What ought to have been a blessed event is turning into one that will leave a bad smell. Will you wait to buy your copy of The Pale King, the posthumous novel by David Foster Wallace, at your local independent bookstore, where it’s supposed to go on sale on 15 April? Or will you click your way to more immediate possession at Amazon’s or Barnes & Noble’s Web sites?

Amazon and Barnes & Noble were selling the book on their Web sites on Wednesday, long before many bookstores would receive copies. Nicole Dewey, a spokeswoman for Little, Brown, part of Hachette, said the official on-sale date for the book was March 22, but the publication date — when the book is available everywhere — remained April 15. (A countdown clock on the Hachette Web site ticks away the days, hours and minutes until April 15.)

“I don’t really understand the confusion,” Ms. Dewey said. “This happens all the time. There’s nothing unusual about it.”

It was a distinction lost on many bookstores, who erupted in protest on Wednesday when they heard that Amazon was already selling the hotly anticipated book.

“Outrageous,” said Zack Zook, the general manager and events coordinator at BookCourt, an independent store in Brooklyn. “If stuff like this keeps happening, booksellers are going to start suing publishers.”

In the mean time, we’re reading Suicide, by Édouard Levé, a French writer who killed himself after handing in the manuscript.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Thursday, March 31st, 2011 at 8:00 pm.