Talk about hypocrisy. The Boston Herald took a swipe at the Globe yesterday because our book about the Patriots' undefeated season was already available for pre-order on Amazon.com. But what the Herald didn't tell its readers was that it was hawking its own book, "New England Patriots: 2008 Super Bowl Champions."
Amazon removed the Globe's book, titled "19-0: The Historic Championship Season of New England's Unbeatable Patriots," after the Herald reported that Amazon was promoting it. Later in the day, Amazon also removed the Herald book. So why didn't the Herald come clean about its own book yesterday?
Turns out the paper wasn't entirely forthcoming about its staff's involvement in it.
"The distinction between the Herald's book and the Globe's book," Herald spokeswoman Gwen Gage wrote us in an e-mail, "Is that we instructed the publisher not to market our book as authored by the Boston Herald until the Patriots win the Super Bowl."
Of course, such books are always prepared in advance. As Gage conceded in her e-mail: "The realities of selling 'Championship' books --on the web and in bookstores -- is that they have to be in the market quickly, and by necessity publishers pre-sell them." (Too bad the Herald didn't think to mention that yesterday.)
It's also worth noting that the Herald's story speculated that Giants Coach Tom Coughlin could
use word of the Globe's book as a way to fire up his team. Problem with that is that, as of tonight, you could still pre-order a book about the Giants' Super Bowl win on Amazon.
