Last weekend we received something extraordinary in the mail from literary publicist Lauren Cerand: a copy of Jonathan Baumbach’s 2007 novel YOU or The Invention of Memory. Why are we telling you about it two years later? Cerand and Baumbach just launched a Web site called The New You Project to promote the novel; they’re offering up a free copy of the book to the first 365 people who request it and chronicling their progress online. What makes that so interesting? Most publicists only take on projects prior to a novel’s publication. Cerand herself prefers to begin a year prior. We knew there had to be a special reason she was making an exception.
