What’s the Buzz: Borders Tweets Free Books; Apple Owes Us a Tablet

By Hannah Johnson

The best of the blogosphere and social media…

Borders has decided to combine its Twittering with Dan Brown fever. From today until September 24, Borders will give away 80 free copies of The Lost Symbol. Apparently 10 vouchers for free books are hidden in Borders stores in 10 US cities (I’m not a math genius or anything, but my calculations say that 10 vouchers in 10 cities add up to 100 books, not 80). To find the vouchers, you have to follow the clues from the Borders’ Twitter feed. Happy hunting!

PW links (for the first time that I know of) to a Mashable story, which predicts that “the Apple tablet will eat Kindle’s lunch” because of its multi-functionality, color display, and general coolness. At this point, so much media coverage has been devoted to the Apple Tablet as if it is a real device that Apple would be remiss not to actually produce one.

On the light side, I chuckled over @JenHoward’s tweet today: “So very, very tired of ‘E-books are catching on!’ stories.” It reminds of the days, unfortunately not so long ago, when people were saying, “the Internet is going to be big.”

About the Author

Hannah Johnson

Hannah Johnson is the publisher of international book industry magazine Publishing Perspectives, which provides daily information and news about book markets around the world. In addition to building partnerships with international cultural and trade organizations, she works with the Frankfurt Book Fair to organize and support a number of its overseas initiatives. Hannah has also worked as the managing editor for an online media company, The Hooch Life, focused on craft distillers and cocktail experts. Prior to that, she worked as a project manager for the Frankfurt Book Fair’s New York office, managing various business and marketing activities.