Still, the fact that the trilogy's author is dead complicated things. Knopf publicity director Paul Bogaards began the marketing effort by romancing booksellers months before publication with a flood of advance reading copies.

"The retail channel was key," says Bogaards. "In the absence of bookseller enthusiasm you might, as a publisher, have a problem."

The goal, Bogaards says, was to build momentum in the form of advance book sales. Knopf also took out a late summer ad in The New York Times Book Review offering a free copy of the thriller to anyone who wrote asking for one.

Bloggers also got into the act: The books had already appeared on five European best-seller lists by the time Knopf secured the American rights, and many U.S.-based bloggers who had read raves about Larsson from their European counterparts had finagled copies of the books from overseas. They began touting the book early this year.

And I meant every hyperbolic word of it. See, sometimes you can judge a book by its blurber.

"I have no idea at this point how many books I've blurbed," says humorist Jonathan Ames, who is approached frequently to dish out book-jacket praise.

"It may be about 50. It might make some long, strange poem if I was to collect them all."

In fact, one of his blurbs was even declared "best blurb" by New York magazine for "The Only Bush I Trust Is My Own," which Ames notes, "on the title alone, deserved a great blurb."

While he tries to blurb honestly, he does admit, "Once I promised someone that I would blurb their book, and then I read it and didn't feel so strongly about it. This was years ago. But I blurbed it anyway, and then a fan e-mailed me and said they bought the book because of my blurb and were sorely disappointed. I felt bad about this. But I guess it shows that blurbs actually do work once in a while."

Oh, they totally work. Even if it's just to generate an article about blurbing.

Publicist - and now best-selling author - Sloane Crosley (who, yes, has a blurb from Ames) has seen press from Radar to New York magazine about her bevy of notable blurbs as a first-time author, the question being whether she "cheated" by using her publishing clout to secure out-of-sight blurbs.

With Cathy's Book: If Found Call (650) 266-8233, a genre-bending mystery for young adults by Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman that was published in 2006, the authors learned that product placement could be a touchy subject. After their publisher, Running Press, an imprint of Perseus Books Group, revealed that the authors had agreed to have characters wear specific makeup lines made by Cover Girl in exchange for promotional ads for the book on beinggirl.com, a Web site aimed at adolescent girls and run by Procter & Gamble, Cover Girl's parent, the book came in for criticism. Ralph Nader's advocacy group, Commercial Alert, urged book review editors to boycott it, and the novelist Jane Smiley wrote a disapproving op-ed article for The Los Angeles Times; The New York Times wrote a critical editorial as well.

Now the novel - which features a series of clues that are given out in voice mail messages, Web sites, letters and other documents included with or referred to in the book - is set to come out in paperback on Monday, and all the references to Cover Girl’s products have been removed. A drawing in the hardcover edition, for instance, shows Cathy wearing "Cover Girl lipgloss 'Demure,' " and "Waterproof Mascara -- 'Very Black'," but it appears in the paperback version without any makeup noted. And at the end of the hardcover edition, Cathy talks about wearing "a killer coat of Lipslicks in 'Daring'"; in the paperback she just says, "a killer coat of lipstick."

"We did a whole bunch of pretty innovative things with that book," Mr. Stewart said in a telephone interview. But, he said, the main topic of conversation, "instead of being about the other 18," was about the product placement.

The question my colleagues kept asking is why was Picoult signing books at a Costco?

"Do you want the politically correct answer or the truth?" she said. "Well, the politically correct answer is because they sell a ton of books. And these all will go, which is very, very cool." And the truth? "I actually go to Costco, Sam's and BJ's because they sell a lot [of] books and because of that are allowed to have author signings."

'Literature,' [Philip] Roth goes on, 'takes a habit of mind that has disappeared. It requires silence, some form of isolation, and sustained concentration in the presence of an enigmatic thing ... the writer is only interesting in terms of how much money did he get and what's the scandal? The mysterious side of existence is not the urgent problem.'

Mailer's elegy for a lost world of high seriousness is echoed by another of the surviving American greats, Gore Vidal. In his classic memoir Palimpsest, Vidal writes: 'Television, movies, journalism claim the general audience. Today, publishers are reluctant to publish first novels by anyone who has not been a movie star or a serial killer.' It goes without saying that chick, hen and lad lit - and a lot of what passes for 'literary fiction' - will never qualify as the 'enigmatic thing'.

*****

It certainly requires a prodigious effort of imagination to see Virginia Woolf signing books at Hay or James Joyce giving a reading at Cheltenham. Or, better still, Sartre in the Brighton Pavilion. But wind the clock back another 50, or even 100, years and it's not difficult to picture Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope, Twain, or even Disraeli, indeed almost any Victorian writer, promoting his or her new book to an audience under canvas. Dickens, of course, pioneered the reading tour. Twain made his name as a popular lecturer of genius. A generation later, that supreme aesthete, Oscar Wilde, drank the miners of the Wild West under the table while promoting his career.

