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Soapbox: The Hobson's Choice of Hardcover Pricing
I just got married and 30 bucks on a single title is not in my paying-off-a-wedding budget. I can wait until paperback. Which is no answer at all. Telling a customer with a burning desire to wait is lunacy. That's like a restaurant telling me to order the six-course prix fixe or leave hungry.
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Soapbox: The Audacity Of Hype
Authors need to publicize their books, but not forever.
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Soapbox: False Advertising
No nomination process exists for the NBCC award. Yet there it was, in the author's bio on the jacket of a newly published book: "nominated for the National Book Critics Circle award.”
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A New Perspective on E-Book Pricing
The publishing industry is right to be concerned over $9.99 price tags for bestselling e-books. One price has the potential to disrupt the current publishing model, as well as change how books are marketed and priced in the future. The good news is that pricing techniques can be used to effectively manage this transition.
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Soapbox: We Slept With Tiger
We did. Really. Ask him; he is not going to deny it. Surprisingly, we had been having trouble selling our story. Gloria Allred did not call back. The Enquirer, TMZ, and In Touch did not respond to our messages. We were going to end up being, like, Nos. 21 & 22 at the rate things were going.
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The Yr of The Tweet
Two thousand nine was one big gloomer, Cruel to poets bent on humor. Versifiers can’t be funny When everyone is losing money. Pink slips issued, long knives flashed, Departments cut and imprints slashed, Luncheon budgets compromised, Bookspan party vaporized, Editors abruptly laid off, And don’t get me started with Bernie Madoff! O Muse, I pray, your face make visible And help this ...
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Soapbox: Fringe Benefit
I think I suffer from hypochondriasis, that curious syndrome wherein the individual—usually a medical student—perceives herself or others to be experiencing the symptoms of the disease(s) she is studying. I'm not a med student, but as the frequent editor of prescriptive health titles, I have a similar up-close view of far too many gory bodily functions and medical misfires.
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Soapbox: How Stephenie Meyer Cramps My Style
I extolled virtues like patience, diligence, and faith. And then I learned the story of how Stephanie Meyer broke in.
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How to Sell a Book Without Wearing Clothes
I'm the kind of guy who likes to jump into things without having any idea how to make them work. As a kid, I tried building model airplanes. My most successful attempt was a model of the Hindenburg. After the crash. In my 20s, I tried something I totally knew nothing about: marriage. Decades later, I know a little, but I'm reluctant to write about it.
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Soapbox: Time to Change
Book publishing has been trying to commit suicide for all the decades I've been writing, and now it's finally getting some traction on that project. Its latest folly is ironic: one of our most antitechnology businesses now places unrealistic hopes on technology as a savior, a textbook case of an American industry's unwillingness to make significant changes until one minute before doomsday.
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Soapbox: Blame It on The Rep
Being the rep for your own book inspires many feelings. Most of them induce nausea.
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Soapbox: Let Loose
How simply being myself on Facebook led to several career boosters.
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Soapbox: Now More Than Ever
There's been some talk recently about the future of the fall regional association trade shows: GLiBA, MBA, MPIBA, NAIBA, NEIBA, NCIBA, PNBA, SCIBA and SIBA. Every August and September, I curse these shows.
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Soapbox: Selling Green
Business owners are realizing that they have a responsibility to help protect the environment. But what about your bookstore? Where do you fit in, and can changes you enact really make a difference?
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Soapbox: The More Things Change...
When I first conceived of Heather Has Two Mommies in 1988, I had no idea that it would be so loved - and so hated. I had no idea it would appear on “most challenged” book lists alongside Huckleberry Finn and The Catcher in the Rye. I had no idea it would become part of the congressional record and be debated on the Senate floor.
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Soapbox: Textbook Buying 101
Two books, $325? If you haven't purchased a textbook recently, you're in for a surprise.
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Soapbox: Where Ideas Go to Die, Not Spread
In this environment, independent bookstores have become the antithesis of the ubiquity of the long tail’s endless web. But they needn’t retreat from this new reality. They can thrive.
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Soapbox: Embargoing... Going... Gone!
Some consider the embargo a nuisance that has outlived its usefulness; others think it is a reliable marketing strategy. A surprising number think embargo is the French word for snails.
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Soapbox: Meeting History
Following a signing for my book, I stood in a parking lot in South San Francisco and watched a man pull a small, copper-plated pistol from a shoebox in the trunk of his Audi.
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Soapbox: E-structions
I am pleased to announce that I will be conducting an exclusive e-book signing of a limited number of first e-ditions of my latest title. Making eye contact with the author, while impossible, is discouraged nonetheless.
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