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The standard rundown of plagiarism excuses includes accidental copying, occupational or personal stress, and even mental illness, as in the case of former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair. I reject those excuses, too, and counter with a more plausible set of explanations that rely on neither psychobabble nor the DSM-IV.

Ambition Often Exceeds Talent: I know of very few examples in which an exceptional writer got caught plagiarizing. Sometimes writers accept jobs or assignments beyond their talents. When the deadline whistle blows, they find themselves facing this cost-benefit quandary: Shall I tell the truth and bail, damaging my career for sure, or shall I steal copy and only risk damaging my career?

Writing Is Hard Work: A corollary to ambition exceeding talent. Even prolific writers, who can toss off a thousand words an hour, complain about the difficulty of writing. Writing well is a difficult enterprise. So is writing poorly. With so many examples of good writing out there to "borrow," why suffer only to write poorly?

*****

Force of Habit: If nobody catches you running stop lights in college or tickets you for doing the same at your first newspaper job, you eventually stop paying attention. One day, red, yellow, and green all mean "go."

Contempt for the Business: Show me the writer who calls himself and everybody he works with a "hack," and I'll show you a potential plagiarist.

Christopher Anderson has learned that with his recently published biography, Barbra: The Way She Is. Streisand has retaliated not with interviews or public statements, but by way of the Internet. On her website, she has issued a response she titles Does the Truth Matter These Days?

"Normally, I would not dignify vicious, mean-spirited mythology masquerading as biography," she begins. "But it seems this latest rehash of other unauthorized biographies is getting a lot of attention. "Who is the person described in this book? From what has been told to me, certainly not anyone I know. This stereotypic image bears little resemblance to me or anything about me." Streisand adds that none of her close friends or professional co-workers had been sources for the book. Indeed, her intimates, co-stars and major directors are missing from the author's account of contributors.

"A few of them spoke off the record," Anderson responded, talking from his Connecticut home. "Karl Malden and Estelle Parsons offered interesting insights, as did people who worked with her ? singers, musicians, composers." Streisand branded as "a lie" the book's allegation that she refused to attend her sister's wedding even though she was in the same city. "I was in London filming Yentl," she declared.

The website also includes a letter from her sister Roslyn's ex-husband, Randy Stone, who said that Streisand provided her Malibu ranch for the wedding and gave the couple "a large gift of money" to start their married life. Anderson remarked that the criticism concerned "one small detail."

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The author, who devoted two years to the Streisand book, said he wasn't surprised by her reaction. "She made a statement years ago, 'If God wrote my biography, I wouldn't like it.' "I'd like people to know that I am a fan of Barbra's," he said. "The first gift I gave my wife when we were students at UC Berkeley in the 1960s was the soundtrack album of Funny Girl."

Yes, there are still people who haven't read The Da Vinci Code. But the number seems to be shrinking. Dan Brown's international sensation has sold around 1.4 million copies in its first month as a paperback release, a big number for any book and astonishing for a novel that's already sold more than 40 million copies in hardcover.

"There are more than 300 million people in the United States, so we still have a lot of potential sales out there," joked Russell Perreault, vice president and director of publicity for Vintage Books and Anchor Books, paperback imprints of Random House Inc.

Perreault said Tuesday that he expects sales to remain strong thanks largely to the upcoming movie version, starring Tom Hanks and scheduled to come out May 19. The Da Vinci Code had an initial paperback printing of 5 million copies, but that was soon raised to 6 million.

Kaavya Viswanathan's How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life contains more than a half-dozen passages in which the language closely echoes Sloppy Firsts, published by a division of Random House Inc., including one 14-word sequence that appears in both books. Late last week, Random House sent a letter raising concerns about the similarities to lawyers for Little, Brown and Co., the publishers of Opal Mehta, a spokesman for Random House said yesterday.

"After reading the book in question, and finding passages, characters, and plot points in common, I do hope this can be resolved in a manner that is fair to all of the parties involved," Megan McCafferty, the author of Sloppy Firsts, said in an e-mail yesterday. "I am so grateful for the diligence and support of Random House's legal counsel." McCafferty declined a request for an interview. Her agent, Joanna Pulcini, said a fan pointed out the similarities in an e-mail to McCafferty about two weeks ago.

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Viswanathan's book, the tale of a studious Indian-American girl's quest for social success, was published this month and climbed to number 32 on the New York Times bestseller list for hardcover fiction this week. In an interview with the Globe in February, Viswanathan said she rushed to get the book done during the last few months of her freshman year at Harvard, knocking off 50 pages every two weeks.

