Bin Laden: an unexpected move into the celebrity
endorsement market. Photo: AP
Move over Richard and Judy - there's a new player in town. If you're a poverty stricken author seeking a sure-fire route to bestseller status, forget angling for a slot on the teatime-TV duo's book club. If you want to watch your sales really hit the roof, there's only one endorsement you need: that of Osama bin Laden.

Until last week historian William Blum had failed to trouble bestseller lists on either side of the Atlantic with his searing attack on US foreign policy, Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower. But since last Thursday, when the Arabic-language television network al-Jazeera broadcast an audio tape of the al-Qaida leader in which he was heard to say "If Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you [Americans] to read the book 'Rogue State'," its rise has been stratospheric. The previously obscure title, which calls Bin Laden's September 11 attacks an "understandable retaliation against US foreign policy", has shot up Amazon's top seller list from somewhere below the 200,000 mark to the number 16 spot. The website is apparently (and understandably) struggling with the sudden demand. Amazon updates its top seller list hourly; with Blum having moved up a spot in the space of this morning, I doubt I'll be the only one logging in today to find out how the book is doing.

According to The Washington Post, Blum has refused to act outraged at the unorthodox plug; he informed a New York radio station that he was "not repulsed, and I'm not going to pretend I am." And why should he be? Sales of his book have gone through the roof and his message - that US interventionist foreign policy causes resentment and foments discord - has reached a far wider audience than he could ever have anticipated. But the key point to be taken from this improbable story is that when it comes to book endorsements, the man at the top of the US's most wanted list wields a frightening power. Where, one wonders, will he direct it next? Suggestions from around the arts desk this morning include Afghanistan: A Companion and Guide by Bijan Omrani and Matthew Leeming, Toby Young's How To Lose Friends and Alienate People, the SAS Survival Handbook: How to Survive in the Wild, and perhaps Alan McArthur and Steve Lowe's encyclopedia of modern life, Is It Just Me, Or Is Everything Shit?

Anything we've missed?