Gig Harbor, Washington, December 10, 2011 - Octopus Books launched its new TDP-or-Else publishing program today with a billion-dollar treasure chest filled with enough loot to temp even the shyest of authors into a restrictive contract that keeps their books out of competing stores and online bookseller websites.
"We firmly believe that Tentacle Direct Publishing (TDP), when combined with our Octopus-only author's contract, will provide the best cradle-to-grave entertainment service for readers," said Octopus Books founder and chairman J.D. Rock.
According to informed sources, TDP-or-Else "has the potential for harming everyone who reads, writes or sells books except for Octopus Books."
Yet Rock and his two primary business partners Hank Flag and Roger Henry discounted such objections from competing Internet booksellers and independent bookstores as "cry baby stuff" at the company's annual sardine roast where the new publishing program was unveiled.
"We think we have enough bounty to keep authors loyal to us and to understand that it's not in their wallets' best interests to shack up with other booksellers," Rock said.
Publishing insiders said that once Octopus Books is finished building its from-here-to-eternity corporation, publishing insiders will be a thing of the past.
Speaking off the record, the president of a bookseller association said that Rock, Flag and Henry modeled Octopus Books after such famous vertically integrated cartels as Standard Oil and Paramount Pictures.
"Such companies control all aspects of the supply chain from the devil to the deep blue sea," the association president said.
In spite of recent cries of "Gig the Octopus" and "Eat a Tentacle for Lunch," many long-starving authors and industry outsiders are viewing the bait dangling on the end of the line with "guarded naïveté."
"Now every author can be a contender," said emerging author Terry Malloy ("Calm Weather Tails"). "Octopus Books is really the only game in town and as soon as the small fry realize this, we can get onto writing great stories and controlling the readers' habits."
In a white paper published by a suddenly failing independent publisher whose name has not been released pending the notification of next of kin, author Ida Minerva wrote ''With Mr. Rock’s genius for detail there went a sense of the big and vital factors in the publishing business and a daring in laying hold of them which was very like military genius. He saw strategic small-fry publishers and mom-and-pop bookstores like a Napoleon and he swooped on them with the suddenness of a Napoleon."
When asked about Minerva's book, Rock laughed and said, "Now there's a little writing gal I liked to wrap my tentacles around."
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--Story by Jock Stewart
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