Tweeters and bloggers are teaching publishers new tricks, and each continues to profit from collaboration with the other. By Rachel Aydt Blogger. Vlogger. Tweeter. Author. Journalist. These words aren’t synonymous, and yet they all have one thing in common: behind these terms are people who are jockeying in the media world for your attention. They could be selling something (whether …
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Cool Idea: Five-year “Anniversary” of Memoir Prompts Book Party
By Rachel Aydt Last Friday night, at the Bowery Poetry Club in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the book GirlBomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir, by Janice Erlbaum, was being celebrated on its 5th Anniversary by roughly fifty people who appeared to have been deeply touched in different ways by the memoir. At its root, Girlbomb (published by Villard in 2006) is a story …
#TwtrBkPty: How Twitter is Helping Publishers Reach 100,000 Readers 140 Characters at a Time
By Rachel Aydt Like gallery openings, one might stumble into a neighborhood bookstore only to find a casual book release party. Maybe there’s a few cheap bottles of Chilean red, some chat, and a little reading to go along with it. So what happens when you take away all of those elements, but still call it a party? The Twitter …
How Authors, Booksellers, Archivists Are Crowdsourcing Funding Online
• Websites like Kickstarter.com, Indiegogo.com, and Invested.in are helping artistic entrepreneurs raise money for new projects. • Here, we look at three book-related projects — a comic book, an online library, and a new bookstore — to see if they succeeded in getting the money they needed. By Rachel Aydt Kickstarter: “A New Way to Fund & Follow Creativity”, which was …
Graphic, Novel: Cuba: My Revolution Brings the Harsh Reality of Castro’s Revolution to Comics
• Cuba by Inverna Lockpez and Dean Haspiel, offers a unique view of Castro’s Revolutionary-era Cuba from the point-of-view of one of its dissident artists. • Haspiel offers a visual interpretation of his interview with PP writer Rachel Aydt and discusses the challenges of interpreting with such a highly-charged and personal story. Interview by Rachel Aydt Some 20 years ago, Eisner …
So Many “Friends,” So Little Friendship: Authors Discuss Mingling Social Media, Self-Promotion and Real Life
• Today, authors are compelled to constantly self-promote, but the practice isn’t always pleasant or appropriate. • What happens when the intimacy of the typically quiet writer’s life, and the nature of real friendship, blends with the public persona of our professional selves online? By Rachel Aydt “My original goal with Facebook was to use it as a marketing tool,” …
Old World, High Style: A Visit to Paris’ Librairie Galignani, Est. 1801, Publishers Since 1520
• Paris’ venerable Librairie Galignani lays claim to being the oldest English language bookstore on the European continent. • Despite its age — the store was founded in 1801, but the publishers of the same name date back to 1520 — it has weathered the years well and continues be an important part of Paris’ vibrant literary community. By Rachel Aydt …
On Not Changing With the Times: How Manhattan’s Three Lives & Co. Bookstore Endures
• Three Lives & Co. Booksellers in New York City has managed to survive increasing economic pressure that has forced the closing of numerous other bookstores. Three Lives’ longevity is the result of staying very much the same as when it first opened in 1968. • Owner Toby Cox — formerly of the marketing department of Broadway Books — likes …
Dropping by the Almost Corner Bookshop in Rome’s Trastevere
By Rachel Aydt New York writer Rachel Aydt is traveling through Europe this summer, and has been filing occasional posts on her bookish adventures. Today, she visits an English-language bookshop in Rome. We headed to Rome for a few days after spending two days with my mom and stepdad, who’d done an apartment swap in Anzio (despite its somber WWII …
A Summer Sojourn at Paris’ Shakespeare and Company
Parisian bookstore Shakespeare and Co. has launched a new literary magazine, The Paris Magazine, along with a 10,000 euro literary prize for an unpublished novella.