The Associated Press

CLEVELAND - A woman who wrote a book about the history of the All-American Soap Box Derby in Akron says she has been banned from selling it at Saturday's race because it mentions cheating.

Bob Troyer, spokesman for the Akron-based derby, said Melanie Payne's book is not the kind of product the organization wants to endorse.

"We feel she should be focusing on the positive aspects of the program, and she chose to focus on the negative by having that as part of her title," he said.

Payne, a former Akron Beacon Journal reporter who works for a newspaper in California, spent three years writing Champions, Cheaters and Childhood Dreams: Memories of the All-American Soap Box Derby.

Until December, Payne had cooperation from derby officials.

But she said that friendly relationship ended abruptly when officials learned the book would refer to cheating at the race. They refused to allow her to use their photos and prevented her from having a booth at the event.

Boys and girls from around the country race in the derby in cars built from kits and from scratch.

Payne, 45, said only one chapter of the 200-page book mentions cheating.

"It's not a muckraking attack on the derby. It's a straightforward history. In all history, there is good and bad," she said.

One cheating reference is about a 1973 scandal in which a contestant concealed a magnet in the front of a car to try to gain an edge by having the car drawn toward the metal starting plate.