All posts by trav

At the heart of it all, I’m a fan. A fan of books and bookstores. A fan of fiction and non-fiction. A fan of authors and publishers. And most of all I’m a fan of great conversations sparked by books. All that to say - I really need more bookshelves.

Do blog-books bomb?

Gawker has compiled a pretty exaustive list of blogger book deals. It’s pretty interesting. Even with “less than stellar sales”, it’s amazing how many publishers keep coming back to the trough. They must just have money to burn.

I’m a huge fan of blogs and books. But I tend to think that blogs fill a niche need for readers and that these readers are satisfied with that, so they don’t buy the book. Plus, I think publishers let their eyes glaze over when their marketing people tell them how many hits a blog gets and they think that number translates directly into potential sales. So they do a sub-par job with the book “to get it out while it’s still relevant” and put a less than stellar book on the market.

Just my two cents.

Oh yeah, happy Banned Book Week! And here’s Google’s Banned Book initiative.

Don’t forget…

This weekend’s Book TV schedule is up.

I see that Sunday at Noon (EST) Chomsky (who is not dead) will be on talking about his 2003 Hegemony or Survival book that rocketed from obscurity to No.3 on Amazon after being mentioned at a United Nations meeting. Now you can see what all the hub-bub is about.

Selling stories via video

So Many Books is the reason I took to the whole blogging idea. I’ve been lurking there forever. It’s great reading, neat folks and I may have even learned something here and there.

Here’s a link to a post that introduces us to “video ads for books”. They’re fun to watch and yes, a tad addictive.