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Stupid Media Tricks: Hyperion Books

Where I’m staying for August the browser is set to boot to ABC’s news site. I noticed yesterday that the headline news was about a book about September 11th. The headline is still there today. Curious, I thought; why is this particular book making such a splash? There’s lots of books about September 11th out there.

Well, the answer is dead obvious, but here’s a breakdown of the tentacles: like the ABC site, Hyperion Books, which published the book, is on the Go.Com network. Hyperion’s website indicates it publishes ESPN-related books; ESPN is 80% owned by Walt Disney. Hyperion also boasts (heh) the Talk Miramax imprint; I presume this means it’s the book publishing arm of the horrible synergy juggernaut that Talk Magazine was supposed to bring together (Talk was a testing ground for nonfiction pieces that could be spun off into books or — presumably Miramax — movies).

If I had a subscription to Hoover’s, I probably could have figured out exactly how much of a stake the Walt Disney Co. has in Hyperion, or which Disney holding Hyperion answers to. Regardless, the appearance of this book on abc.com is another example of how synergy works, and why you can’t just expect your book to get the respect it deserves based on its own merits these days. (It’s a simple exercise, I know; some days I just like to flex my corporate research skills.)

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