New York is Hatchet from Hachette-Filipacchi Country

Heading up to the "New York is Cookbook Country" roundtable event at the mid-town branch of the NY Public Library last night I ended up riding the elevator with restaurant royalty - Lidia Bastianich and Eric Ripert. I was looking forward to an intelligent evening saluting the current New York restaurant scene and the cookbooks it has generated. But, instead, while the chefs tried to discuss culinary matters, it became all too clear that kitchen star power publishing comes with all of the tiresome ridiculousness that is usually assigned to model/actor/author celebrities.

Proof positive: A snit from a collection of ladies from Filipacchi Publishing, the book arm of Hachette-Filipacchi, when they noticed that Coliseum Books' table at the event featured several of Daniel Boulud's cookbooks, but not their Daniel's Dish, based on his articles in Elle Decor. They ripped into reps from the library as if this oversight was as important as getting a more descriptive page about the cookbook on Amazon with an image of the bookcover.

Filipacchi ladies, did you check out that hyperlink in the last sentence? No more than 40 people attended last night. How many books did you think you were going to sell? Time to get your priorities straight and leave the poor librarians alone. Oh, wait, this is the publishing world - What was I thinking?