As Stardust enters its second weekend in theaters, it will be interesting to see how its earnings compare to last weekend's disappointing $9 million opening. Earlier in the week, romance novelist Deb Smith told us she walked out in the middle, but fantasy author Shanna Swendson (left) stayed all the way to the end and told us she had a great time. "I thought it was a lovely movie with charming characters who had actual growth arcs," she emailed. "I think a lot of fans of the book were like me and a little afraid of what would be done to it. The ad campaign, which seemed to be working overtime to make it look like The Princess Bride and therefore focused on the more campy parts of the film, didn't help. I'm hoping this one will be a case where word of mouth works and people who took the chance to see the film will then tell others that it's really okay and not a hatchet job on a delightful book." No doubt Paramount's hoping the exact same thing...

You know that joke about the guy who goes to prison, and everybody shouts out numbers instead of telling the jokes they've all memorized, and the punchline is "Your delivery stinks"? Well, Gary Rudoren and Eric Hoffman went ahead and sorted through all the gags from "animals doing things humans do" to "women/womyn," wrote the list down, then put it into Comedy by the Numbers. To promote the McSweeney's book, the two authors are starring in a series of short films, directed by former Mr. Show star Bob Odenkirk (who made his first full-length feature, Let's Go to Prison, last year). Here's their take on "funny names," which includes a handful of words you might not necessarily want your boss to hear as she's walking past your cubicle.

Future installments on fart noises, verbal abuse, and pain reactions are promised.

"How is this possibly a book club?" asks a GalleyCat reader of the Viking Penguin Book Club, which launched earlier this week. Each month, the website—"designed to simulate the experience of browsing the shelves of a bookstore or library, while offering the speed and flexibility of a digital environment"—will feature one Viking hardcover, one Penguin paperback, and a Penguin Classics paperback, with links to author bios, reading group guides, and an assortment of links to online bookstores. (There's also a baseline archive of about 100 titles already installed.) "This smells like a a fancy feature rather than a real book club," our reader continues. "Where is the community? Author involvement? Why is this in Flash?"

Penguin Group's press release promises "community" will be an added feature to the site, in the form of "a forthcoming blog where readers can post comments and reviews," along with messages from the authors and Viking/Penguin staffers. The publishers are confident the new site "will help fill the needs of the modern reader by offering the interactive digital content that readers crave today," but our reader isn't impressed yet. "I don't see a blog or anything other than a very clear BUY THE BOOK message," she says. "If you're going to launch with all the features you're touting about in your press release, why not wait until then?"

To ask what self-published author and Cape Cod official Bill Schneider was thinking when he claimed that his novel CROSSED PATHS had been chosen by Oprah's Book Club when such a claim is easily checkable and refutable is, of course, perfectly valid. But as Cape Cod Times's Mary Ann Bragg reports, the hoax is even stranger: Schneider went so far as to post a five-page "transcript" between him and Oprah (if you go to his site, it's been removed, but Bragg's story preserves it for posterity) that includes commercial breaks, cutting instructions and lots about Oprah's invented love of a book by a "friend" of hers. More at the Weekly Dig (from where we stole the above image) which first called bullshit on the whole thing.

Schneider admitted yesterday that his claims about Winfrey were false. "I acknowledge an error in judgment, in my attempt to memorialize (in my book) someone very special who didn't get a chance to finish his life," Schneider said. "He is misrepresenting himself and he has no relationship with Oprah's Book Club," the spokeswoman for Harpo, Inc., a privately held multimedia entertainment company owned by Oprah Winfrey, said. As for Schneider, he's still claiming CROSSED PATHS will be made into a movie, and he has his defenders. "There's not any conflict that I'm aware of with Bill's personal web site and the town," Provincetown Town Manager Sharon Lynn said. "His employment is not affected."

