Here’s a very good piece about off-site events, and managing the author’s expectations of them, courtesy of the Book Publicity Blog.
We did a long book festival a few months back, running over two weeks and having about a dozen author events. We also ran a mini-store in a room set up at the main venue. It was pretty much a mess.
I’m pleased to learn today that I have won a fun trivia contest. From the latest Musings newsletter from Discipline Global Mobile, who represent King Crimson and all things related to Robert Fripp:
The four of us stood staring upward, mouths agape, like turkeys in the rain. Once again, it was snowing inside the store.
It was a finer snow this time, drifting steadily downward from a leak in the skylight’s window seal, caused by what had accumulated on top of the glass overnight and through the day. It [...]
The new John Grisham novel, The Associate, released today, was displayed on the front table, visible from the outside as I waited for the doors to be unlocked. The title, however, was a mystery: sale-price stickers blocked part of it out, so it looked like it was called The Ociate.
These sales stickers are the bane [...]
Had I been on top of absolutely everything, as customers expect their omniscient, omnipotent, and groveling booksellers to be, I would have known well ahead of time that the Newbery and Caldecott medals were to be awarded today. Fortunately, I had read the Shelf Awareness newsletter this morning, and had seen not only that they would be announced, but that the event would be webcast, and that the announcements would be propagated over Twitter.
“Yup, it looks like we have several Merchant of Venices — er, Merchants of Venice — no, there are several copies, um, editions, uh — yes, we have quite a few versions of the Shakespeare here.”
Yes, it was that kind of day, all day. And it wasn’t until writing this down now, after work, that [...]
“Borders book store chain goes it alone online” in CIO UK Magazine is a good tech-based article from a British magazine on Borders’ recent roll-out of its own online bookstore. The chain had previously had a site that was just a front end to Amazon, but is now doing everything itself (with the help of [...]
The bookstore across the street from us is having an Inaugural Ball tonight: forty dollars per person, with formal dress, dancing, and champagne.
We pulled the old 13 inch TV out of the breakroom this morning and hooked up the rabbit ears. It still worked. Reception on one station was just good enough for us to [...]
“Where’s the ethnic section?” the couple demanded. They had suddenly appeared in my path as I zoomed past General Metaphysics in pursuit of a ringing phone.
I’m wondering if this one’s related to the sterotypical American male’s fear of asking directions:
Quite often, when I ask a customer if I can help him (and these cases are almost always male) to find anything, he will say something like: “If I was looking for stuff on golfing in Rhodesia, where might I be?”
There [...]
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