I’m ccing Katie Finch the head of publicity at Amazon publishing.

It is my strong preference (because I believe it will optimize book sales) that you guys hold off on doing any and all media.

Who is the interview with?

J

I just spoke w/ Gregg, who mentioned that he’ll be doing a radio interview next week that was scheduled weeks and weeks ago.  Gregg has no trouble getting media, and has already committed to this conversation, but I thought it would make sense for them to hear from you what YOU want Barrett and Gregg to be thinking about going forward.  BOTH of them are frequently queried about Anonymous-related activities; Barrett is involved with a research project into the HP Gary case, for instance; so I don’t think it’s going to be practical to suggest (or enforce) a muzzle…  But obviously there need to be some guidelines.

Julia will supply Rules #2 - #10…  Let me start w/ Rule #1:  I strongly suggest that you refrain from answering ANY substantial questions about the book itself—don’t say anything about its content, nor its timing, nor (of course) the advance etc…  MY preference would be that you both stick to a stock answer, something about how your obnoxious agent has told you not to talk about the book, and /or that you’ll let the book speak for itself.  Likewise there might be some people wanting to get you to comment on Amazon—here again, a stock answer about how excited we are to be working with such a forward-thinking publisher, blah blah blah.  The point is, if you say too much now about what’s going to be in the book, there may be less a sense of newness when the book itself arrives.  

Julia, your thoughts?  (As a separate matter, J:  how will you guys be handling publicity, and is there somebody ELSE who should be looped into this conversation at some point?)

-Dan

Literary Agent

Writers House

(212) 696-3825