Publisher Sics Leakseeking Dick in Teddy Bio Embargo Imbroglio

This story appeared in the New York Times on September 3, 2009, eleven days before publication of True Compass by the late Senator Ted Kennedy: "Despite the press embargo of Ted Kennedy's upcoming memoir, the NY Times has published an article looking at a leaked copy of the highly-anticipated autobiography."

Did you know there was an embargo on Kennedy's book? Do you know why its publisher, Twelve, a division of Hachette, required it? How it was supposed to be enforced? Who leaked it and why? Was the Times in breach of, um, embargo? And is that a crime, like rum-running?

As to the latter question, Hachette thinks the transgression was flagrant enough to merit hiring a private detective to learn how the Times got its hands on copies of the book, which enabled the paper not only to extract the marrow for its readers but to run a review as well - a review of a book that nobody (except Times reporters, apparently) would be able to purchase for another eleven days. (Today is the officially publication day and here is the link to the Times's review.)

A Breach of Manners or a Crime?

We know what an embargo is when we talk about sanctions against rogue nations. But...books?

The term is used in a number of publishing industry contexts, and they all revolve around a date before which release of information, excerpts or copies of a book could be harmful to a publisher's interests. For instance, there are embargos on serialization of book texts in newspapers and magazines, on early reviews, and on sale of copies before the official release date.

In some instances the constraint is simply moral: "Please don't spoil the book's plot by reviewing it two weeks before publication date." A book's sales may be negatively impacted by a trigger-happy reviewer but not so badly damaged as to warrant legal action. There's little a publisher can do about it except yell at the reviewer and his newspaper. The breach is one of manners.

In other cases the transgression is legal, the flouting of a contractual covenant. The New York Times figured incidentally in such a case when an online bookseller and a distributor placed Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on sale days before the embargo was to end. Several papers including the New York Times ran reviews jumping the official gun. According to Emily Shurr of cnet News Blog, the book's publisher, Scholastic, brought a lawsuit against the companies claiming that "This breach led The New York Times and Baltimore Sun to lawfully claim that copies of the book could be obtained at a public retail outlet before publishing their book reviews, which included details considered spoilers."

The Biggest Embargo of All

The issues raised by these incidents are about to become incandescent as we count down the hours until publication on September 15th of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, which has been cloaked in paranoiac secretiveness. Motoko Rich, who covers the New York Times's book beat, writes that "Nobody at Special Ops Media," the outfit hired to design the book's Web marketing campaign, "has been allowed to read the book..."

Even the most powerful figure in book retailing jumped into the embargo game, Rich reports:

Last week Amazon’s chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, posted a breathless memo to customers on the Amazon.com home page, informing them that the company was taking 'one of the most anticipated publishing events of all time' very seriously. 'We’ve agreed to keep our stockpile under 24-hour guard in its own chain-link enclosure, with two locks requiring two separate people for entry,' Mr. Bezos wrote.

Who Dunnit?

Friction between publishers and review media over early release of a book's contents has been an age-old issue for as long as anyone can remember. On several occasions a publisher would license first (pre-publication) serial rights, only to discover the information in a tabloid well in advance of serialization. It seems that the publisher had also sent review copies to those tabloids which, under the pretext of "reviewing" the book, revealed everything, rendering those first serial rights worthless. Needless to say, the magazine that had bought those rights fair and square demanded its money back.

When you realize how many people see a book before publication, it's a small miracle that information blackouts ever work. Agents, editors, publishing executives, copy editors, proofreaders, sales representatives, marketing department managers, publicity people, cover designers, ad copywriters, even clerks feeding manuscripts into the copy machine, all have an opportunity to squeal and even to smuggle, and that doesn't even include bookstore buyers who need to read something in order to know how many copies to order, or reviewers who always appreciate having something to review on publication day. Though I never was able to confirm it, back in the '80s it was said that an employee of a photocopy shop used by a big literary agency could be paid off to make an extra copy of a hot new novel for movie studios hoping to get an early look.

It is about as easy to impose an embargo in the book business as it is to keep a secret in a beauty parlor. If the contents of a book get prematurely out of the bag we have no one to blame but the porous system known as book publishing. If The Lost Symbol remains under wraps until the embargo is removed, it will be the best kept secret since Operation Overlord, the invasion of Europe in World War II.

Me? I've got my money on the spoilers.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times and the New York Observer.