Ben Karlin Breakfast at Book Expo America

NFZ Senior West Coast Correspondent WordsWithGrace sent us this wonderful report this morning. Enjoy!

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BEA director Lance Fensterman emceed Sunday’s Author Breakfast, a panel that included Ben Karlin (former executive producer of The Colbert Report and The Daily Show, and before that editor of The Onion), Rosie O’Donnell, Alice Sebold (The Lovely Bones), and Ian McEwan.

Karlin was at BEA to promote his humorous anthology, Things I’ve Learned from Women Who Dumped Me, which is scheduled to be released by Grand Central Publishing in February 2008, just in time for Valentine’s Day. He was a last-minute replacement for Paulo Coelho, who’d had to cancel.

Low-key and self-deprecating, the 36-year-old Karlin mocked the differences in his and Coelho’s status, apologizing to ticket buyers who might be expecting to see the best-selling author of The Alchemist but got him instead: “Even I’m disappointed.” He noted that he and Coelho have a lot in common, though: “He is from Brazil. . . . I’ve been to Argentina.”

Karlin noted that until recently he’d been with the Report and TDS, at which the audience applauded and cheered. “Then I had an epiphany. What could I do for less money and less recognition . . . and that would require me to be at the Javits Center at 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning?” Writing a book was the obvious answer, he said.

Karlin noted that his book is an anthology, “which is not to say that I’m too lazy to write my own book. It’s just that I didn’t want to.” He said it would be a “compilation of humorous essays, art, conversation transcripts, annotated song lyrics” – all of them from “the funniest, most interesting people . . . who would return my calls.” He rattled off several dozen names of participants, including Stephen Colbert (“who I understand was here yesterday both live and on videotape. He’s the only person who can do that”), Andy Richter, Tom Green, Dan Savage, Nick Hornby, Adam Schlesinger (from the band Fountains of Wayne), A.J. Jacobs, Damian Kulash (from the band OK Go), and – surprise — Senator Bob Kerrey.

His mom is writing “a kind of everymom foreword” called “I Think My Son Is a Catch.” “In a classic switcheroo, I guilted her into it,” Karlin said.

And what has Karlin learned from women who dumped him? For one, “a reality show is not where you should end up trying to work out your problems. If in fact that happens, you are not just in the wrong relationship, you’re on the express train to Sad Town, making stops at Depressionville and OhMyGodWhatHaveIDone-Sylvania.”

Karlin ended his 10-minute talk with another jab at the torturously early hour: “For the first time in my life, I’m gonna close a presentation with these words: ‘Good morning.’”