Sebastian Copeland has just been named the year's best professional photographer in the book category of the International Photography Awards, for Antarctica: The Global Warning, which hasn't even officially come out yet. The October pub date set by Palace Press roughly coincides with the IPA awards ceremony to be held at Lincoln Center; gallery events will also be held in New York and Los Angeles to mark the occasion, and it's a safe bet that Copeland's cousin, Orlando Bloom, who accompanied the photographer on his expedition, will attend at least one of those parties. In the meantime, several of the amazing pictures are on display in this short trailer:

Yesterday afternoon the Bookseller broke the story that literary lawyer to the stars Bob Barnett would be representing Tony Blair - and shopping around the former UK prime minister's interests to America first. So of course, people are wondering a) who will get the book and b) how much they will have to pay for it. Bill Clinton money? Alan Greenspan money? Something even greater?

The advance will be inflated by Blair's perceived value in the US, said one leading publisher of political books. "The Americans love him. They see him as an articulate George W. Bush. He'll get a good whack out of a US publisher." And the direct approach to the US is seen to thwart UK agents who were vying for a slice of the action. "It will be a shoot out between HarperCollins and Random House, but I think HarperCollins will prevail despite the much trumped link with Gail Rebuck's husband. [Rupert] Murdoch's keen and he’s got deep pockets," said a major non-fiction publisher. "They've been political bedfellows for a very long time, and [News Corp] is a multimedia company," a leading UK literary agent added. Shootout royale? Major league auction? Stay tuned, as the drill goes..

LA Times reporter Scott Martelle sent us this photo from the reading he held at the 107 Bar in downtown Los Angeles for Blood Passion, a history of the Ludlow Massacre, an assault by the Colorado National Guard on the families of striking coal miners in April 1914 that left 20 dead, the majority of them children. "The inadvertent highlight was when a guy at the bar wandered back to where we had gathered for some blues by fellow staff writer Louis Sahagun and my 17-year-old son Michael," Martelle tells us, "asking for the guy who wrote the book. Then he pulls up his t-shirt to reveal a tattoo with the word Ludlow and a handful of gravestones. Thought we had a great zen moment but then he says Ludlow is his last name and the gravestones represent dead relatives." Still, I wish we had a picture of that!

Martelle's heading to Colorado for readings next week; we understand his appearance at Denver's Tattered Cover bookstore may well be recorded for BookTV. Oh, and about that tattoo guy, Scott emailed us this morning: "You ask, you get."

The Wall Street Journal's Robert Hughes looks at efforts by two publishers - Persephone Books and New York Review Books - to bring back neglected books into print. NYRB Books, an offshoot of the literary magazine, has published more than 200 adult and 30 children's titles, most of them reprints. Persephone specializes in novels by women. Among the London company's most popular releases is 1938's "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day" by Winifred Watson, about a governess sent by an employment agency to the wrong address, where she finds a glamorous nightclub singer and helps her through misadventures. The reprint has sold 22,000 copies -- exceeding the sales of many well-received new novels today. And "Miss Pettigrew" has spurred a film adaptation starring Frances McDormand set to come out next year.

Reprint publishers, Hughes writes, aren't under the same pressure to create instant hits as are publishers of new material, says NYRB publisher Rea Hederman. His books often take a year to gather momentum compared with the month or two that bookstores give a new title before they pull it from shelves. Some independent booksellers embrace NYRB's list. Nancy Olson, owner of Quail Ridge Books & Music in Raleigh, N.C., says her staff recommends John Williams's "Stoner" from 1965, about a farmer who becomes a college professor, and has sold 60 copies so far. "They're not the kind of titles you'll see pushed in big commercial bookstores," she says.

When Gabe Rotter (left) celebrated the publication of his first novel, Duck Duck Wally, with a party at G Spa, the basement lounge at the Gansevoort Hotel, even Simon & Schuster publisher David Rosenthal donned one of the gold chains that were strewn all over the room to work the book's hip-hop theme. Among other partygoers sporting the complimentary bling: Melissa Lafsky, taking a well-deserved break from transitioning the Freakonomics blog over to the NY Times web site, and foreign rights scout Glynnis MacNicol, who did the best job of accessorizing that chain of anybody in the room, going for an imperial Roman hairstyle.

UK-based publishing journalist Danuta Kean has a piece in the Financial Times today about literary estates, and how the posthumous works of an author end up being big business. Sebastian Faulks, for example, is expected to share royalties and be paid an advance by Penguin for the May 2008 James Bond novel DEVIL MAY CARE. There's the posthumous cottage industry of V.C. Andrews and Robert Ludlum. But not all dead authors need produce new books. The owner of Agatha Christie's rights has kept her in the public eye without resorting to new books. Agatha Christie Ltd is part of the intellectual property group Chorion, which also represents the estates of Enid Blyton, Raymond Chandler and Georges Simenon.

