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------- Among the other wonders it has brought to the reading public, Amazon.com has introduced a dangerously addictive new literary sport: the Great Book Sales Horse Race. The online bookseller ranks, according to sales, every one of the more than 3 million books it sells. The top 10,000 bestsellers are updated hourly, so authors can amuse themselves watching their numbers move up and down all day long. And they can indulge in exciting, masochistic games of comparison ranking. "Anything that can catapult you, in one hour, from the high hundreds to the low 10,000s is some kind of torture system," says John Burnham Schwartz, whose novel "Reservation Road" is currently ranked 498. "This is exactly the kind of thing a writer doesn't need and yet can't help himself from exposing himself to. It is amusing, and I'm sure there will be a medication for it soon," says Burnham Schwartz, who claims to have weaned himself from the numbers and entered rehab. "I should be working on a new book, not watching sales figures," says Daniel Bergner, whose "God of the Rodeo: The Search for Hope, Faith, and a Six-Second Ride in Louisiana's Angola Prison" got a rave review in the New York Times and who nonetheless proved amazingly up-to-date on the fluctuations in "God of the Rodeo's" ratings. "I was just checking out Ethan Canin's sales figures -- he's 1,800," says Cameron Stracher, author of "Double Billing," a soon-to-be-published look at life inside big-city law firms. Canin, a pal of Stracher's from the Iowa Writers Workshop, says he doesn't check the Amazon rankings: "I used to, but it just drives one crazy." "That was good, to beat out Khadaffi and Mike Davis in one day," gleefully reports Baffler editor Tom Vanderbilt, who was actually online checking numbers for "Commodify Your Dissent" and his new nonfiction tome, "The Sneaker Book" (ranked 7200) when I phoned. (Davis' "Ecology of Fear," which had been pretty high, around 300, for some reason dipped to 9,000; Khadaffi's collection logged in at 65,000.) Even Harold Evans is keeping his eye on the Amazon rankings. At a recent visit to Salon's San Francisco offices, the former Random House publisher and author of the impressive new coffee table-size history "The American Century" happily shared his book's high ranking (he's currently 22nd). Amazon.com's numbers offer plenty of fun for nonwriters too. It's heartening to find, for example, that the 1972 classic "The Joy of Sex" is ranked roughly twice as high as "The Joy of No Sex: Handbook for Higher Pleasure." At 164,242, "The Joy of Sex" also noses in ahead of Adrienne Rich's early poems, as does the beloved children's book "Pippi Longstocking," at 173,758. Joyce Maynard's tell-all memoir about J.D. Salinger places 1,735th -- outranking hardcover sales of Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" (1,959th). But before you dismiss these lousy, phony rankings, take note: The paperback edition of "Catcher in the Rye" is Amazon's 77th biggest seller. Grand! Marcel Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" sagged like a forgotten madeleine, ranking 1,266,862 in hardback sales. But the paperback edition earned a respectable 8,284 -- slightly ahead of the venerable feel-good parable "Jonathan Livingston Seagull," which optimistically splashed down at 8,489. Amazon.com seems to have a high-minded readership: "Blindness," the latest novel by Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese writer José Saramago, places 75th on Amazon's list, while Lorrie Moore's "Birds of America" is 330, just ahead of "Men are from Mars," which at 362 seems destined to sail through the heavens like a moronic asteroid forever. The No. 1 bestselling book, FYI, is "The Breast Cancer Prevention Diet: The Powerful Foods, Supplements and Drugs that Can Save Your Life." Another interesting thing about the Amazon numbers is that they indicate, other evidence to the contrary, that NPR has a tremendous impact on the world. Sales numbers often soar after author appearances on public radio -- what Tom Vanderbilt refers to as "the NPR effect." Vanderbilt says his "Sneaker Book" was "up there in the hundreds" for a few hours after his appearance on Morning Edition.
Seems it's getting tougher to keep editors in the hinterland. Utne Reader editor Hugh Delehanty wasted no time getting to New York after leaving the Minneapolis-based monthly early this month. "I wanted to do something else, something outside Minnesota," said an exuberant-sounding Delehanty ... In Sante Fe, it's apparently hard to be a workaholic while everyone else is busy doing a lot of photography, art and body work. That, anyway, was one explanation offered for the recent defections from Outside magazine's editorial staff. "This is not a slacker job. And this isn't a young person's town," said someone inside Outside. The magazine is looking for at least two editors ... Meanwhile, Mother Jones editor Jeffrey Klein's last day was Friday. The magazine's replacement wish list reportedly includes former New Republic editor Michael Kelly and Slate deputy editor Jack Shafer. A search is under way.
Hillary hits up Drudge for money! Now on Drudge's site: a copy of a solicitation letter, written on "Hillary Rodham Clinton" stationery, and mailed to Matt Drudge. "The Republican Party and its powerful right-wing allies are going all-out this year to strengthen their grip on Congress. If they succeed, America will be at the mercy of the extremist agenda ... Matt Drudge, with your support we will send the Republican Party and pundits scrambling for a new explanation of why Democrats are prevailing at the polls," Hillary apparently wrote Drudge. "Hillary, check your data base!" rightfully exclaims the right-wing Web gossipmeister. And you wonder why the Republicans always seem to have more money than the Democrats? Recently on The Smoking Gun.com: a form letter from President Clinton thanking Monica Lewinsky for the tie and T-shirt she sent. "It was kind of you to remember my birthday," the president wrote, expressing appreciation for Monica's "continued thoughtfulness and generosity." Before signing off ("Sincerely, Bill Clinton") the president kindly added, "Hillary and I send our best wishes."
Ever wonder why women's magazines have the same vapid flavor, stories, coverlines, etc.? Maybe it's because the same editors keep moving from one glossy women's rag to the next. The latest upheaval in the world of women's mags started when former Cosmo editor Bonnie Fuller took over at Glamour, inciting a mass exodus there. Fuller is said to be a control freak who wants the magazine to have a uniform voice and easy-to-read sensibility. "It's clear she's going after the Cosmo reader," said a departing Glamour veteran. Already Fuller has pulled the plug on the magazine's politics, literary and "Bridges" columns; the latter featured pieces on ethnic identity issues unlikely to interest readers rushing to read about better orgasms. The magazine's "Private Time column" has been renamed "You, you, you"; the models are said to be getting thinner and breastier, the paper stock glossier and richer. "Bonnie told people she wanted a magazine that would take no effort to read -- if there was a story that required attention to read, that would be too much," said another departing staff member. Many of the editors responsible for what was best in Glamour are on the way out. Senior editor Peggy Northrop, for example, is out, along with executive editor Judy Coyne, features editors Jill Herzig and Mary Hickey, 31-year Glamour veteran Barbara Gillam, associate editor Susan Quick and most of the art department. Northrop will be executive editor at Redbook. The editor there, Lesley Seymour, left YM in September to fill the post vacated when former Redbook editor Kate White took over at Cosmo following Fuller's departure. Dizzy? Former YM creative director Marilu Lopez will join Seymour and Northrop at Redbook. (Diane Salvatore, of Good Housekeeping, will take over as YM's editor in chief.) Meanwhile Judith Coyne will be editor in chief at New Woman, and Jill Herzig, who initially accepted a job at Marie Claire, may be Coyne's executive editor. Coyne succeeds Clare McHugh, who once worked with Bonnie Fuller at Marie Claire. Will the circle be unbroken? Apparently, yes, it will.
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