May 8, 2006

Hillary Clinton: Too Much of a Clinton Democrat?

… Had Kerry not lent himself millions to reach the Iowa caucuses, and had Dean not been so green a candidate, Dean probably would have been the nominee.

Dean lost, but the point was made. No longer would D.C. insiders impose their candidates on us without our input; those of us in the netroots could demand a say in our political fortunes. Today, however, Hillary Clinton seems unable to recognize this new reality….

Wow, this is just suicidal. Dean Democrats are passionately scrambling to block a Hillary bandwagon. Thinly-veiled subtext: “bloggers rule.” If all Kos can do is slam one of his party’s leading figures, how does he expect the Democrats to assemble a majority?

VCs running amok, shades of 1999!

See the BISG panel on the long tail of books. Long tails typically amount to about 25% of online sales. It looks to me like this is basically a bet on making an existing market more efficient: Alibris has proven to be a good operating company.

Oak Hill Capital Partners announced today that it has acquired Alibris, a leading online exchange for used, hard-to-find and specialty books, music and videos. Terms were not disclosed.

According to Bill Pade, a Partner with Oak Hill Capital Partners, “We have conducted extensive research on the used/hard to find/rare book market and related ‘long tail’ businesses. We are impressed with the position that Alibris has built in this market and with the quality of its management, technology, and business partnerships. We are excited about helping this company grow and prosper.”

“Oak Hill Capital has built an unusually deep knowledge of secondary book markets, e-commerce, and the challenges of global distribution,” said Alibris’ CEO Martin Manley. “They know this market and are committed to helping us grow internationally, strengthen our movie and music business, and increase consumer awareness of our website.”

Mr. Manley will serve as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Brian Elliott will serve as President and Chief Operating Officer. The closing of the transaction is expected to occur within several weeks.

The Raw Story | Plame book nets $2.5m advance
Valerie Plame Wilson, the Central Intelligence Agency covert officer whose name was publicly disclosed three years ago, has agreed to sell her memoir for a little more than $2.5 million, according to people involved in the bidding process for the book.

The book, whose working title is “Fair Game,” is scheduled to be published in the fall of 2007 by Crown Publishing, an imprint of Random House. Steve Ross, senior vice president and publisher of Crown, said the book would be Ms. Wilson’s “first airing of her actual role in the American intelligence community, as well as the prominence of her role in the lead-up to the war.”

Only in America.

And here’s the missing piece of the puzzle: how Opal got her book signed.

A Passage to Harvard

It was, unsurprisingly, IvyWise [college admissions company] founder Katherine Cohen (Brown ‘89; Yale PhD ‘97) who got Viswanathan into the book-writing business. Cohen (author, “Rock Hard Apps: How to Write a Killer College Application”) wondered why Viswanathan hadn’t listed her novel-in-progress on her résumé. You can almost see her application-glazed eyes lighting up: Okay, here’s our pitch: “Not just another high school newspaper editor-in-chief, Indian American science nerd!”

Which is where the next round of packaging comes in. Cohen sent Viswanathan’s work to her own agent, who hooked up the teenager with Alloy Entertainment, a book packager (yes, this is really a business) that specializes in churning out teen-lit like so many Moschino miniskirts. Deeming her original concept too dark, Alloy “helped Kaavya conceptualize and plot the book,” according to the company president.

It’s no excuse, but with all this third-party positioning, is it any wonder that a person — especially a teenage person — could forget (or ignore) the fact that some of the writing in her book is not actually hers?

Rescuing Da Vinci

Published by Laurel Publishing, LLC., Rescuing Da Vinci is the first comprehensive photographic telling of the amazing and largely “untold” story of Hitler and the Nazi theft of Europe’s greatest art and America and her Allies’ recovery of it. The book is 320 pages in length and contains more than 460 photographs including 60 in color. It is the first time this group of photographs has been assembled in a single book. These photographs, rarely published and with clarity not seen before, illustrate masterpieces being handled in unimaginable ways.

This sounds great! I want to get a look at it.

This is a pretty sharp take on the Gilliam/HP6 rumors. Nice job, Cinema Blend.

Is Potter Gilliam’s Next Disaster?

Is Potter Gilliam’s Next Disaster? If you’re British and you’re a director, there’s a good chance you’ll at some point be rumored to be directing the next Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The latest guy having his name thrown about his ex-Python and 12 Monkeys director Terry Gilliam.

The rumor has been everywhere by now, but as near as we can tell with the limited low-budget resources of Cinema Blend’s newsroom the whole thing originated in an interview Terry did with Entertainment Weekly in September. During the interview, Terry bashed Chris Columbus and then I think he intimated that maybe Harry Potter was entirely his idea. I’m not exactly sure. You be the judge. He “was reading the script as I was flying to Los Angeles for the Warner Bros meeting and thought, ‘Oh, she’s seen Time Bandits, she’s seen Monty Python,” says Terry G. Then just to prove he’s got his head screwed on straight he added, “I mean, Chris Columbus’ versions are terrible. Just dull. Pedestrian. But I thought Alfonso Cuaron did a great job with the last one. I thought, ‘Yeah, you got really close to it’.”c

But that was an interview from way back in September. An interview in which he said, “You know you’re not going to get the job. It’s just to keep her happy - due diligence.” Terry doesn’t think he’ll get the job, he was just reading the script. Why all the heat on this rumor now? No idea. Perhaps Warner Bros. is getting closer to picking a director and wanted to get people talking about Potter, or perhaps someone decided to recycle old information to start a fresh rumor.

Either way, Gilliam’s a weird choice to direct anything, let alone Harry Potter. He’s a brilliant mind and a guy with a few really great movies under his belt. But he’s also a guy whose films tend to drown in disaster. For every great movie he’s made, Terry makes two flops, or spends millions trying to make a movie that never actually gets made. Handing a franchise like Harry Potter to an unpredictable force like Terry would be a ridiculous gamble for Warner Bros, and one they have absolutely no reason to take. Honestly, hiring Terry Gilliam is like volunteering your film to be randomly squashed by a viciously catapulted wooden rabbit. It’s kind of like flushing money down the toilet. Seriously folks, Terry’s last film, Tideland hasn’t even been able to get distribution. It’s so bad, that it’s sitting on a shelf and rotting because no respectable studio wants to be associated with it. I doubt that’s what the WB has planned for one of their biggest cash cows.