of this week’s Boston Phoenix about why authors must look goooooooood to get published. All the usual suspects – Pessl, Kunkel, Krauss & Foer, Freudenberger, Vachon – are namechecked and analyzed for why their looks helped get them a big publishing contract (a topic Ron covered in similar detail for Writer’s Digest last year.)

“It’s easier in life to be attractive. That’s reductive but true,” says HarperCollins editor Gail Winston to Sharon Steel. “On the other hand, a brilliant book by an author who is not young and not attractive isn’t going to fail. It’s just, I think that those other books – for those reasons, those authors maybe get a little bit of an advantage.” But Gawker’s Emily Gould wishes the story was a little different. “The combination of fair-to-middling – or even strong but underdeveloped – talent with attractiveness and youth seems to be eternal catnip to publishers, if not reading audiences, and I think that’s a shame. What I am deeply, passionately opposed to is all the ridiculous praise that’s heaped on just-okay books because of the looks and pedigree and other accomplishments of their authors.”

Another feeling the adulation and backlash is Katherine Taylor (first talked about here last fall when I speculated she was a good bet for a Starbucks pick, which didn’t happen.) “I haven’t had a very long career as a writer, but while I was publishing stories, and when I got this book contract [for RULES FOR SAYING GOODBYE, published last spring by FSG] nobody knew what I looked like or who I was at all. My appearance had nothing to do with anything,” Taylor says. “But I’m not terribly concerned…The book is there, the book is always going to be there…I think the book stands on its own. All the noise surrounding it is just noise. I feel like whatever you have to do to get your book in the cultural conversation is all fair,” Taylor continues. “Because the bottom line is, you’ve put so much of yourself and so many years of your life into what you’re doing. The greatest tragedy would be if nobody noticed.”

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