Watching TV (a rarity for me) this past weekend, I was bombarded with stories about the price of gas. I had a premonition about all the upcoming quarterly reports from publishers and booksellers citing gas prices as the cause for lower results. It made me wonder — if gas prices keep rising and publishers and [...]
Ok. Here is the thing — the below comment isn’t meant to be snippy. I think this is wicked good. I also think it is a shame…
Last week I posted about a funny youtube video I saw on Michael Cairns’ site PersonaNondata. Michael “hat tipped” Peter Brantley. I credited Michael.
Since then I have seen the [...]
An editor once told me it was too early to promote an unwritten book. At the time, that kind of statement had a built-in logic I was unprepared to counter. I sighed when I saw this site go up today. I should have dug my heels in. The tag-line on the site is “Experience the [...]
A retail warrior I know talks all the time about the WOW. He says big box retail is predicated on delivering WOW to each and every customer, each and every time they visit. With no WOW, the casual bookstore customer won’t be convinced to buy when they wouldn’t otherwise. If the casual bookstore customer doesn’t [...]
Robert McGrum is retiring from The Observer. He lists ten milestones from the past ten years in book publishing over at the Guardian.
New blood (aka the passing of the guard)
Amazon
Harry Potter
Jonathan Franzen
Festivals
Prizes
Ian Mcewan
Blogs Vs Reviewing (It is quaint he thinks these are opposed)
Lynne Truss
The Kindle
I bit my tongue a couple of times reading his story [...]
A friend of mine was determined to deliver Guy Vanderhaeghe’s The Englishman’s Boy into the hands of Viggo Mortensen. She loved the book and she loved Viggo. She wanted to play match maker for the good of all concerned. When Viggo was in town shooting a movie he actually dropped into my friend’s workplace unexpectedly. [...]
In the aftermath of the closure of Microsoft’s Live Book search program I was fascinated to learn there is an open source project that is trying to bring together out of print works, orphan works, public domain works and other available books all in one place. It is essentially a wikipedia meets IMDB for books. [...]
The 1000-fan meme was all the rage a month or so ago. Then it seemingly went away. I think it still is powerful. I think it is applicable to book publishing and I think it can be applied from the top down — i.e., it can be used by publishers not just by authors.
I was [...]
I tracked down a book by a Canadian 9-11 widow called The Alchemy of Loss. After reading it on the plane this weekend, I passed it on to my mom. It is a mom-kind of book. The book’s author — Abigail Carter — is an attractive narrator because she is so self-aware. Her interaction with [...]
A couple of weeks ago I was talking to a teacher who was about to retire. She remarked that the younger teachers in their 30s didn’t dress appropriately. The ones in their 40s weren’t very focused. She laughed. One group doesn’t have any money and the other has kids.
I thought of that conversation when I [...]