bookstores
November 19, 2009
- It’s been a rough year for most of us, but I guess I should count myself among the lucky ones. When Chronicle Books began mapping out promotional plans for the Grateful Dead Scrapbook, in late summer or early fall, I turned down one of the first bookstores to invite me for a signing. Lord knows, it could have turned out to be the only one. But it was Clayton Books, in Clayton, which I ...
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November 6, 2009
- I live in Philadelphia, a wonderful city, vibrant and diverse, with a downtown that thrives after dark and on weekends, with residential neighborhoods that are cosmopolitan here and provincial there. Arts and culture? We have museums to rival those in D.C. or New York. We have restaurants offering every imaginable cuisine. We have a wonderful symphony orchestra and a magnificent ...
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November 6, 2009
- I was quite taken aback by myself today. Ever since my books first came out, I've been so busy working on other projects that I haven't really had much time to sit back and take in what's been going on around me. The books have had great reviews, and I've been very happy about that, in the few seconds before falling asleep when I had a quiet moment to think about something other than my next ...
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November 5, 2009
- I don't have a lot of time, but this week's suggsted topic is near and dear to my heart. I have spent long hours of my life in independent bookstores, browsing shelves, piling and unpiling musty old volumes in search of treasure. That was how I learned to love books - how I cam to collect them. The bookstore is a magic place...I wrote a story about that once.Now they serve a purpose that ...
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October 27, 2009
- It had to happen. The reading in Half Moon Bay this last Saturday had the smallest audience yet: three (two SOs and a close friend) plus the bookstore staff. I felt terrible for having asked my readers to slog through October traffic over the hill for so little benefit. They were wonderful, though, very professional. They brought the show, even if Half Moon Bay didn't cough up the audience.I'm ...
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August 12, 2009
- You may have noticed, when browsing the shelves at your local bookstore, those little cards that are sometimes attached to the edge of the shelf, with extra info about one of the books. Most often these take the form of “staff favorites” or “recommended books” and the like. They are called shelf talkers, and can be used to highlight certain titles and draw the book browser’s attention. ...
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July 31, 2009
- I love the concept of everyone blogging on the same topic at the same time -- and I'm very much looking forward to learning what I can from other people's mishaps in the publications of their first books. Is that wrong? The topic of the day is pretty intimidating for me. My first book on a big house is due out at the end of September. I'm sure there are plenty of things I've already done ...
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July 20, 2009
- This is a fascinating article on book publishing in the era of digitization — it deconstructs the industry, showing how the pie is divided (as writers know, it’s not so great for writers), and how this will likely change with increasing digitization; the three big waves currently hitting the industry; and what a future of e-products might look like for authors, agents, publishers, and ...
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July 6, 2009
- This Boston Globe article on a Vermont independent bookstore offers a glimpse of what our future bookstores might look like — and it actually paints a pretty nice picture.Imagine your local indie bookstore with “all the classic trappings: exposed beams, wood tables stacked with hardcover bestsellers, comfortable leather chairs nestled into alcoves” — as the Globe describes the Northshire ...
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June 30, 2009
- I went to a reading last night by Jacqueline Carey, promoting her new book Naamah’s Kiss, at the University of Washington bookstore. She read a bit from the next book in line after Naamah’s Kiss, much to the delight of a very devoted audience. What I liked most was that, during the Q & A session that followed, she described her writing process, which is much like mine (outline all the ...
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