We are admittedly a bit a slow side this morning — the coffee maker is taking its sweet time, the slacker! — so perhaps we’re completely missing the punch line here. But we doubt it. See, Penguin is seeing a return to the magic of serialized novels as a way to build online buzz. Naturally, […]
Analyzing Penguin’s Marketing Strategy Because We Can
September 8th, 2006 · 2 Comments
File Under: Books/Mags/Blogs · Marketing For Introverts
How To Sell A Book
September 6th, 2006 · Comments Off on How To Sell A Book
The BS household is celebrating a return to a life of DSL and electricity today. It is a thrilling, thrilling morning. You don’t realize how much you depend upon, oh, lights until you don’t have them. Turns out they’re quite useful, and the little pluggy thing that goes into the laptop serves a purpose. It […]
File Under: Books/Mags/Blogs
Suspension Of Belief
September 4th, 2006 · 2 Comments
The current trend in the blogging community is analysis and discussion of lonelygirl15, and we are ever-indulgent of trends. Hmm, no, that is not true. The fact of the matter is that lonelygirl15 is an example of our current thought process. Hey, you said, “BS, we really want to know what goes on in your […]
File Under: Marketing For Introverts · Non-Traditional Publishing
On Sour Grapes
September 4th, 2006 · 4 Comments
Stand back for a war of words – and of commas, apostrophes and split infinitives. One of Britain’s leading language experts has attacked Lynne Truss’s bestseller Eats, Shoots and Leaves for its ‘misconceived’ and ‘deeply unnerving’ zero tolerance approach to punctuation. David Crystal, a former colleague of Truss who once advised her that a book […]
File Under: Quote of the Week
Linking Is A Virtue, Not Linking Is A Vice
September 1st, 2006 · 1 Comment
We have been understandably worked up about this whole online presence thing this week. Hmm, maybe it’s not so understandable — it strikes us that you are not privy to our lengthy debates with the husband. Trust us when we say that nothing makes an evening fly by like a discussion about making the web […]
File Under: Back To Basics
On Tippling
August 31st, 2006 · 1 Comment
“We’ve been much drunker than this,” he said, “but the party was so nice that we were lulled into a false sense of security. Everybody was wearing jackets; there was classical music.We didn’t think anyone was going to steal our money.” He added: “Also, our office manager got into a fight with his girlfriend and […]
File Under: Quote of the Week
It’s The Story…And A Whole Lot More
August 31st, 2006 · 3 Comments
We have a friend (who shall remain almost nameless, but her initials are L.R.) who will be particularly interested in this post. Not that it won’t fascinate the socks off the rest of you, but this is really for her. Yes, our dear unnamed friend, we’ve found an interview with Stacy Boyd of Harlequin. Just […]
File Under: Publishers and Editors
On English
August 30th, 2006 · 1 Comment
“I don’t know what they call ‘English’ now. I can understand the attractiveness of it. But I don’t hold the view that reading English is a soft option, or at least it shouldn’t be. It should be a severe option, restricted to those people who are qualified to do it. I’ve been out of touch […]
File Under: Quote of the Week
The Thinking Piece
August 29th, 2006 · 2 Comments
Once your domain name is secured, you can breathe easy. No need to worry about someone grabbing your precious name and forcing you to spend hard-earned cash on buying it back (by the way, if you do spend said cash, do not feel bad; it happens a lot…in your next life, go with an unusual […]
File Under: Back To Basics
Back To Basics
August 28th, 2006 · 5 Comments
This past weekend, we were reminded that, well, oh how to say this?, that while the Internet as we know it is an unruly teenager — no, Yahoo!, you can’t borrow the car, Google? You’re far too young to know about those things. Netscape? It’s great that you’ve decided what you want to be when […]
File Under: Square Pegs