Plume, an imprint of Penguin Putnam, has issued a press release announcing that they are renaming the book Katie.com. The release is posted in PDF format (sigh, remind us to explain why that’s irritating some other time), so we’re going to excerpt a few of our favorite quotes, just because that’s what press releases are for.
In an effort to avoid an association between the book originally titled Katie.com and
the website Katie.com, Plume and the author decide to make this title change.
This is good news (a little belated, but what the heck). However, the next quote scares us. Like, really? They really had no clue? They didn’t even, oh, type the domain into the address box on their browser to check? They didn’t say to themselves, “Hey, we could probably set up a website to help with promotion”? Then there’s the comment about putting the disclaimer on the copyright page. As far we know, most people look at the legalese and move on. Probably this wasn’t the best placement for this information.
After the book was released into the market, it was brought to Dutton’s attention that a website of the same name existed on the Internet. The fact that the book, Katie.com, and the website shared the same name was purely coincidental. In an effort to avoid any association between the book and the site, when Plume issued the book in trade paperback in 2001, it printed on the copyright page that the author of Katie.com and events described in the book have no connection whatsoever with the website domain owner Katie Jones or her e-mail address.
And this is why this should never have been allowed to become an issue. We are happy that the focus will now be where it should.
This is an important book about predatory pedophiles on the Internet and how
we can protect our children. We changed the title to keep focus on this issue. The newly
titled book will be released next month.
