Radha Michelle Shares Her Take on Daphna Ziman\’s The Gray Zone

It’s been reported numerous places on the web where the book publishing financials stand in the midst of the economic melt-down. Priorities seem to be that reading to kids is at a premium – with a 62% increase in children’s hardcover books. Folks who got Kindles for Christmas seem to be buying ebooks like crazy — 131% incrase in February. And Amazon says today that its Kindle sales to date have outstripped its wildest dreams.

The first quarter, ending March 31, Kindle sales were up more than 18% over last year, which helped the company to incease net sales this quarter to $4.89 billion. Jeff Bezo is pleased.

AAP Book Sales: Declines for February, Year-to-Date
In February, net sales decreased 12% to $447.5 million for 81 publishers that reported to the Association of American Publishers. Net sales for the year-to-date have fallen 2.1% to $1.24 billion.

Sales of selected categories:

• E-books jumped 131% to $6.7 million.
• Children’s/YA hardcover rose 62.1% to $67.1 million
• Children’s/YA paperback increased 13.4% to $41.6 million
• University press hardcovers showed no change at $4.8 million
• Adult paperback decreased 38.8% to $79.7 million.
• Audiobooks dropped 31.7% to $8.2 million.
• Higher education slid 24.9% to $27.1 million.
• Professional and scholarly decreased 19.7% to $36.2 million.
• Religious books declined 19% to $44.3 million.
• Adult mass market dropped 18.3% to $48.8 million.
• El-Hi slid 9.9% percent in September to $76 million.
• University press paperbacks fell 7% to $4 million.
• Adult hardcover declined 0.9% to $77.8 million.

Charles Ghigna - Score! 50 Poems to Motivate and Inspire (Abrams Books for Younger Readers)

Susan Gregg Gilmore – Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen (Shaye Arehart Books, Crown)

Patricia Harman – The Blue Cotton Gown: A Midwife’s Memoir (Beacon Press)

Helen Hemphill – The Adventurous Deeds of Deadwood Jones (Front Street, Boyds Mills Press)

Michael Lee West – Mermaids in the Basement (Harper Collins)

Until this treasure hunt it had taken all  three clues each time for the treasure to be discovered. In this case the Harpers and their two dogs, Mr. Christmas and Hershy, discovered the faux gold coin just hours before the 3rd and final clue was to be announced.

Cashville Gold & Silver Buyers is planning to take a hiatus from treasure hunting for a while, but I fully expect that they have something else fun up their sleeves for Nashvillians in the near future.

Eagerly anticipated Nashville Treasure Hunt, sponsored by Cashville Gold & Silver Buyers, will begin Tuesday, March 24.

Charlie Chase and Kelly Sutton, hosts of Tennessee Mornings on Fox 17, will be talking with Jerry and Josh Levine of Cashville Gold between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. tomorrow morning and the first clue for the new treasure hunt will be released then.

Last fall more than 30,000 treasure hunters chased the clues in Nashville. Some terrific, heart-warming stories came out of the search for a 1/2 ounce gold coin.

Crowds gather for 2008 Nashville Treasure Hunt at Centennial Park

Clues are posted on the Cashville Gold & Silver Buyer’s website.

As always, the Levines remind their Nashville neighbors that anyone can go on a treasure hunt in their own home, find discarded and broken gold and silver and take it to the Cashville Gold & Silver Buyers’ office and receive their own self-made “stimulous check.”

<a href=”http://technorati.com/claim/f9v8g4ttm6″ rel=”me”>Technorati Profile</a>

Paper Pen & Imagination Day Camp is back for the 4th consecutive summer.

This unique creative writing camp for rising 4th – 7th graders in Nashville is always the first week of August — this year August 3 – 7, 2009.

I started this camp as a service to the community — for families looking for a serious creative writing camp for young kids who truly want to express themselves on paper and spend time with other authors-in-training.

There is the 1/2 day and full-day option for that week (full day is 9 a.m. – 4 p.m.).

PPI Day Camp probably is not a good fit for kids who wince at putting pen to paper…it’s for the young person who has so many thoughts and ideas that just come tumbling out. This week provides a little help with structure in making their wonderful stories, poems and plays come more tightly into focus for them.

The program is taught by award-winning published authors who have experience in a classroom setting.  Each day is a new adventure in stretching the kids’ ideas about creative thinking and ability to communicate through the written word.

For more information, visit the official website and download the application. Paper Pen & Imagination Day Camp.

Alan Cheuse and Susan Gregg Gilmore

Illness kept me from the Virginia Festival of the Book this week-end. I was sick (pun intended) not to be a visitor at what so many authors consider one of the very best literary festivals in the country!

Susan Gregg Gilmore presented at the Festival. The highlight of the event for her came when she was in the audience of a panel made up of: Alan Cheuse, Michael Dirda, Louis Bayar and Bethanne Kelly Patrick. Ron Hogan was the moderator.

Alan Cheuse did a review of Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen, about a year ago. In his remarks on NPR he mentioned Lemon Meringue pie. Susan, a huge fan of Mr. Cheuse and very grateful for his attention to her book, has always wanted to give him one. She got her chance.

Read what had the audience roaring in laughter: Susan Gregg Gilmore’s blog

A millinium ago in the blogsophere, which would be Sunday evening, The South by Southwest Conference hosted the now infamous New Think for Old Publishers panel.

I was reading tweets on my twitter stream and knew something was up, but I miss calculated the ripple effect. I’m not going to rehash what happened since I wasn’t at the event in question and this is the best account I’ve found so far on The Book Publicity Blog.

I guess what I find astonishing is that there is even a question of whether bloggers and on-line literary sites are important to marketing new books. There is no question. Absolutely.

For me, that’s like asking if itunes is relevant in the music industry.

Some of the books we publicize get huge bumps in sales with one mention on some sites. Our virtual book tours are wonderfully successful and fun for the author. It’s even better when books fly off of the bookshelves of independent book shops (especially close to my heart), bookstores and on-line booksellers. And that’s what happens when you engage new media.

The new media can be staunch advocates for books and authors and will continue to remind their followers about books they especially enjoy. One excellent example of promotion is when an on-line reviewer posts a review of the book, a Q&A with the author another day and perhaps offers a contest to win the book on yet another day. Traditional media doesn’t remind their readers of special books — the real estate on printed paper has been at too high a premium…and now seems to be disappearing altogether with the demise of so many newspapers and truncated magazines.

I’m here to cheer on the new media and the on-line reviewers and bloggers that have been so important to the success of many of our books and hundreds of others.

If you’ve been living under a rock and need a little nudge to see what’s out there in the world of new media, check some of my favorites out. There are scores more that are wonderful as well:

Mediabistro/GalleyCat

Cynsations

Maw Books

Through the Tollbooth

Bookroast

Cheryl Rainfield

Book Moot

Book Club Queen

The Voracious Reader

Boys Rule Boys Read

Omnivoracious (Amazon’s blog)

Lillian Brummet Blog Radio

The Sleepy Reader

These are but a few of the books that have benefited from the new media buzz: