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The Book You've Been 'But Waiting' For

Remy Stern is one of those guys who not only gets mesmerized by the likes of Ron Popeil, he winds up succumbing to the siren call of the Ronco Automatic Pasta-Maker and other products that, if nothing else, prove the axiom that "if it's too good to be true, it probably is."

But it's payback time. Stern has written But Wait . . . There's More!, which reviewer Steve Salerno calls an "entertaining portrait of a business that might have been sliced and diced by ridicule over the years but that somehow still has countless viewers reaching for the phone to order the latest labor-saving kitchen gizmo being flogged on channel 173 at 2 a.m."

Stern peppers the book with mordant one-liners, Salerno says, and drops in on infomercial royalty such as fierce rivals A.J. Khubani of Telebrands and the duo behind the Guthy-Renker empire (2006 sales: $1.5 billion). "If Bill Guthy and Greg Renker represent the Tiffany & Co. of the infomercial industry," Salerno quotes Stern as writing, "Khubani is the Piercing Pagoda." I'm not sure what that means, but I want to find out. You can put me down for two -- if you throw in something that slices and dices.

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