Reading Copy

If you’re not sure because you’ve never tried them, now you can!  Yesterday’s edition of our local newspaper in Victoria tipped me off to a new recipe collection, the Green Eggs & Ham Cookbook.  I recalled my childhood excitement over the silliness of Dr Seuss and such a meal but then I became intrigued - what do green eggs and ham taste like?  Would I, could I in a house?  I guess I’ll have to get the book and try out the recipe to know for sure!

And lo and behold, while looking up the Green Eggs & Ham Cookbook, I discovered that there is also a recently released Mary Poppins recipe book, Mary Poppins in the Kitchen: A Cookery Book with a Story.  This book cleverly presents recipes as a story of a week where Mary Poppins goes beyond a spoonful of sugar and teaches the Banks children how to cook.  

These two books have piqued my interest to see what other childrens’ books have become inspiration for cookery books! 

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The Literary Review’s annual Bad Sex in Fiction award, now in its 14th year, is always worth a read. The Guardian goes to town on it with extracts of the shortlisted books. Fans of this kind of literature can buy the winning book here - but remember we’ll know who you are.

Plus Indigo Chapters is throwing self-published authors a lifeline in Canada.

And a very big book about Manchester United costing £3,000…. I know an awful lot of people back home in the UK who wouldn’t pay a single penny for a book about Man U.

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If you’re looking for something to do this weekend in the New York area - you can stop by the Independent & Small Press Book Fair.

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The Library of America is going to reissue four of Philip K Dick’s novels next year, including Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 2007 marks 25 years since the release of the Bladerunner movie. That quarter of a century went quick - it seems like yesterday that I watched that film.

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If you’re in Illinois and someone offers you some college textbooks on the cheap then just say no.

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Lots of interesting stories from the weekend. The Times (of London) talks about book jackets and also author Ian McEwan, who has been accused of copying.

The New York Times and Canada’s Globe and Mail both have lists for books of the year.

Also a big thanks to Kevin from Bisonscat Books, who pointed out this article to me from the Chicago Tribune. Thanks, Kevin, I hadn’t seen it - a nice mention for AbeBooks.com.

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If you’re planning a literary holiday, the Literary Locales pages may come in handy.

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Tim from LibraryThing is constantly amazing me. I’ve been testing his UnSuggester, which recommends the books you are unlikely to read if you own/have read another. It’s fun to plug in your favourite titles or bestsellers and see what the opposite reads are.

Another great book thing today is My Penguin: classic books with blank covers that the reader can design or decorate personally. If you scan a copy of your cover and send it in to Penguin, they’ll even post it on their website.

I think some great literary jokes could be played by taking the blank covers of the Penguin titles and replacing them with the covers of the UnSuggester’s picks. Readers who picked up Girls in Pants (Sisterhood of Traveling Pants) by Ann Brashares might enjoy Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment after finding it inside the covers, and who knows, maybe readers of Web Standard Solutions by Dan Cederholm would appreciate the romance in Jane Austen’s Emma?

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UK artist Su Blackwell uses books as the medium for some striking pieces.

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As always The Guardian has some interesting things - like this story from California about ‘fotonovelas’ being used to fight drug crime and then there’s an excellent quiz on the ‘Great American Novel’ to celebrate Thanksgiving.

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Slate.com wonders if Google book search will uncover long-buried literary crimes.

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The Calcutta Medical College in India is in a quandry about what to do with several thousand rare medical books. It tried to give them to India’s National Library who refused to take them.

Here’s an example of one of the books that is housed in the college’s library “in a state of permanent ruin.”

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In the world of the ever fracturing audience and the consolidation of media power, how do smaller, lesser known authors and books get known. Is it enough to rely on the efforts of the publisher? Unlikely.

A couple of recent examples of doing something different surfaced recently:

• John Shors makes himself available to book club discussions by putting a letter in the back of the book with his e-mail address and an invitation.
• The authors of the WorldChanging book attempted to push their book to the #1 bestseller spot (on some other book site) by asking all their customers to purchase the book at the same time. The thinking being that the exposure of being #1 (even for one day) would drive awareness and sales.

Do these efforts work? Maybe. The key here seems to be engaging the audience in some way. You’re not just buying a book, you’re hacking the publishing system. Draw the customers into the experience, let it become a conversation (literally).

Any other examples of unusal book promotion?

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Despite all the criticism and media furore, people want to buy If I Did It - the controversial OJ Simpson book personally pulled by Rupert Murdoch. Our daily tracking data shows a significant number of folks are coming to AbeBooks.com and searching for the book - whether it is the finished article, advance copies or galleys. At the time of writing, there are no copies on the site.

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We noticed this story on the BBC this morning. Rare works by Hardy, Dickens and Trollope went under the hammer yesterday in Dorset.

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