Adding Value: No Good Duke Playing Cards

I've never been a huge romance reader (though I do love me some Outlander), but I'm always a fan of authors and indies teaming up to do really cool things for readers. In the midst of the to-Amazon-or-not-to-Amazon debate, it's refreshing to see ideas that make the argument moot, giving readers unique benefits that can't be obtained on Amazon (just like Amazon gives the unique benefit of deep discounts that generally can't be obtained in brick-and-mortar stores).

This week's excellent idea: book-themed playing cards for the first 500 readers to pre-order Sarah MacLean's upcoming book, No Good Duke Goes Unpunished, from MacLean's indie, WORD in Brooklyn.

Image from Sarah MacLean's webpage.

The playing cards are on top of the MacLean gift-giving extravaganza that apparently happens every December, when those wishing to gift any of MacLean's titles to friends, family (or themselves) can order from WORD and receive not only an autographed copy of the book, but bookmarks, postcards and other goodies.

I have one of MacLean's earlier novels on my Nook waiting to be read (A Rogue by Any Other Name, the first in her Rules of Scoundrels series), and just seeing this promotion makes me want to pick it up sooner than later.

What are the best indie-only promotions you've seen?

Jay-Z's Memoir Gets the Big Creative Ad Campaign

Did you all hear about Jay-Z's upcoming memoir? As a bookish-type working in the ad industry, the Big Creative campaign behind the book has hit all my radars and appeared on at least 50% of the blogs I currently follow. It seems that Droga5, an independent ad agency out of New York, has devised a clever, interactive campaign for fans, involving large reproductions of the book's pages appearing in various locales discussed throughout the book. The enlarged places will loom on standard advertising mediums - like billboards, bus stops, and building sides - as well as less conventional spots, like the bottom of a hotel pool or the felt of pool tables in a local pool hall.

The best part is that these pages are all unannounced, and form a kind of scavenger hunt for those eager-beaver readers looking to participate (and the winner gets tickets to see Jay-Z and Coldplay in concert).

There's something wonderfully refreshing about a new kind of ad campaign for the publishing industry - for all our talks about the need to change and to breathe new life into the world of printed pages, most publishing ads (for those publishers that still take the time and money to even run print ads) look the same, featuring the cover of the book, maybe an author head shot, and a series of blurbs from recognized authors and critics praising the book as "the best of its genre" or "my favorite book of the year." The ads amount to little more than a re-organization of the elements on a book's jacket and (in this humble book-loving advertiser's opinion) do precious little to make a book stand out from the dozens of other titles offered for sale each month.

But this? This is different. This is new. This is refreshing, and this turns heads. Decoded stands out from the crowd... even if it is yet another celebrity biography/behind-the-scenes (or in this case, lyrics) kind of book.

Typewriter Computers

Has anyone else noticed a recent surge in the popularity of typewriters? They seem to represent an idyllic era of writing history, allowing writers faster, neater writing than basic pen and paper without offering the distractions of the computer and the internet. The development of typing skills when typing skills mattered and spelling and grammar came from the brain, not the squiggly lines on your word processor.

Antique typewriters aren't actually that difficult to track down on e-bay or at flea markets in most areas, but finding the spools and ink for them can prove more problematic. But not to fear! One particularly clever artist has recently come up with a way to link a typewriter to a USB drive on a computer, offering writers the typewriter experience without the difficulties of self spell-check, printer jams, ink blotches, etc.



Pretty cool, huh? For a mere $400+ dollars, you, too, can have your very own pre-made USB typewriter. Or, for $150, you can get a kit to build your own. Purchase here.

Happy Earth Day! Celebrate with a book bike?

Happy Earth Day! Got any big tree-planting plans?

One article in today's Shelf Awareness caught my attention as a particularly earth-friendly (and book-friendly!) idea: a Book Bike! Gabriel Levinson is the proud owner of this crafty, custom-built transportation and book-sharing device, riding around public parks in the Chicago area. Levinson was also featured in a Shareable article earlier this week.

Here's three cheers to the Earth and creative ideas like this one!

Books Are Art

I always think it's cool when people come up with new, innovative ways to decorate with books. (Maybe I'm biased because my own dresser is lined with books at varying heights, atop which my makeup, jewelry, etc. are perched in precarious positions.) Artist Mike Stilkey, however, takes the cake for now, with his ingenious art-on-books display (featured in today's Shelf Awareness, and originally posted on This Blog Rules).

Here's a sneak peek of the work:


















Check out the full article on This Blog Rules for more info and pictures.

Another Cool Idea of the Day...

In (yet another) follow up to the 24 Hour Book Project that I posted about recently, here's another cool idea of the day: a Twitter book project. Neil Gaiman of fantasy writing fame has paired up with the Twittersphere to write an audiobook - or record one, at any rate. It all started at noon today, and was capped at the first 1,000 tweets. You can read the whole story here.

Now, I'm not much of a Twitter fan (I just don't get it, although if you do, you can follow me @ofabookworm... did I do the @ right?), but I do think this is an impressive use of new technologies to create a new work of fiction.

The final product will be available for download on the project's website for free; I will keep you posted if I hear it's completed!

24-Hour Book, Continued

Following up on a comment left on the post regarding the 24-hour book project:

Despite incredible Googling skills, I haven't been able to dig up much more on the outcome of the project other than the fact that it was completed within the allotted time frame, and the launch party for the book was this evening in London. Hopefully there will be more information on the book post-launch (some publishers like to keep things hush-hush until after the release, even if that is only for a period of 12 hours or so...).

As to seeing a project like this on our side of the pond, thanks for the reminder! There was actually something similar conducted during Book Expo this year: Book: The Sequel. This was slightly different as it was not actually a novel, as in the 24-hour book, but it was created in the same vein. Perseus dedicated part of their booth at BEA to Book: The Sequel, with a workstation equipped for editing, design and layout, and promotion. Members of the book world were polled at BEA (what better place to pick the brains of book nerds galore?), and submissions were taken online as well. The whole process began Friday morning, and the book had a launch party on Saturday afternoon. You can see some samples of sequels on the book's webpage, and the schedule of publication is available here.

Here's to creative thinkers!

Brilliant Idea of the Day: The 24-Hour Book

I can't stress enough my belief that the book industry has to adapt to the age of 21st-century technology in order to survive. We can't keep doing things the way they have always been done, because this is a new age (read: ebooks) in a new market (read: broke) with new challenges (read: Amazon). In this vein, the brilliant idea of the day comes from England: the 24-hour book.

if:Book, the Society of Young Publishers and completelynovel.com have teamed up with Spread the Word to challenge writers to create a book about London in just 24 hours. Not just write, but create: print, publish, etc. The writing will take place this Saturday, with publishers and editors swooping in on Sunday to prepare the book for its Monday launch. Technically you could argue that that time frame is longer than 24 hours, but it's still impressive.

The project goes beyond the interesting timeline to engage readers by inviting anyone interested in actually participating in the process. Through the glorious Google Docs, parts of the book will be written by anyone interested in logging in and writing (with monitoring by the lead author, for cohesion's sake). The group has put out a call for editors on Sunday, and is even looking for someone with a really loud voice to stand on top of buildings in London and start a shout-campaign (which I think may or may not be legal).

This is the kind of project we need to see more of - the kind that is not only interesting in its own right, but the kind that goes one step further to really get people interested in books and the book-making process. Without that interest, what we are left with is raw type -- glorious in and of itself, but just as accessible digitally as physically. And that is the end of publishing. Ha, I keep ending these posts with doomsday announcements; really, I do think there's hope, I promise.

Read the full story here: http://www.completelynovel.com/pages/general/24hrbook