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Born in Chennai, India, Viswanathan lived in England for about a decade before moving to the United States. Her high school college counselor, also a published author, recognized her budding literary talent and helped her get an agent. The agent steered Viswanathan toward a company that helps young writers package book ideas; editors there helped her conceptualize the novel. "There was more shaping to this book than we usually do," Asya Muchnick, Viswanathan's editor, told the Globe in the February interview. Viswanathan was just 17 when she signed her two-book contract, which was worth approximately $500,000, according to the New York Sun.

It was second legal victory for Brown this month, after a London court rejected the charges that he plagiarized another book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. In the New York case, author Lewis Perdue had claimed Brown's book infringed the copyright of his novels Daughter of God, which was published in 2000, and The Da Vinci Legacy, which came out in 1983.

Last August, Judge George Daniels of U.S. District Court in New York concluded: "A reasonable average lay observer would not conclude that The Da Vinci Code is substantially similar to Daughter of God." "Any slightly similar elements are on the level of generalized or otherwise unprotectable ideas," he said, adding that copyright did not protect an idea, but only the expression of an idea.

Brown's publisher, Doubleday, said in a statement that the federal appeals court in New York had confirmed that ruling this week, the news service reported. "This rapid and unanimous verdict confirms, once again, that this claim never had any merit," Brown said in the statement.

Babar was first created in 1931 from the imagination of de Brunhoff's parents.

His mother used to conjure bedtime stories about an orphaned baby elephant. His father, the painter Jean de Brunhoff, then created the first book, The Story of Babar, at the urging of his children.

Laurent de Brunhoff, who inherited his father's drawing skills, took over the series in 1946 at age 21 following his father's death.

"I wanted to be a painter . . . but I wanted Babar to stay in the family," said the amiable Paris-born author, 81, surrounded by his books at a downtown children's shop.

"He was my friend and I wanted him to live again. I started to make drawings in the same style. I enjoyed it very much and everybody was happy to see Babar again.

Four years after agreeing to sell his second novel to Random House for an advance of more than $8 million, Charles Frazier, the author of the best-selling "Cold Mountain," has handed in the first half of his final manuscript, and is expected to turn in the remaining half next week.

The publishing industry is likely to watch the progress of Mr. Frazier's new book closely because at the time he signed the deal four years ago, his advance was considered extraordinary for a literary writer who had only written one previous book, although it was a huge best seller. With just a one-page outline of the planned work, he sold the second novel in an auction, and in so doing left behind the editor, Elisabeth Schmitz of Grove/Atlantic, who had discovered and nurtured him to success.

At the time of the deal, Mr. Frazier was expected to deliver in time for a 2005 publication date. Kate Medina, executive editorial director at Random House and Mr. Frazier's current editor, said he had turned in an earlier manuscript and has been working on revisions until now. The new novel, like "Cold Mountain," takes place in the 19th-century American South and is the story of a young white man raised by Cherokee Indians who ends up representing them in Washington in their fight to preserve their land. According to Random House's fall catalog, which goes out to booksellers this week, the new novel, "Thirteen Moons," is also, like "Cold Mountain," an epic love story.

Random House is betting that the readers who made "Cold Mountain" such a hit will do it again for "Thirteen Moons." The first novel was a critical darling and a surprise reader favorite, selling 1.6 million copies in hardcover. There are 2.5 million paperback copies in print in the United States. "Cold Mountain," which was also made into a movie starring Nicole Kidman and Jude Law, spent 61 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list in hardcover, and a total of 33 weeks on the paperback list. It also won the National Book Award for fiction. Carol Schneider, a Random House spokeswoman, said the initial print run for "Thirteen Moons," scheduled to go on sale Oct. 3, will be 750,000 copies. Just to cover the cost of the advance, the publisher ? which will receive about half the $25.95 cover price of each book sold ? will have to sell at least 625,000 copies. To cover marketing, printing and other overhead costs, it would have to sell even more.

It is quite clear in the Bible 'Thou Shalt Not Kill,'" McCourt, well-known in New York City progressive politics, said in a news release. McCourt plans to officially announce his candidacy Sunday. He was out of the country Tuesday and didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

McCourt has appeared on public radio and numerous TV talk shows. His latest of eight books is "I Never Drink When I'm Sober," and he writes a newspaper column called "Sez I to Myself." He also has acted in soap operas, in films including "The Molly Maguires," "She's the One," "The Devil's Own," and "Green Card," and in the HBO prison series "Oz." His brother Frank McCourt wrote the best seller "Angela's Ashes."

