The LA Times' Glenn Bunting continues his regular coverage of the Clive Cussler/Philip Anschutz lawsuit trial, and yesterday's tidbits focus extensively on Cussler's sales figures - he and his camp claimed upwards of 100 million but an extensive audit presented as evidence last week during a Hollywood breach-of-contract trial revealed that the actual number of Cussler books sold through 2000 was at most 42 million, Bunting reports.

On Friday, Cussler offered myriad explanations for his accounting of the "Sahara" numbers. Asked if he pulled the numbers out of thin air, Cussler said, "Pretty much." He added: "I honestly thought I probably did sell 100 million books. That doesn't seem out of the ordinary to me." Cussler's response, made during tense cross-examination testimony (he is scheduled to continue being on the stand today) "illustrates that he is perfectly comfortable lying about the number of books he sold," said Alan Rader, one of several attorneys from the O'Melveny & Myers firm who represent Anschutz. "He was willing to say whatever it took to get the $10 million."

Interestingly, Cussler's real sales figure amount to roughly half of what he's claimed - a by-product, Cussler testified earlier in a deposition, of an edict handed down by his agent in the late 1990s never to say how many books he sold because the amount was not known. Instead, Cussler said, he was advised to use the phrase "books in print." So a word to the wise, especially new GalleyCat readers: anytime you see a "books in print" figure, downscale it by half, maybe even more, to get the real story...