From Sarah:

"I'm looking forward to your comments on the imprint differences, because it seems like the Bantam one has done some "literary crime" (Bill Landay's MISSION FLATS comes to mind from last year) while Delacorte has done some "genre" (Victor Gischler's THE PISTOL POETS), so are the differences as cut-and-dry as they are meant to be?"

No, absolutely not. It's a bit of a mystery to me, and to everyone I know, why some books are positioned in some imprints. When Sara Paretsky was at Bantam she was published as Delacorte, and as you point out, Victor Gischler is now. With Gischler, as with me in this new book, writing style (what the critics refer to as, heaven help us, "literary values") is important. I think maybe it's a signal to booksellers and critics -- because that's who this is for; have you ever known a reader to walk into a bookstore, look at a book and say, "I think I'll take a chance on this; the last Delacorte book I read was really great?" -- that this book is should be looked at differently from the books usually published as Bantam. Meaning that Bantam, from its end, will be handling it differently, trying to get off-the-book-page reviews, sending the writer to different kinds of events... That's as near as I can figure. It's an invitation to consider the book from an unusual angle, which can pay off but can also be dangerous.