Book Soup - Publicity Stunts

Publicity Stunts

Book Soup hosts author readings on an almost daily basis. The store is well known for its many publicity stunts, some staged by authors and some staged by the store to attract customers. Among the more notorious are:

• For a book reading by Paris Hilton, Hilton's publicist hired protesters to picket the store with signs saying, "Read a book, don't write one."
• After Margaret Thatcher banned Peter Wright's nonfiction exposé, Spy Catcher, Book Soup ran an ad in Private Eye magazine which declared "Banned in Britain. Available in America." The store sold 3,000 copies of the book in the next three weeks.
• When a fatwa was issued condemning Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, Goldman wrote a ransom note to the Los Angeles Times declaring that freedom of speech was being held hostage. Rupert Murdoch wrote Goldman a letter praising his "ransom note."
• When the National Organization of Women (NOW) strongly criticized Bret Easton Ellis's 1991 novel, American Psycho, for glamorizing and condoning rape, Book Soup put fliers into its copies of the novel, blasting NOW for drawing attention to the book and disclaiming any approval of the novel's content. The store sold 18 copies of the book in 24 hours.