A graphic novel adaptation of The 9/11 Commission Report is set to hit bookstores this fall. The 9/11 Report, A Graphic Adaptation whittles the more than 500-page report down to less than 150 pages of comic-book style imagery.

Two U.S. comic book veterans carried the project out: former Harvey Comics editor Sid Jacobson and comic book illustrator Ernie Colon, who in the past worked on characters ranging from Casper the Friendly Ghost and Richie Rich to Spiderman and Wonder Woman. Published by the Hill and Wang division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, The 9/11 Report, A Graphic Adaptation will be available in September. The book will be the publisher's first in a series of graphic non-fiction titles, with future projects to include graphic biographies of U.S. civil rights leader Malcolm X and former U.S. president Ronald Reagan.

In 2002, the U.S. Congress established the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States to investigate the events and circumstances surrounding the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The group, informally known as the 9/11 Commission, issued its 567-page final report in 2004. Though available for free download, the lucid, accessible report became one of 2005's bestselling non-fiction books, selling more than one million copies altogether, in paperback and hardcover editions. The team behind the upcoming graphic novel adaptation has said they hope their project will allow the report to reach an even wider audience of readers.

All of this is a reaction against over-socialization, or maybe an over-feminization of the culture," said Jeremie Ruby-Strauss, Mr. Max's editor at Kensington and a point man for the genre. "I think all of these books are about men searching for a model other than what they're being told to do, something more rebellious, less cautious and less concerned with external approval."

Though sales aren't at chick lit levels, there have been some early successes. On March 28 a writer known simply as Maddox ? he is the author of the Web site The Best Page in the Universe, which shares a mostly male readership with Mr. Max ? sent a notice to those on his e-mail list that his book, "The Alphabet of Manliness," would be published in June by Kensington. Within hours the book soared past "The Da Vinci Code" and "Freakonomics" to No. 1 on Amazon.com's best-seller list, pulling Mr. Max's book with it into the low double digits. Maddox, whose real name is George Ouzounian, said he has presold over 7,000 copies of "The Alphabet of Manliness," through the Amazon link on his site, an all but unheard of run by a first-time author.

Many of the books in the fratire genre began online, either organically or out of necessity because mainstream publishers would have nothing to do with them. Mr. Max said that despite receiving approximately 60,000 visitors daily at TuckerMax.com, he got "zero interest" when he initially pitched his book. "Bro, when I say 'zero interest,' I mean zero," he said, taking another slug of beer.

Frank Kelly Rich, the 42-year-old editor of Modern Drunkard magazine and the author of the book "The Modern Drunkard," said that it took the Web to help fratire get around the hang-ups of mainstream publishing houses that professed to be searching for the male equivalent of chick lit, but which were frightened when they actually saw what it looked like.

Publishers say the controversy surrounding James Frey's memoir "A Million Little Pieces" -- which turned out to be filled with fiction about his purported life as a drug addict -- hasn't dimmed interest in the form. Mr. Frey's book, after all, sold more than four million copies and continued to sell even after Oprah Winfrey, who had earlier endorsed the book, denounced it on TV.

Literary agents say they're seeing more memoir manuscripts and proposals than ever. Lee Gutkind, founder of the literary journal Creative Nonfiction and a professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, says he gets 300-400 memoir submissions each month unsolicited, for his publication, which comes out three times a year. This reflects a change in the whole publishing climate, Mr. Gutkind says. In the past, writers would break into the business with autobiographical novels, and move on to other sorts of fiction. Now, "the novel's not hot anymore, and the autobiographical novel has been replaced by the memoir." Memoirs have become "the new door opening for first-time writers, young and old," he says. Even established authors are turning to the form. Erica Jong, author of the novel "Fear of Flying," recently published a memoir, "Seducing the Demon."

Several trends are driving the popularity of the memoir today. One is the public's continuing fascination with reality TV. The programming genre's obsessive interest in the lives of ordinary people and B-List celebrities has migrated to the printed word. Another trend is the ascent of narrative nonfiction with such books as the "The Perfect Storm" and "Shadow Divers," an account of the discovery of a shipwrecked German submarine from WWII.

