Now, I’m no Alvin Lustig or Paul Rand, but does anyone at Amazon REALLY think these are the “10 Best Covers of 2008” in all of the tens of thousands of books that were printed this year? Really?
I mean, there were some GORGEOUS covers done this year. Maybe Amazon’s editors just let some random number generator pick these. Even with the Chip Kidd cover included, this list is just weird, at best. Feel free to disagree and if you do, please explain why. I just don’t get it.
BookFinds has a fun post on the”10 Best Changes of a Novel’s Title”. My favorite is #5…
5. Originally, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 was titled “Catch-18? but the year that he was going to publish his novel, Leon Uris published a novel about German-occupied Warsaw called Mila 18, so Heller had to pick another number.
I mean, who would have thought that the 22 was such an arbitrary choice? I bet I heard three people this week refer to something as a Catch-22. Which just seems better than Catch-18, with the double digit and all. Have a good weekend!
I have signed up for my first ever book challenge (I feel like a grown up blogger now). I’m tossing my hat in the ring for J.Kaye’s 2009 Support Your Local Library Challenge. Basically, I’m committing to borrowing and reading 25 books from my local library. I check out a LOT of books from the library, that I almost feel like I’m cheating. I even started tagging all of my borrowed books with JCLC on LibraryThing.
Continue reading Check out this Reading Challenge
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.
