It appears that the CNN mailroom has an entrepreneur who, rather than schlep stolen books down to the Strand bookstore for some cold hard cash, is selling them on Amazon. This just came in through the Galleycat tipwire:
This was sent out by Brian Sack, author of In the Event of My Untimely Demise via the book’s Facebook page. It’s funny but definitely must be maddening from an author’s standpoint at the same time: “I received an email from someone who bought IN THE EVENT OF MY UNTIMELY DEMISE from a third party vendor on Amazon. He was curious why his new book was signed with a note to a guy named Evan. First I thought I was being pranked. How could someone buy my book on Amazon and receive a copy that I’d personally signed and mailed to Evan, a producer at CNN? Too weird. But I emailed Evan – and he said he’d never received the book. Hmm. We did a little Sherlock Holmesing and came to realize that someone in the TimeWarner/CNN mailroom is actually stealing books that arrive in the mail and re-selling them on Amazon. Isn’t that great? They didn’t bother to open the book and notice that I’d signed it to someone. Now Evan’s working hard to find the thief and teach him or her a valuable lesson in sudden occupational reassignment.”
This certainly makes a good argument to follow up on books that you send out.