The Skim Trade

"I'm not impressed," Getman tells him. "It's all computer-generated."

They pass the giant Random House booth, which sits opposite a huge, colorful Google display. An Elton John look-alike wanders by, advertising something they never figure out, and Akre stops at Lonely Planet. (Washington, she explains, is "a good travel city.") A minute later, colleagueless again, Akre is hugging a woman named Jean Wescott, who left Olsson's a few years back and now works on the publishing side.

"She has a pretty glamorous life," Wescott says of Akre. "I miss that life. I have to be here and say, 'No, we don't accept unsolicited manuscripts.' "

Another aisle or two and there are Ritchie and Getman, chowing down fudge and talking to a woman in an apron that says "Politics & Pot Roast." This would be Sarah Hood Salomon, who hopes to convert Mamie Eisenhower's fudge recipe and other politically connected delights into a bestseller (in Washington, at least).

On they wander. Akre chats up Grove/Atlantic President and Publisher Morgan Entrekin ("a connected man"). She grabs lunch with her liaison at Publishers Group West, which distributes the books of numerous small publishers. She talks with Penguin about a buy-two-get-one-free paperback promotion Olsson's is planning.

By midafternoon she's fading. She decides to skip the most-hyped BEA event of the day: novice Penguin author Alan Greenspan being interviewed by -- stop the presses! -- NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell.

"I'd like to go, but I need to decompress," Akre says.

Besides, she doesn't need to see Greenspan field softballs from his wife to know the former Fed chairman's book will be big.

* * *

Why the Friday afternoon fatigue? It's no secret. The accumulation of social capital requires a lot of party-going.

Thursday night it was the bash thrown by the newly renamed Grand Central Publishing, formerly Warner Books, at (of course) Grand Central Station. TV laughmeister Steven Colbert, author of "I Am America (and So Can You)," due out in October, was said to be there, but Akre never saw him. She did get her picture taken with humorist Amy Sedaris, though.

"I did it for my friend," she explains. "She's taking care of my cat. It's the least I can do."