By Edward Nawotka In today’s lead story Kathy L. Patrick, founder of the Pulpwood Queens Book Club, discusses how she expanded her small town book club into an international juggernaut. It is likely the single biggest “meet and discuss” book club in the world. Of course, there are online book sites, such as GoodReads.com, LibraryThing, and others that foster discussion …
Building the World’s Biggest Book Club
By Kathy L. Patrick JEFFERSON, TEXAS: They say everything is bigger in Texas…and it’s true. When I opened Beauty and the Book in January 2000 — the ONLY hair salon/book store in the world — in January 2000, one of the first things I did was start my book club, The Pulpwood Queens of East Texas. We started with six complete strangers …
Global Trade Talk: PEN Prioritizes Indigenous Language Preservation; Club Bertelsmann Becomes Zeilenreich; Amazon International Profits Up
By Edward Nawotka and Siobhan O’Leary Last Wednesday, London-based International PEN elected Canadian writer John Ralston Saul as the organization’s new director, replacing Czech writer Jirí Grušá who has held the position for the last six years. In an interview with CBC Radio, Saul said that in addition to PEN’s traditional role of fighting for freedom of expression, he would try …
Hugo Chávez’s Color Coded “Revolutionary Reading Plan”
By Emily Williams No friend to publishing (see our earlier coverage here) Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez has nevertheless started to implement his four-part color coded “Revolutionary Reading Plan.” Announced in May, the goal of the project as stated by the Venezuelan government, is “the democratization of books and reading, with a new conception of reading as a collective act under …
German Buch News: No E-book for Dan Brown; Der Club Opens to Non-members
By Siobhan O’Leary Despite the announcement in the US that Doubleday will release an e-book edition of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol simultaneously with their hardcover edition, Buchreport notes that Brown’s German publisher Lübbe has no plans to release an e-book version of the German translation. However, Lübbe Audio will be releasing an abridged audio edition for the same price as the …
What’s the Buzz: Book Studio Tweets, News Corp Wants to Make You Pay
By Hannah Johnson The best of the blogosphere and social media… Today we had a great new discovery: The Book Studio, a project of public radio and television station WETA in Washington D.C., which features video interviews with authors, book reviews, and now a Twitter Book Club. How did we miss this? Each Monday, The Book Studio will host a …