Alabama First Lady Patsy Riley will be at Milestone Books this Saturday, May 9th, 10am-12pm. She’ll be signing her new cookbook When the Doorbell Rings at the Governor’s Mansion. And if you want that book, you better go to Milestone because I can’t find it on Amazon or Indiebound.org. It seems to only be available at the Montgomery Gift Shop and select local bookstores.
I do a lot of thinking about ebooks and digital media, but Readerville pointed the way to a post by author Jennifer Weiner about something I have never really thought about: does it matter what an author looks like? Their example given is a good one:
the idea that she would likely have reacted differently to the author’s tale of marital woe had she known she was a gorgeous blonde who’d have no trouble finding a new mate.
I have to admit to often deciphering an author’s name as I reach for a book in the bookstore. Especially in the Current Events topic areas. You really do get different points of view from people living in different places, but I never applied to the sympathy and believability side of things.
I’m going to have to go through LibraryThing’s author database and look up all of my authors to see who lives up the image in my mind and who surprises me.
In this day of self-publishing services partnering with, ebook vendors and vending machines that print books, it is not hard to envision a day when machines would control it all. But then you run across a site like Lulu.com’s new service and realize that day is a long long way off.
They have a new Title Scorer where wannabe best-selling authors can thow their titles up and “to the scientific test and find out whether it has what it takes for bestseller success.”
I thought it a cool idea. Then I typed in “Of Mice and Men”, which in it’s infinite wisdom cranked out the following result:
Oh well. Humans (1) Machines (0)
So tonight, I raise my glass to all you editors, AQ folks and authors who actually think about these things while discerning what will resonate with your readers.
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.