*****

Literature has always oscillated between the cloister and the marquee; at the moment, the spirit of the age favours the public arena. Perhaps it is the role of the literary festival to remind writers and readers that literature has always had a human face. Meanwhile, it may be the task of the next generation to renew the exploration of the 'enigmatic thing'.

Penguin, however, is the first major publisher to dip its toe into the virtual world and, appropriately, it has chosen Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash as the book with which to test the waters. With its invention of the notion of a "metaverse" (a contraction of "metaphysical universe") it is acknowledged as the inspiration behind Second Life and other virtual worlds. "It was the obvious entry point," says Penguin's Ettinghausen (avatar name Jeremy Neumann) as he shows me around the virtual sampler of Snow Crash. "We are always looking for new ways to connect with online communities and Second Life is undergoing a huge amount of growth. However, it is still a small community when compared with MySpace or iTunes and we wouldn't want to bring authors in who didn't have a connection with that world yet."

Penguin worked with the London-based virtual world design agency Rivers Run Red to create an in-world version of the book - this offers readers excerpts of the text, an audio clip and a link which clicks through to a dedicated Second Life page on the Penguin website, complete with the opportunity to buy the book at a discount. They are now developing a virtual bookshelf of other Penguin titles for the Second Life resident.

Although slow to load (and many of the objects in Second Life suffer from a frustrating delay known as "lag"), the Snow Crash sampler is a neat offering from a company which appears, wisely, to have taken a softly-softly approach to engaging with the online community. The crucial factor, perhaps, is that Ettinghausen, who devised the initiative, had already been a resident of Second Life for six months, and came to the project with an insider's understanding of this sometimes mind-boggling new environment.

He is also aware that there is some disquiet among longer-term Second Life residents about perceived bandwagoning by large corporations and the increasing amount of big brand advertising in their world.

Near the end of an early galley of Cathy's Book: If Found Call (650) 266-8233," a young adult novel that will be published in September, the spunky eponymous heroine talks about wearing a "killer coat of Clinique #11 'Black Violet' lipstick." But in the final edition of the book, that reference has been changed to "a killer coat of Lipslicks in 'Daring.'"

As it turns out, Lipslicks is a line of lip gloss made by Cover Girl, which has signed an unusual marketing partnership with Running Press, the unit of Perseus Books Group that is publishing the novel. Cover Girl, which is owned by the consumer products giant Procter & Gamble, has neither paid the publisher nor the book's authors, Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman, for the privilege of having their makeup showcased in the novel. But Procter will promote the book on Beinggirl.com, a Web site directed at adolescent girls that has games, advice on handling puberty and, yes, makeup tips.

By now, television and movie viewers have become used to this kind of thing: when they see sneakers or cars on a show or in a film, they generally assume that these appearances have been paid for by the companies that make the brands. But product placement in books is still relatively rare. The use of even the subtlest of sales pitches, particularly in a book aimed at adolescents, could raise questions about the vulnerability of the readers.

Many popular young adult novels, of course, already spread references to brands throughout their pages in series like "The Gossip Girl" and "The A-List," although there are no actual product placement deals. But such deals are not unprecedented. Five years ago, Bulgari, the Italian jewelry company, paid Fay Weldon an undisclosed amount to feature the brand prominently in her novel, entitled — what else? — "The Bulgari Connection."

MEG CABOT'S BOOK SIGNING DO'S AND DON'TS FOR WRITERS:

1) DON'T BE A SLOB

Writers, I recognize that you are sensitive artists who want to be known for your creative writing, not your fashion sense. But for the love of God, people, you are at a book signing. Your readers are seeing you live and in person for the first time. SO WHY DIDN'T YOU BRUSH YOUR HAIR?????

*****

2) DON'T BE A WEIRDO

If there is anything that burns me up more than an author who makes no effort to look nice for his or her readers, it's authors who act all weird because they think people in the "creative arts" are "special."

I am not talking about throwing on a tiara and a feather boa, either. I am talking about authors who pretend their books aren't written by them, but by their characters. As in, "I didn't want to kill off So-and-So, but Name of Main Character insisted on it! There was nothing I could do!"

*****

...I fear that some authors say things like this so often, they are actually starting to believe it. I know this because authors are saying it to ME, in private conversations, with no readers present. And I find myself going, "Uh-huh. Really? Your characters actually talk to you? That's so interesting, because you know, I made my characters up, so they can't talk to me, because they ARE NOT REAL."

The truth is, authors, characters cannot act and think independently of you because they are FIGMENTS OF YOUR IMAGINATION. When your character says or does something, it is because YOU MADE THEM DO IT. Your characters DO NOT ACTUALLY EXIST except on paper and in your head.

