Links of Interest (At Least to Me) 11/10/06
by Eoin Purcell
Oh what a wonderful world. I have been getting really annoyed at the links and links and more links that The Big Bad Book Blog have been serving up (I am conscious of the hypocrisy/irony here) and then today they served up a wonderful piece going in depth into the mysteries of buying/getting front table exposure in superstore Borders.
Here
I found some interesting news today on a newly discovered blog called New Media Trends. The post covers the fascinating changes in the Danish Newspaper industry. Well worth reading and really offers a perspective on what the world of rapid innovation looks like.
Here
Jeff Jarvis posts some nice thoughts on the whole Google/YouTube thing.
Here
Two others that really deserve a look: The Rejecter is a literary agent’s assistant’s blog and Working Towards the Betterment of Publishing is by a government contractor and amateur novelist.
Here
And last but not least: Google Docs & Spreadsheets.
Here
That thing about getting prominent placement on bookshop tables is interesting. I bought fiction for Waterstones in Cambridge many years ago, and at that point I put on the tables the books I personally liked a lot, the ones that sold really well, and the ones people talked about. Publishers were selling to us all the time, but they didn’t put any pressure on to place stuff – probably times have changed since the early 90s! If they wanted us to do a dumpbin then all they had to do was provide it. There was often quite a fight amongst the staff as to who got to take home the lilfesize cardboard figures from such promotional displays!
I had the same sort of experiences at the same time – I managed a few bookshops in the early 90s. Window displays were the really big things for us.
Addy
I enjoyed the link to rejector — it was fun to read the rant about writing genre fiction when everyone else in the mfa program was writing “literary” fiction. Thanks Eoin!
I’m enjoying the range of links you consistently provide, even though I’m having trouble keeping up with them consistently! Thanks.