Well, the book is out to advanced press. And some left-leaning bloggers and websites are combing through Palin’s claims. If you aren’t a fan of Palin, you probably aren’t surprised to hear that they are finding some statements in the books that… stretch the truth a bit. Salon has a good shakedown [...]

Here’s another installment from my forthcoming book. (I won’t post every chapter, only occassional ones.)
VoxPop, Sander and Me — Chapter 3
“Fifty thousand in cash! Fifty thousand in cash to launch your new indie bookstore! Get your free fifty thousand!” I was passing out translucent envelopes containing banknotes, stickers and silver coins to attendees strolling the [...]

The Sagging: Spirits & Skin. Poetry by Jason FiskPropaganda Press, 2009
The Sagging: Spirits & Skin sings eloquent tales of loss and the big truths that are learned within small pieces of emptiness. Through these poems, Fisk lurks like a quiet voyeur into the dirt-smeared windows of a embattled collection of naked and lonely souls. There [...]

Yesterday on the bookstore industry newsletter Shelf Awareness, this remarkable proposal was floated. (My personal response is appended further down in this blogpost.)
A Solution for Capital-Starved Independent BookstoresThe following is a proposal made by Jack McKeown, former president and CEO of the Perseus Books Group and former president and publisher of the Adult Trade Group [...]

Last night on the Indiebookman radio show, Brad mused about my perspective on eBooks. The answer is that I do not believe printed books are endangered, and I assume there will always be new developments in the distribution of information. I don’t regard eBooks as replacements for physical books, in other words: they will simply [...]

I’m working on a new book. Here’s the first chapter!
Vox Pop, Sander, and Me
Chapter One
By Andrew Laties
“Who will screw the chains? How will they screw the chains? When will they screw the chains?”
The entire email response to my book query for Screw The Chains: A Free-Jazz Improvising Radical Children’s Bookseller Gets Chewed Up And [...]

I think I have a new hero. His name is Christopher Herz, from Canal Publishing and his book is The Last Block in Harlem.

This guy takes indie/guerrilla marketing to absolute new heights. What he does is called “handselling,” and that in-and-of itself is nothing new. As the name implies, it’s basically making sales [...]

True story: A prominent scholar spends years researching and editing a scholarly gift edition of a Victorian classic. The independent publishing house which over the course of decades has sold hundreds of thousands of this author’s elegant and popular books presents this forthcoming title to Barnes & Noble’s buyers. Barnes & Noble places an order [...]