For an update on our True Blood post, click here.

Good advertising should tell a story, but when do you draw the line and say an ad that passes as editorial content is a breach of ethics? Gawker is pushing the limit with Bloodcopy, the blog sponsored entirely by HBO’s True Blood. Bloodcopy entries appear to be normal blog posts (the word “advertisement” doesn’t appear anywhere). “With vampires, we thought we could be a little looser with the disclosure and create some disbelief” says Chris Batty, Gawker’s vice president of sales and marketing. Check the complete interview with Batty at Nieman Journalism Lab.

Be sure to check out her blog, Books On the Nightstand (especially the podcasts).

Mark Twain popped up in the blogosphere again, but no one is waxing on about his writings this time.  Sure, he’s an amazing author, inventor, and billiards player, but he’s also an incredibly stylish gentleman; a nerd boyfriend if you will…

Nerd Boyfriend brings you the fabulously dorky/cool looks of iconic figures with links to where you can get the pieces of the pictured outfits.  With or without his white suit, Twain (ahem, Sam Clemens) sure knows how to dress, and the Nerd Boyfriend blog will point you to the right place if you ever feel like rocking a skinny bowtie or frock coat.  George Washington Cable is also bringin’ it, so start taking notes.

We are excited to have signed bestselling thriller writer Brad Metlzer for two works of nonfiction, the first of which “Heroes for My Son,” is a collection of stories about the Wright Brothers, Jim Henson and others. We will publish in June 2010 for Father’s Day. [New York Times]

A few weeks ago Theresa Brown wrote a moving story about one of her cancer patients undergoing a difficult stem cell transplant.  Considering how risky the procedures can be, opting for treatment can be a tough decision.

I compare his choice with deciding whether to jump from a burning building. Staying in the building means certain death. But if you jump, you might break both legs and take months to heal or sustain injuries serious enough that the complications eventually kill you. But you would be alive when you hit the ground. Maybe it will only buy you a few more rough years. But you might just walk away and live.

When it comes down to cancer patients making the choice, a few decide to stay in the building. They opt for the quicker, surer death of cancer. Others, for different reasons, don’t have the option of a transplant. But even knowing the risks, I’m pretty sure I would make the leap, endure the free-fall, feel the impact, and hope to be one of the lucky ones who survives to walk back into the life that is waiting for me.

This week, Theresa’s post on The New York Times Well blog is a touching tribute to a man who took that jump.

We’re all busy experimenting with new ways to promote books. But as this clip from “The Office” reminds us, sometimes the best marketing is person to person (with a gift basket).

Everybody likes new inventions, new technology. People will never be replaced by machines. In the end, life and business are about human connections…and computers are about trying to murder you in a lake. And to me the choice is easy.  – Michael Scott

Elaine and Bill Petrocelli from Book Passage came by the office to visit. They’re in New York for the Book Expo next week (and to see their grandkids ). Book Passage is one of the great Indie bookstores of all time — because they come up with innovative ideas, they are a bunch of book-nuts, and they care!

Somewhat to our surpise the mainstream media is still buzzing about the blog-to-book phenomenon. The next chapter in the crowdsourcing adventure is a project from Perseus which came up with the cool idea of publishing a book made up entirely of the first lines from sequels our favorite authors never wrote (examples on the book’s website include Tolstoy and Orwell). They’re calling the project Book: The Sequel and anyone can submit their one-liner for consideration. Like something you might have done in high school English to jog your literary memory, the book is a fun and quirky exercise in group brainstorming.

So is crowdsouring a viable future for books?

I wonder what Virginia Woolf  would think of this first line: Mrs. Robinson said she would buy the stockings herself.

This morning I had a love fest with Harper’s magazine. The June issue includes a fantastic story by Kurt Vonnegut, a perversely entertaining phone transcript involving Bernie Madoff, and a weird and dreamy diary excerpt by Werner Herzog. See! I said to myself, gazing at the woman playing Pac-man next to me on the Q train, this is why magazines like Harper’s must stay in print! This is so GOOD!! Then, in one of those rare flashes of insight that comes before 9am, (at least for me) I realized something: None of this material was original. “The Jungle is Obscene” by Werner Herzog was published in the Spring issue of The Paris Review. The 2005 Madoff phone transcript, “The Less You Know,” which could pass as a Shouts and Murmurs piece, is among the public documents filed in a Massachusetts lawsuit.  “”Little Drops of Water” by Kurt Vonnegut is included in Look at the Birdie, a collection of previously unpublished stories. Now Harper’s has always put a spotlight on the horrifying-but-funny legal document, or the newly discovered posthumous work, (the magazine recently published “The Quarrell in the Strong-Box” from our book Who Is Mark Twain), but my reading experience on the train got me thinking about other magazines: Would I enjoy reading an Edith Wharton short story in Vogue, or an excerpt from the 1929 classic “The Anatomy of Dessert” in Gourmet, or a diary excerpt from Albert Einstein in Wired magazine? I most definitely would!  During this moment of transition when budgets for long form journalism seem scarcer by the day, maybe looking to the classics or the public domain is one tiny way to keep our collective attention span in tact.