Thursday, June 08, 2006

Catalog Corrections

An interesting development occurred the other day.

Robert was updating the book information found on my website when he discovered that, for some reason, the co-author of Clinton's book on Amazon.com was listed as "ami henckson."

No, this isn't a rant about the world getting my name wrong. Really.

It's more a rather unsettled musing about how easy it was to log into Amazon.com and tell them to change the author's name.

I know that when the book was released, the spelling of my name as co-author was correct. (Sure, I checked. I was so darn happy to see the book exist online.)

Does this mean that someone, somewhere, bothered to log in and change it? For what possible purpose? And does it mean that there is no Grand Poobah Amazonian who decides what does and does not constitute a bona fide catalog correction?

Hmmmmm....

Just for grins and giggles, I think it would be a hoot and a half to submit catalog corrections to author's names all over the place. Some suggestions:

* Think and Grow Rich -- by P. Hilton

* Bush's Brain -- by Dr. Seuss

* The Da Vinci Code -- by J. H. Christ

* I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings -- by Col. Sanders

* To Kill a Mockingbird -- by C. Heston

* A Million Little Pieces -- by A. Einstein

* Animal Farm -- by M. Stewart

The change form I submitted informed me that it would take about a week for the correction to show. Maybe by that time, someone will have told them that Hugh Hefner wrote the book on The Feminine Mystique.