Ooligan Press Masters Marketing
posted February 17, 2010
Posted by Mariko Fujinaka in Bookselling books marketing publishing
I’m always interested to see what Ooligan Press, the student-run publishing house of Portland State University’s master’s in publishing program, is up to. One of its current projects is the launch of Classroom Publishing: A Practical Guide for Teachers. Though the book will not be available in bookstores until March 2010, the marketing for it has been underway for quite some time. This is a good lesson for us here at Thomas Riggs & Company, as it teaches us it’s never too early to start publicizing a book.
Candyfreak Steve Almond Jumps into the Self-publishing Fray
posted February 1, 2010
Posted by Mariko Fujinaka in Bookselling books events publishing self-publishing trends
Steve Almond, author of Candyfreak and My Life in Heavy Metal, among others, has taken publishing matters into his own hands. Though Almond is still a hot commodity (his Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life will be availble April 13, 2010), he found that one of his book ideas was not generating much interest with publishers. His idea was a book that could be flipped over and read in two directions. One side would offer short stories, and the other side would contain essays about writing. The title? This Won’t Take But a Minute, Honey.
Quick, name some Japanese authors. I bet you couldn’t come up with many names, could you? Plenty of English-language books get translated for the Japanese market, but not many
Japanese-language books get translated into English. Japanese book editor Hiroki Sakai decided to do something about this inequity and in 2001 founded Vertical Inc., a small publishing house that specializes in translated works of contemporary Japanese fiction and nonfiction.
Looking Back at the Decade’s Mysterious Sleepers
posted December 24, 2009
Posted by Erin Brown in books publishing
‘Tis the season for editors and bloggers everywhere to weigh in on what they believe to be the best books of the year. Some are even taking the opportunity to size up the whole literary decade. The most interesting list I’ve seen is The decade’s best unread books, compiled by the Guardian.
“While people are busy ranking the hit books of the last 10 years,” the Guardian says, “many a publishing insider is quietly mourning a volume that unaccountably never made the ‘best of’ or bestseller lists, but should have. Here publishers, agents and translators speak up for the ones that really shouldn’t have got away.”
It’s fascinating to get this behind the scenes perspective on books that were expected to do well but didn’t.
Why NOT Judge a Book by Its Cover?
posted November 17, 2009
Posted by Mariko Fujinaka in Bookselling book design books publishing
From an early age we are warned not to judge a book by its cover, but now that I am an adult, I question this advice. Why can’t we judge a book by the cover? Isn’t that why new books are displayed face out, to capture one’s attention? Why are book designers and illustrators paid good money to create attractive covers if they don’t matter? Now there are certain books I will buy no matter what the cover is, but with undiscovered authors when I am wandering aimlessly through a bookstore? Something needs to catch my eye, and an ugly or boring cover isn’t going to do it.
So let’s conduct a little experiment here. Following are four covers for the same book, Chinua Achebe’s seminal Things Fall Apart.
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