Talk about a lucky find.
It was about 8 p.m. Friday when the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder walked into the Kramerbooks in Dupont Circle to meet a friend. He noticed a copy of John Heilemann’s and Mark Halperin’s new book, “Game Change,” and knowing it wasn’t supposed to hit shelves until Monday, he picked up a copy.
“Note that I had not been provided with an advanced embargoed copy, nor had I seen talking points, nor had I any communication with the authors or their publishers about the book,” he told Yeas & Nays via e-mail.
Several hours later, Ambinder posted to his blog the juiciest parts of the gossip-filled book about campaign ’08: Harry Reid had said that Barack Obama had “no Negro dialect,” John and Elizabeth Edwards had fought openly in front of staffers about the candidate’s affair, and Hillary Clinton’s campaign had a “war room inside a war room” to deal with Bill Clinton’s libido.
Since then, the chatter has been nonstop, Republicans are calling for Reid’s head, and more and more anecdotes are being squeezed out of the tell-all.
On Monday, most Washington area bookstores were sold out of “Game Change,” including Kramerbooks, where there seems to be confusion about how the instant best-seller ended up in the paws of one lucky journalist several days before it was supposed to.
“When we are shipped books, we sell them, that’s our job,” one Kramerbooks employee told Yeas & Nays, declining to discuss whether the store knowingly sold the book before it was supposed to.
Mark Laframboise, a buyer for Politics and Prose, another independent bookstore in town, said there are sometimes repercussions for breaking a book’s embargo.
“The publisher may penalize you by not shipping you, in the future, books on time, or ahead of time,” he said. “My guess is, knowing the people at Kramer’s, that there was nothing underhanded with this.”
Another source told Yeas & Nays independent bookstores often will sell books early. The reason? By the time the book comes out, larger booksellers can offer the book for a reduced price.
The book’s publisher, HarperCollins, did not respond to requests for comment.
