PublicAffairs has promoted Gene Taft out of the publicity department to the role of associate publisher. Taft will be tasked with improving non-traditional sales, including those via the web. We remain available should he desire our thoughts on this particular topic — we certainly have much to share. PublicAffairs Books
The Quarto Group has named Richard Green as publisher for Marshall Editions, which features highly illustated books for adults and children. No, we must be honest, we don’t know what the difference between a regular illustrated book versus a highly illustrated book might be. The Quarto Group
You’d think after missing last week’s org chart updates, we’d be forced to spend the entire day typing frantically to catch up. Ha! Fooled you…the summer doldrums (aka vacations) have hit the publishing industry. That’s not to say you should worry — we do have a few changes for you. And so we begin on this hot August morning. Maureen O’Neal has left Ballantine due to the elimination of her position. No futher details were forthcoming (yes, it does make us curious). Ballantine Books
Our final word of advice on the katie.com topic, movie studios regularly register all possible domain names for projects, pretty much on day one (this is to prevent cybersquatters). Authors should consider this move — it’s a relatively inexpenisve prospect and could be a boon to your marketing efforts. Yeah, we know, we shouldn’t have to say this, but we will. For cheap registrations, we recommend Go Daddy, but there are many places you can do this. You will be glad you took this into your own hands. Trust us. Go Daddy
Plume, an imprint of Penguin Putnam, has issued a press release announcing that they are renaming the book Katie.com. The release is posted in PDF format (sigh, remind us to explain why that’s irritating some other time), so we’re going to excerpt a few of our favorite quotes, just because that’s what press releases are for. In an effort to avoid an association between the book originally titled Katie.com and the website Katie.com, Plume and the author decide to make this title change. This is good news (a little belated, but what the heck). However, the next quote scares us.
It’s Friday, Things are slow. We’re supposed to be tackling a spreadsheet that makes us cry. So indulge us for a moment. For some people, grocery shopping is a chore; for us, it is an integral part of our social life. We see a lot of things at our local store, but looking back, we’ve never actually witnessed a customer picking up a tabloid and adding to their pile. We see such items being picked up, skimmed, and replaced on the shelf, but never bought. Though someone must, right? Circulation appears to be up (though we read about sufficient circulation
We have a friend whose job is author escort. She’s the one who drives authors to and fro during their visits to the Los Angeles area. Because: It is [Joan] Robbins’ view — shared, evidently, by the publishers who pay her several hundred dollars a day to chaperone legally competent adults on book tours in South Florida — that authors “don’t know where the hell they’re going.” We find this job fascinating (maybe because the husband thinks we would be more efficient with a handler — we remain convinced we can lure any professional to the dark side). So we
The husband and I were talking about one of our prized possessions: specifically the Replacements mobile from the Pleased to Meet Me Tour. This was the tour where the band was pleased to meet us multiple times. We also think this is the tour where the husband stole Paul Westerberg’s beer, but that’s another topic entirely. We can’t imagine getting rid of such an item, but we don’t recall seeing it in the past ten years. But anything could be in the boxes in the garage. The ones with “Important” in big black and red letters on all four sides.
One advantage of laziness is that sometimes other people read and analyze things well before we work our way down the first screen. And while we are certainly capable of writing megabyts about novels and social issues (yeah, we know, the megabytes have already been written, just this week alone, we’ve been all over the concept), we’re going to let Sarah Weinman tackle this subject as it relates to mysteries. We won’t add a thing. Okay, except for the part where the article notes that authors tackled social issues in the 1930s, too. Um, not to be one of those
Just today, we had a pseudo-marketing discussion with a friend (pseudo because we don’t have a clue from marketing), and talked about how word of mouth is really important. And we weren’t meaning verbal stuff. Alas! The media has seen the light. We never got the fuss over “deep linking” — it was always our belief that only those who way overpaid for their home page design railed (and sued) against the practice. You don’t read the yellow pages from the beginning to get to listings for pizza delivery…you pretty much head straight for the “piz…” section. Now certain organizations