Brad Parsons, senior editor for books at Amazon.com, argues that there's a "safety valve" factor that a memoir provides in an uncertain world. "We like to read about the crazy lives of others and how they got through them," he says. There's an additional reason why publishers like memoirs: Most, except those written by flash-in-the-pan celebrities, have a long shelf life. "Memoirs continue to sell year after year," unlike typical nonfiction books, says Bob Wietrak, chief merchant at Barnes & Noble, the nation's largest bookseller. Indeed, he says that recently 75% of the chain's biography sales have come from memoirs.

The fair, which will be inaugurated by Tamil Nadu Governor Surjit Singh Barnala on board the German ship, will offer more than 6,000 educational books in English and Tamil.

Emilie Noteboom, Project Coordinator for Doulos? visit to Chennai, told PTI that it is the ship's third visit to Chennai after visiting over 500 ports in more than 100 nations. "Run by a German Non-Profit Organisation 'Good Books for All' it seeks to bring 'Knowledge, Help and Hope' to the world," she said.

Doulos arrived at Chennai port on April 8 amidst much fanfare with the 320-member crew donning their national costumes and bearing flags, she said. The book fair will be open to the public from April 13 to May 8, a press release said.

The lawsuit aims to keep Noa from publishing the book which Lopez claims contains "private and intimate statements, many of which are negative, denigrating and disparaging" about the singer-actress. By "shopping" the manuscript, Noa was "wrongfully attempting to exploit his prior relationship with (Lopez) by making salacious, inflammatory, invasive, disparaging statements," the suit said.

In addition, Noa made "some false and defamatory statements" for his own "financial gain in violation of a specific written agreement to the contrary," Lopez -- once known to her fans as J-Lo -- claimed. In the suit filed in Los Angeles, Lopez requested a temporary restraining order and a permanent injunction preventing Noa from selling the manuscript. In addition she wants to be awarded her court costs. Lopez, 36, and former model Noa were married for one year from February 1997 to January 1998.

The lawsuit states that Noa sent a letter to Lopez's attorney on January 13, 2005 in which Noa "declared his intention to continue to shop his proposed Book and to obtain a publisher for the book." In the letter he suggested negotiations over what he said about Lopez in the proposed book saying he would not "stop his life because of her" again. "She may want me to stay quite (sic), and not talk about her it (sic) all in the book, I'll be more happy to do, if we can come to an agreement...," Noa allegedly said in the letter.

The lawsuit then states that Lopez's attorneys received another letter from Noa dated January 19, 2006, claiming "he would not agree to refrain from marketing his book unless (Lopez) paid him a sum of five million dollars." In addition, Lopez claimed that Noa made a false statement to a New York Post gossip columnist alleging Lopez had been seeing singer Marc Anthony, to whom she is now married, while she was filming the 1997 horror movie "Anaconda" in Brazil.

Novel: Creepers by David Morrell, Dread in the Beast by Charlee Jacob, Keepers by Gary Braunbeck, November Mourns by Tom Piccirilli

First Novel: The Hides by Kealan Patrick Burke, Scarecrow Gods by Weston Ochse, Siren Promised by Alan M. Clark and Jeremy Robert Johnson

Long Fiction: "Best New Horror" by Joe Hill, "In the Midnight Museum" by Gary Braunbeck, "Some Zombie Contingency Plans" by Kelly Link, "The Things They Left Behind" by Stephen King

Short Story: "As Others See Us" by Mort Castle, "Haeckel's Tale" by Clive Barker, "Times of Atonement" by Yvonne Navarro, "We Now Pause for Station Identification" by Gary Braunbeck, "Invisible" by Steve Rasnic Tem

Anthology: Corpse Blossoms by Julia and R.J. Sevin, Dark Delicacies: Original Tales of Terror and the Macabre by Del Howison and Jeff Gelb, Outsiders by Nancy Holder and Nancy Kilpatrick, Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth by Stephen Jones

Fiction Collection: Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk, Looking for Jake by China Mieville, Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link, Twentieth Century Ghosts by Joe Hill

Nonfiction: The Bradbury Chronicle by Sam Weller, Horror: Another 100 Best Books by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, Morbid Curiosity number nine by Loren Rhoads, More Giants of the Genre by Michael McCarty, Why Buffy Matters: The Art of Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Rhonda Wilcox

Poetry: Freakcidents by Michael A. Arnzen, Seasons: A Series of Poems Based on the Life and Death of Edgar Allan Poe by Daniel Shields, The Shadow City by Gary W. Crawford, Sineater by Charlee Jacob

Efforts to bring readers new formats for books are continuing as Sony Electronics announced a deal yesterday to sell its much vaunted Sony Reader in 200 Borders stores when the Reader begins sales in midsummer (a delay from original plans for spring). Borders will be the only book chain to sell the Reader at first. It will also be available at SonyStyle stores and online, and will cost $300 to $400. Borders will sell accessories and prepaid cards to use when downloading the books from Sony's Web site (connect.com). Several thousand titles will be available for the Reader.