The imminent arrival of the gadget, called LongPen, has prompted fears it could kill off the grand tradition of the book-signing tour. Those long hours spent on trains and motorways, trudging the publicity circuit as writers to press the flesh with the people who pay their wages, could be a thing of the past.

Yet the threat has led to a backlash by other authors. D. J. Taylor called it "an absolutely feeble idea - another example of fatuous modern technology", while novelist Jilly Cooper believes "if the signing tour were to die off, it would be a tragedy". Ms Atwood, 66, is to launch the device - which has been seen by only a select few at secret testings - at the London Book Fair a fortnight from today, where publishers and authors from around the world will be given a demonstration. The writer will be in Canada but will create what is being billed as the world's first transatlantic autograph.

*****

The comedian Charlie Higson, who has recently been promoting his book Blood Fever about the young James Bond, said: "I don't think a robot arm is a substitute for an actual signature. Plus, you still have to go through the actual process of waggling your arm across the page. I do like to do a short tour if I have the time, although if you are in the middle of something else it can take for ever."

Terry Pratchett [says]: "The worst was when I turned up at the bookshop and the manager went white and said, 'Was it today?' After every tour I doubt if I'll do it again ... Tours gouge out big lumps of my life, but everyone seems to think they're essential."

The first segment of the series will be released June 1. A new episode will be offered each Thursday night for 12 weeks, according to Kathy Savitt, vice president of strategic communications, content and initiatives for the e-commerce bellwether.

Amazon's goal, Savitt said, "is to help our customers discover new books, films, and music, and to help the creators of these works find new audiences." The programs will be available for on-demand viewing but they reportedly cannot be downloaded to personal computers or mobile devices.

Jack (we'll call him Jack) arrived 10 minutes later. He's 50 years old and has the unmistakable aura of someone with an interesting and important job and an income of more than $200,000 a year... ....Jack's first words to me, after saying hello, were: "I don't have much time. One of my colleagues came up to me in the corridor just as I was leaving and said there was an important conference call I had to handle at 1.45 sharp." This is a very New York thing to say. I smiled and glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was 12.40.

*****

He had no advice to offer on what was most saleable these days, other than to say that fiction was almost impossible to crack. Publishers were reluctant to give unknown authors a try, he said. This was because it had become so expensive to promote new talent. "All those piles of books you see when you walk through the front door of Borders or Barnes & Noble - those didn't get there by accident. Publishers paid through the nose for the space and, every couple of months, the price goes up again. I tell you, it's a tough sell."

Some of his books failed because they weren't as good as he hoped, he added, or because the market had moved on. But it could also be because the major chains refused to stock them - "not even if we pay them."

"Does that happen often?" I inquired, using chopsticks to negotiate my dim sum into an unfeasibly dinky container of soy sauce.

"More often than you'd think."

So it's the booksellers who are in the driving seat these days in America - just like in the UK.

Jack thought I might have more luck with non-fiction, but that everything depended on "platform" and having the right agent.

"Platform is key," he went on. "In New York, people want to know what your platform is before they'll even shake hands with you."

"The Second Lifers have been holding a competition to see who can design the coolest in-game ebook for my launch, and the finalists are in. Each one is amazing, a worthy re-think of what a book means in the virtual world. Just looking at the sketches for these things makes me go crosseyed with futurismicness."

First, Jon Stewart sure seems like a fantastic guy. Smart, friendly, down to earth, funny the whole time on and off the camera. Maybe he should run for president sometime. I would vote for him. His only problem is that he is not so tall, and Americans grow their presidents tall.

Second, sitting in the studio, no matter how hard you to try, it is impossible to imagine that 2 million people are watching what you are doing (actually in my case 2,000,002 because my parents don't usually watch, but they were watching last night). Which is good if you are someone like me who is inherently anti-social and frightened by crowds. It certainly would be more nerve-wracking to do an interview in front of a live audience of 2 million people stretched out over the Mall in Washington.

Third, television, except maybe Charlie Rose, is a terrible medium for trying to talk about books. I had a long interview -- over 6 minutes -- but Stewart was asking hard questions that I couldn't give real answers to (essentially he wanted me to explain regression analysis, but to do it in 15 seconds). One key point in Freakonomics is that we try to show the reader how we get our answers, not just assert that we are right. On TV, there just isn't time to follow that path.

Fourth, it sure is nice to be in front of an audience that is dying to laugh at and respond to anything you say. (For instance, I'm not sure why, but the audience burst out laughing when I mentioned crack cocaine.) I wish the students in my 9 am undergraduate lecture were so responsive. Of course, if my lectures were one-tenth as entertaining as the Daily Show, I bet my students would be plenty responsive.