The Alabama Book Festival is today down in Old Alabama Town, Montgonmery, AL. We’re loading the kiddos up and headed down there. Looks to be a good weather day.
Robyn Litchfield just had something post to the Montgomery Advertiser site though, and it sounds like it’ll at least be as good as last year’s!
Here is a list of authors and venue schedule for today.
It’s National Library Week and the Birmingham Public Library is celebrating by printing up coupons for $5 off of your overdue fines. They can be found online and in the most recent The Reader. Offer expires when Library Week does, on April 18th.
Chris Anderson says his new book Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business will be unleashed – free- upon the world on July 6th. As popular as his first book The Long Tail was, I’m sure I’m not the only anxious to read his latest thoughts.
In the interview he had with Guy Kawaski, Anderson does say that he expects the free version of his book to spur print sales. Something many in the industry are watching, I know. How does a publisher make money at giving their products away for free? While I’m sure the book will contain nothing as useful or solid as the formula filled The Art and Science of Book Publishing, Anderson says
“If you can convert 5 percent of users to paid, you can cover your costs. Anything above that, and it becomes extremely popular.”
I haven’t started crunching the numbers yet, but that seems to assume a very slim overhead. But it gives us a starting point. Something for the industry to aim for or pass. We’ll see. Five percent it is.
One of these days I am going to have to make it to SXSW…. but until then, thank the internet gods for blogs and twitter.
The 3rd Annual Student Book Collecting Contest, over in Tuscaloosa, is under way. Both graduate students and undergraduate students have until March 27th to catalog and submit their entries. There is an essay to write and it turns out that 80% of the book collection, er, must be books… hmmm. Seems they are allowing some cd’s and dvd’s to be included… anyway… there are cash prizes with the 1st Place winner getting $500 and a chance to compete in Fine Books & Collections annual competition.
Awards are April 16th at Gorgas Library and might just be worth the drive from Birmingham, if the collectors show enough creativity and fun with their book collections.