In a separate deal, a consortium of nonprofit publishers, booksellers and a print-on-demand publisher announced that it was starting a project called Caravan, scheduled for spring 2007, to make 24 forthcoming titles simultaneously available in hardcover, paperback, print-on-demand, digital and audio formats. The idea is that no buyer should ever go into a bookstore and be turned away because the book is out of stock, said Peter Osnos, publisher of PublicAffairs and executive director of Caravan. Participating publishers include University of North Carolina Press, Yale University Press and the Council on Foreign Relations Press.

SLG Publishing and Disney bring a thrilling new chapter to the Tron story with Tron: The Ghost in the Machine, a comic book written by Landry Walker and Eric Jones (Little Gloomy, X-Ray Comics) and drawn by Louie De Martinis. Tron: The Ghost in the Machine picks up where the critically-acclaimed video game Tron 2.0 leaves off, bringing you the same thrilling action, as well as an exploration of the effects of the cyberworld on the human psyche.

Like many, writers Landry Walker and Eric Jones got their first view of the computer world in Disney's 1982 cult hit movie, Tron. "I've loved Tron since I first saw the movie as a kid," said Jones. "The whole concept is so exciting, since it involves more than 'good versus evil' and allows for some pretty good twists and turns."

Walker stresses that Tron: The Ghost in the Machine will be true to its cinematic and video game roots by not only being an action story but also delving into the mental trauma protagonist Jet Bradley suffers by being forced into the computer world. "Jet is not a hero," Walker said. "He's just an average person thrust into exceptional, and somewhat horrible circumstances. The story is more about the psychological challenges Jet faces when he's disintegrated and reduced to pure information -- that shift in reality is really going to screw with your head."

The sophisticated treatment of technology's effects on the human mind in Tron: The Ghost in the Machine is an element of what Walker calls "pure science fiction." "The comic is an exploration of a different universe, the unknown," he said, "from the perspective of someone completely out of his depth."

The High Court threw out a breach of copyright claim by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh over The Da Vinci Code. That has left them with a bill of ?350,000 in costs. They have been refused leave to appeal. Random House, publishers of both The Da Vinci Code and Baigent and Leigh's earlier book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, was in the dock.

After the hearing, Brown said the case had been "utterly without merit". "I'm still astonished these two authors chose to file this suit at all," he said. The Holy Blood, published in 1982, was based on a theory that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married, had a child and the bloodline continues to this day. Baigent and Leigh say a secret society is protecting their heirs against wicked conspiracies enacted by the Church - a similar theme to the one explored in Brown's mega-seller.

But Mr Justice Peter Smith ruled that Mr Brown did not copy the central theme for his novel from the earlier book. The Da Vinci Code won best book at last year's British Book Awards and has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide, earning the author ?45m in one year. It sold half a million copies in its first week of paperback release in the US, boosted by the trial, say industry watchers. If the trial had gone the other way, the long-awaited film of the book may have been put on hold. Its May release now goes ahead.

The division will be headed by Kate Tentler, as senior vice president of digital media, formerly vice president and publisher of S&S Online. "We're excited about all the opportunities that the digital world will open for us," Tentler told The Book Standard. "Search-and sell-technologies, the newest generation of electronic books, the unknown developments around the corner, all should be very positive developments for publishing."

Tentler will work with the same staff to develop a digital archive and rights management system, as well as continue to run and update the website and online store, work with online search technology and stay on top of new electronic publishing technologies, the company announced.

"Over the past 10 years, digital technology and the internet have shifted from being something separate, other and on-the-fringe, to being an integral part of our lives," S&S president and CEO Jack Romanos said in a memo to employees. "Our online division has taken on an increasing importance to our overall business strategy, a role that will be better reflected by their new name, Simon & Schuster Digital."