Katie Hall, formerly of Bantam Dell, has moved to Doubleday. We haven’t heard much more on this topic. Hall previously worked with fiction and non-fiction, especially that relating to military and sociological issues. Doubleday Books
While we’re more anime freaks that graphic novel freaks (and that reminds us that we’re missing this weekend’s anime festival, and, if our husband reads this, it would be really great if he surprised us with a trip to Anaheim), we appreciate the Japanese style of comics. Word on the street is graphic novels are hot — we’ve actually done some hands-on research here (said research consisting of perusing the selection at a Barnes & Noble). Now Scholastic is joining the fun, launching an imprint called Graphix, due to launch in early to mid 2005. Scholastic Joins Comics World Scholastic
It’s surprisingly gloomy for a Fourth of July weekend. Definitely curl-up-on-the-couch-with-a-good-book weather. But noooo, we have a bunch of editor and agent updates to post (we still haven’t worked out why we hold all this information until the weekend, but there you have it; we’re fairly certain our readers don’t come to us for breaking news). Besides, we already did the good book thing, and once we finish here, there’s another waiting for us. So, item the first: Dan Halpern was promoted to publisher of HarperCollins’s Ecco imprint. We were unable to find out what sort of cool perks come
We have an author friend (to protect her identity, we’ll call her, hmm, Jill) who recently asked us how she can win friends and influence people via her website. Naturally we had many thoughts on the subject, and we think we scared Jill with our enthusiasm. Jill realizes the importance of an author’s website, and she realizes the importance of an interesting author’s websites. Readers who have been online for some time are fairly sophisticated — they expect more from an author than a marketing brochure; they see through publisher-driven efforts. The best author sites offer community — some authors
We don’t like treadmills. They are unstable and unsafe. For proof, you need look no further than our experience on one while reading Georgette Heyer’s Black Sheep. Without going into too much embarrassing detail, let us say there was uncontrollable laughter and an uncontrollable tread. We are sufficiently padded, so bruises barely showed. Heyer, a prolific author who died in 1974, wrote primarily about the Regency period — a fascinating period of cultural history. The bawdy Georgians were morphing into the hypocritical, repressed Victorians as the Industrial Age dawned. Little things like democracy (which you may have heard about in
We have a love-hate relationship with our hometown paper. Actually, now that we think about it, we don’t even read our hometown paper (The Pasadena Star-News, but we’re sure it’s a fine publication) — we read The Los Angeles Times. And, in all fairness, our hate is mostly directed toward the Times’s website, including, but not limited to, its bizarre insistence on charging to access the Calendar section (we, as print subscribers don’t have to pay, which is good because we wouldn’t). Hmm, it strikes us that this post may actually be on topic because we often want to reference
We actually saw the Jessica Cutler thing bright and early this morning (as did other bloggers of our acquaintance — man, some of you get up way too early), but our mind refused to process the story. Mostly because we were hot on the trail of what had to be the craziest thing we’d ever heard: NPR music reviews are hip. We understand your shock, and suggest you sit down and put your head between your knees. We cannot comment on the inscrutable part of the story because we have this weird habit of only half-listening to NPR (after a
Sometimes we must move off topic (yes, we do have one, even if it doesn’t seem that way) to marvel at the world around us. So, we’re going to post a few items that stood out on what is otherwise a slow news day. First story, as predicted (can the inevitable be predicted? We believe not, but we also want to pretend we can see into the future), Jessica (Washingtonienne) Cutler has landed a book deal. Six figures, HyperionDisney (if we weren’t saddened by this state of affairs, we’d actually chortle over this, especially in light of Disney’s, uh, image),
Really, we don’t require restaurant recommendations from authors, but what the heck. As it turns out, Laurie Notaro is perfectly willing to open a vein and share. Powells.com interviews Notaro about turning misfortune (lack of publisher interest) into fortune (self-publishing and thereby garnering major publisher interest). The lengthy interview discusses, among other things, her new book I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies): True Tales of a Loudmouth Girl and how being a dork is okay. We cannot begin to explain our relief. Laurie Notaro’s Ongoing Action Adventure
We’ve been following stories about the Sony Librie for quite some time. As early adopters of ebook technology (the defunct Rocket ebook, specifically), we firmly believe these devices will help with some of life’s more pressing problems: inability to move through the house due to endless piles of books, justifying said piles to the husband, justifying the extra suitcase for vacactions because one should never leave town without sufficient reading supplies, and, because we don’t keep every book that crosses our palm (sacrilege in some circles, but it really is a very small house), reducing the anguish that inevitably accompanies