"We have absolute control over what's made," says Mathew Prichard, ACL chairman and Christie's grandson, of various television series starring venerated Christie characters. "The most important thing about television is that it keeps the books alive. We definitely see a rise in sales across her whole list when the series are screened." Another layer of protection is by trademarking: For dead authors who are still in copyright, trademarking may help estates keep control after the term ends, says intellectual property lawyer Laurence Kaye. "If you intend to republish a book that has gone out of copyright, you would have to do it in a way that did not infringe any trademarks."

Egmont is planning to launch a U.S. business next year following a move into third place in the UK children's publisher league table, ahead of rivals Random House and HarperCollins, reports the Bookseller's Katherine Rushton. "We are looking to develop a U.S. business, and we will look to establish a U.S. office early next year," said group managing director Rob McMenemy. "That's a big move for us."

McMenemy highlighted the Lemony Snicket series and Nestle Prize-winning author Julia Golding as "significant contributors" to the company's performance. The growth at Egmont Publishing was led by classic brands including the Thomas Story Library and Mr Men, and the acquisition of new licences for Bob the Builder and Lazy Town. Egmont recently launched a new research-based series fiction list, 2Heads.

The Rona Jaffe Foundation has announced that six emerging women writers have been singled out for excellence by the Foundation and will receive awards of $25,000 each. The 2007 winners are Elif Batuman, Sarah Braunstein, Robin Ekiss, Alma García, Jennifer Grotz, and Holly Goddard Jones.

The Bookseller reports that Random House Group UK is understood to have made 45.3m pounds in operating profits in 2006 - marking a 5% lift on the previous year (43m pounds). Annual turnover is understood to have leaped 8% in the period, from 250m pounds to 271m pounds, following organic growth and the acquisition of BBC Books. Chief executive Gail Rebuck said: "Last year [2006] was a surprisingly strong year, characterized by diversification with the acquisition of BBC Books and the growth of our non-fiction publishing; [and] innovation with a range of very successful new authors and investment in our future growth."

PW Daily reported yesterday that Sierra Club Books has signed a new co-publishing agreement with Counterpoint LLC, and will produce about eight titles a year starting in the spring. Sierra Club will handle acquisitions and editorial development from its San Francisco office and Counterpoint will handle the making, marketing, selling and fulfillment of the books from the Berkeley office the newly formed company is planning to move into soon. The new deal is similar to the co-publishing arrangement Sierra Club has had for its adult titles with the University of California Press since 2002.

Counterpoint CEO Charlie Winton said the Sierra Club books added a new dimension to the Counterpoint LLC editorial mix. "I am pleased that when we go out in the Spring we’ll have three lists that do very different things but are complementary," said Winton.

FishbowlNY's Diane Clehane spoke to the Goldmans' publisher, and shares the fruits of that conversation with GalleyCat readers:

Eric Kampmann, president and owner of Beaufort Books, the imprint that will be publishing the once thwarted OJ Simpson book, If I Did It on October 3 gave us exclusive new details about the book: Fred and Kim Goldman have already written their commentary.

The book will also include two yet-to-be announced "important chapters written by "non family member" contributors. A disgruntled cop from the case? A cable news talking head looking for some well timed publicity?

There are plenty of suspects but for now Kampmann is staying mum. He and his imprint, which by his own admission, has been "largely dormant" since the nineties, is now in the middle of a media maelstrom. "I guess my anonymity is gone," he says.

After sparring with Denise Brown on the Today show on Wednesday (he swears he had "a pleasant conversation" with her after the on air dust up), Kampmann reports — only half jokingly — that "all the people who have hated me in the last eighteen years have come out of the woodwork. I'm enjoying their hate filled rants. I'm glad they're well."

He better get used to it because Denise Brown isn't going away and is trying to mobile a public campaign against the book on her blog says Kampmann: "I'll never be able to change Denise's mind about the book. I understand her point of view but sympathize with the Goldmans."

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