Declining Reading

On page 4 of Publishers Weekly's 11/19/07 issue is the headline: "New NEA Report Finds More Reading Declines." Below, in the News Briefs, is this: "September Store Sales Up." Apparently, bookstores showed an increase in sales for the third month in a row. So, I'm wondering: Are people buying books and not reading them, or are they using bookstores to buy things other than books?

Brave, Bold World

According to a News Brief in Publishers Weekly (10/22/07), Barnes & Nobkle has arranged with Digby, a "mobile commerce service provider" to sell books, CDs, and DVDs through "Blackberry-compatible devices."

Meanwhile, according to the same issue of PW, publishers large and small are turning to social networking sites (MySpace, Facebook, Library Thing, and others) to promote books. There doesn't seem to be a measurable increase in sales as a result, and this is hard to tell, anyway, but since the cost is minimal, they feel it's worth doing.

Little by little, the publishing industry seems to be accepting and using the web. At the very least, maybe a lot of paper waste for printed catalogs can be eliminated.

Clever Book Promotion

This has to be the best author website promoting a book I've seen. It made me curious enough to look for the book. Found on Alma Alexander's LiveJournal. I firmly believe cleverness and humor should be rewarded.

Advertising Books

J.A. Konrath has a good rant about advertising books that pretty much confirms what I've always thought. I also liked the references to Skinnerian psychology.

I Like this Quote

From Sara Nelson's editorial in the October 23, 2006 Publishers Weekly, in a discussion about what makes one book succeed while another doesn't or not as much, when both are of comparable quality, and have similar publicity.

"...What draws a reader to a work of fiction is intensely personal and not at all prescriptive; what makes that reader pass news of the book to others is as unknowable and indefinable as love.
"Then again, all readers, like all lovers, are not created equal."

Essentially, along with publicity and a good story well told, word of mouth can make or break a book in the marketplace.