Friday, January 30th, Former President Jimmy Carter is scheduled to be at the Books-A-Million in Brookwood Mall signing his latest book We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land. I couldn’t find where you could reserve copies in advance, but he’s scheduled to be there at 7 p.m.
The Emmet O’Neal Library is hosting one of its one-in-a-blue-moon Friends of the Library Paperback Book Sale on Tuesday, January 6th. The sale will run from 9am to 9pm. I’m always amazed how many great condition books these folks are able to collect.
If you plan on going, please try and go late in the day… so I might have a chance to pick through the offerings first! 🙂
One of Birmingham’s more eclectic literary spots is breaking out the guerilla tactics to help keep the doors open. Home to one of the best local collections of used books and staffed by volunteers, Greencup Books sponsors local music shows, reading and classes. Most of which bring in a few dollars in donations as best. The shop has tried to make a go at it on meager foot traffic and online sales, but they’re just not footing the bill.
So, the every energetic and creative staff have organized a Read-a-thon. They’re asking local Birmingham folks to gather up “nickle a page” sponsorships and then stop by the store and start reading 8am Friday, December 19th through 8am Monday, December 22nd.
That’s a lot of coffee to stay up reading… but I did just start Dan Simmons’ 784-page Drood…. hmmmmm.
I attended my third O’Reilly webinar today. Titled What Publishers Need to Know About Digitization, it was led by the very savvy Liza Daly. They said they’re working to get the session’s recording up on the site, so it should be up there soon. This was, by far, the best webcast I have attended. Though the one on Why Publishers Should Care about SEO was ok too. I do wish Daly and crew had spent a little less time with the 101 intro stuff (how to scan something) and a little more on the monetization part that they flew through. In fact, I’m still unclear on where any of the monetization is coming from in any of Daly’s 3 examples. I’ll have to go back and look. The next webcast is Twitter for Business, in case you’re interested.
But today was really just another session of 100+ people asking questions (and getting the answered!), that showed just how many cool tools publishers have at their disposal. They just have to be creative. I know that the holiday season is predicted to be a slow one for books, but after today’s session I can see the potential and though things may change a little and new formats, distribution channels may emerge, I really think that books and publishing are going to be just fine.
Much to the dismay of Jeff Gomez, whose book I plan on reviewing later this week.
