Reviews of JK Rowling's The Silkworm

Publishers Lunch

Reviews of JK Rowling's The Silkworm, published under her pen name Robert Galbraith, first started to appear in the UK newspapers, ahead of publication on June 19 -- and now the Washington Post has joined in, with others no doubt on the way.

Many (if not most) independent booksellers have declined to stock most (if not all) titles from Amazon Publishing's imprint. But Daniel Goldin at Boswell and Books "wound up enjoying Thomas Beller's biography in essays," J.D. Salinger: The Escape Artist, published by Amazon (as part of James Atlas's line there). In a long post, he recalls that his former boss David Schwartz would say, "The book will out." By which he meant "that the book itself is more important than the publishing politics behind the book. It was often in the context of what to do when bad people wrote great books." So Goldin will carry Beller's book.

On last night's The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert offered an "update on my ongoing war with Amazon" stating that after he urged fans to pre-order Edan Lepucki's debut novel California through Powell's, "You heroes have bought over 6,400 copies of California. In fact, you have made California the No. 1 book on Powell's for a week." Colbert's next gambit, after classifying Amazon's "scorched earth tactics" as ""more people are getting screwed than in 50 Shades of Grey":  urging viewers to "really show Amazon" by pre-ordering enough copies of the novel from his website, Parnassus Books, Politics & Prose, Rainy Day Books, and other stores so that California would make the NYT bestseller list.

In awards news, Lorrie Moore, A.L. Kennedy, & Laura van den Berg are among the 6 authors shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor Short Story Prize.  The winner will be announced in early July.