The Lure of the Embargoed Book

Sales Tactics 101: Make it unavailable. For a decade or more, publishers have been hip to this old chestnut, placing an embargo on books to (a) prevent reviewers from jumping on the gun and (b) thereby ensuring all sorts of attention from news-hungry journalists. This maneuver used to be straightforward ("The Tower Report" really was hard to get ahold of, which is why this reporter read it in 12 hours to make a news deadline). But then the houses started embargoing everything they wanted an extra hit on - make it cool, make it newsworthy, make it sell.

So when the New York Times reported this morning that a journalist had bought a copy of Carly Fiorina's embargoed memoir, "Tough Choices" (to be released Oct.9), we weren't really surprised - embargos are made to be broken, and the more Berlin-Wall they seem, the better. And while the reporter, John Markoff, didn't mention the name of the bookstore, one assumes he didn't have to get all that Deep-Throat about it. What went unmentioned in the story was the fact that Business Week published similar revelations two weeks ago.

Business Week's anonymous source, i.e. the reader of the embargoed book, is described only as "outside HP and admittedly not a Fiorina fan." The source goes on to say, "She cries a lot in the book. I started keeping track." Penguin Group, whose Portfolio imprint is Fiorina's publisher, was more dry-eyed in its response. "Portfolio has no comment about gossip about what is or isn't in 'Tough Choices,'" a spokesman told Business Week.

And none of this skullduggery - pretexting or pretending - seems to be hurting either Hewlett-Packard or ex-chief executive Fiorina. HP's stock isn't far off from its all-year high. And Fiorina's not-yet-released book, as of 2 p.m. Thursday, had jumped to number 439 on the amazon.com sales line-up. Half an hour later, it was at 341.

Some choices aren't so tough after all.