When Axe Cops books are flying off the shelves, remember who told you about it

I am so delighted @fullcircleokc shared this site: "That was the day he became Axe Cop."

So why don't we run into this problem marketing other forms of media?: "I guess this mostly points out how tough it is and always has been to market books since the relationship between consumer and product is so personal, it’s almost impossible to create some sort of mass message that’s going to get traction."

Some of the commenters want a recount: "HarperCollins wins first annual boxie award for Best Box. Runners up include Ingram and Random House."

In case you needed another reason to endorse nonsense in the bookstore: "Until I began to think about these issues with boy readers I hadn’t considered how one teacher’s allowance for nonsense in the classroom might have saved me from becoming a nonreader."

New skills for booksellers: "Before the universe began dropping bookbinding equipment on my head, I decided to pay attention to the message...I felt a little bit like I did in wood shop class in junior high, fascinated by the materials and equipment, but a bit shy to step up and demand my share of time with the equipment. But this wasn’t 7th grade with a room full of 7th grade boys. This was an opportunity to be led, one on one, by a gentle man eager to pass on his knowledge."

How to deal with in-house gender imbalances: "In the past Greenwillow has celebrated Man Day by plastering the halls with “Manly posters” (see below), listening to Manly songs (mainly tunes from old Westerns, the Monty Python “Lumberjack” song, and a certain Martin Mull tune entitled “Men, Men, Men”). Some of us even dressed up, Mad Men–style, for the occasion."

On Disneyfication and not: "My own sense of what a fairy tale is is linked to my own sense of what a child is, and that has been part of an experiment we call the 20th-century middle-class democracy."

How finance guys see things: "Amazon’s super useful crowd sourced reviews were a great innovation. From their own selfish perspective, AMZN should be more protective of that. They should carefully consider how Yahoo allowed their comment streams (for just about every property) to become polluted with touts and spam and trolls and haters to the point where it is no longer useful. Then Bezos might want to notice the long slider in YHOO’s stock price over the same period. Coincidence? I doubt it."

What surprises me is this is the hardcover figure. (Paperback was 1,105,469): "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. Dial (104,284)." (see also paperback and children's numbers)

Okay, I think this word-of-the-week thing is going to become a regular feature. (Side note: check out Maria's Bookshop's videos for more linguistic fun!) This week: apomediation: "Apomediation is guidance generated and available from peripheral mediators who have no or limited power to affect the ultimate decision or access to the service, resource, or information."

Posted at 02:16PM Mar 26, 2010 by Sarah Rettger in General  |