I've been a high school teacher and a tour guide for drunken out-of-towners; I've provided customer service to angry, entitled museum members. I've dealt with some tough customers, in other words. Yet I'm continually surprised at some of the rude and ungenerous replies that scholars and authors return to my department's marketing efforts. The worst… Continue reading How Not To Be: Publicity
Category: Book Business
How Not To Be: Peer Review
This post is modified from the original, which appeared in 2012 on Peachleaves. Back in my hoop-jumping early years of grad school, I sent an abstract of a seminar paper to three editors of a proposed volume. The road to revision never did run smooth, but the process for this volume was more painful than it… Continue reading How Not To Be: Peer Review
Get Excited, and Get Lucky
Hello friends. Have a poem for this hot, hot summer day: Getting Lucky With Jamie by Nicole Steinberg If you want to go a tiny bit hipster, here’s how: Grab a romper and go to town on the all-natural train from Jackson Heights to lower Manhattan; mask any contempt for the matchy-matchy girls under your… Continue reading Get Excited, and Get Lucky
Judging books by their covers
As I've described, my office occasionally receives galleys of forthcoming books, usually fiction directed toward women (although last month we got something that looks like a mash-up of World War Z and Sex in the City). Sometimes they come addressed to the marketing department, sometimes to me or to the marketing assistant. Usually, publicists send galleys… Continue reading Judging books by their covers
Starting to like Booklikes
It took me some time to initiate this move, but I finally imported my booklist from Goodreads to Booklikes. And I am happy in my new home. You can check out my book log here: http://literarysara.booklikes.com/ For the moment, it defaults to a blog view, which is kind of funny, since I already have a blog--two,… Continue reading Starting to like Booklikes
Social Media in the Age of Amazon
I began and abandoned a Goodreads account when I started reading for my doctoral program's qualifying exams. My notes and my seemingly slow progress were too personal to share even with the handful of friends who used it; I was not ready to admit to anyone outside of my program that we don't read every… Continue reading Social Media in the Age of Amazon
Sara Davis 