Nick Basbanes’ latest ‘book about books’ is out today. It’s titled Editions & Impressions: My Twenty Years on the Book Beat and is a collection of essays written by Basbanes over the past 20 years. There is a hb trade edition available. But you can also get the Deluxe or Limited editions straight from the folks at Fine Books, if you have the cash!
According to the press, most of the articles here have been expanded upon and updated since they first ran. This one seems to have a pretty large global scope too. Could be a good one.
The NY Times ran an article on blogs/sites moving into printed products. Pretty interesting though nothing really new is mentioned. They don’t even mention the word “blook“. Which is a book mainly consisting of blog posts (and one word I hope never makes it into the dictionary). Basically some marketing folks look at a blog’s traffic stats and see dollar signs, but over the last two years, publishers have realized that a high number of unique visitors does not always translate into dollars.
Though it seems that comics and illustrations do seem to do better than fiction and narratives.
Basically, Frank Warren (of Post Secret fame) summed-up the whole business model when he is quoted in the article saying “I don’t think there is a formula,” Mr. Warren said. “There is a bit of magic there that can’t be replicated.”
Festivities officially start January 14th and go all the way through April. Looks like lots of movies, group talks, road trips are on the calendar. I’m digging their plan to place 1,500 copies of the book around town for folks to pick up, read and then set loose in the wild again. Could be good fun!
According to Swagler’s post, one of the speakers at the Alabama Bound event, in April, is a scholar who wrote a paper “questioning Atticus’s heroism.” Huh? What blasphemy is this? I’m going to have to find said paper and investigate. You can bet I’ll have red markers at the ready!
Actually, I’m just glad that the JCLC has taken the time to get all this organized.
So now you can self-publish a book with them and they’ll help broker ad deals, kinda like you would for placing ads on your blog, I think. I guess book publishers got tired of seeing all the rich folks sitting over at the magazine publisher’s table and decided to hop on the train.
