After tomorrow’s strawberry margarita fiesta (what? It’s the start of true strawberry season here, and a girl has to celebrate with the freshest berries being blended all to hell to create the perfect alcoholic libations. Shesh), I will start my mini vacation and finally get a chance to start posting the recommendations for the book lists you’ve so thoughtfully provided. I’ve got a nice sized reply list going, but I have to work both in Word and in Blogger to make sure all the coding is right, something that necessitates a functioning Blogger.
I will also get to update the sidebar (so get in any links—review sites, favorite posts, other cool book sites—you think would be appropriate), and answer all my email.
The idea of getting actual stuff accomplished here at home makes me feel faint. Oh the wonders!
Until then, why don’t y’all go weigh in on the Venti book debate over at SBLTN. Besides coining the term, Venti, as it applies to the new paperback size (the one between Trade and Mass Market for those of you wondering), SB Sarah is trying to help out Nora Roberts by finding out if there is anything good about it. If nothing else, weed through the comments until you find the one (by April, I believe) that explains grain direction (in paper) and how that affects the way a book opens, flops, and general comfort. I really need to contact her and see if she’ll enlarge on that subject for this blog.
Mapletree7, of Book of the Day fame, has compiled the Alternate List of Winners for Best Fiction over the past 25 years and the winner is Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy. I must agree that this is a wonderful trilogy (meant to be read together, damn it, I don’t know why you see City of Glass published on its own), and if you haven’t read it then you should go buy it now. Don’t let the post-modernism scare you.
Bookslut interviews Anthony Bourdain just as my Boss and I scheme to get him into the store long enough to sign all his stock (and maybe just one, tiny, inconsequential photo-op to forever let us remember the day that Anthony Bourdain was in our frickin’ store). It must be fate…or the fact that he is touring.
Agent Kristin rants on covers, cover control, cover feel (as in does it feel like the story as opposed to whether it feels in a tactile sense), and what an author can do to help the process. Check it out if you haven’t already. Marketing people aren’t stupid, they’re just overworked, so be prepared to help them out and make allowances.
Enough links for now, I need to get to work so we can write reviews and discuss the possibilities of a Manga party to boost sales. Speaking of Manga:
Dear Drama Queen,
Your Yaoi (sp?) Manga is a huge hit with my female customers in that crucial range between 18 and 34, and I’m glad that I can provide them with your books. Your price point makes me happy too. Still, while I don’t mind carding anyone who wishes to buy your product, I wish that you would plastic wrap your books so that I can have some small barrier to keep children under 18 from looking at the artwork. Right now we have to keep them behind the counter, something that both keeps browsing buyers from discovering your titles and makes me feel like the vice cops might break down my doors at any moment to raid my store. I realize that plastic wrap is an extra cost, but I don’t think that the resulting price increase will hurt sales at all.
Thanks.
1 comment:
Allow me to dissent on Paul Auster. The few pages on him in this pretty much summarized my reaction. And that's before I had the chance to read what he sounds like when he doesn't have the "sic" of intentional style to disguise what a dim bulb he is.
And, as you might guess, I'm hardly allergic to postmodernism, but as I think Charles Newman once said about it, nothing kills a movement faster than being unable to distinguish what's new and original from what's second rate
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