Dust off your Harris Tweed and practice your best “Cheerio,” it’s London Book Fair time. Or at least, it will be London Book Fair time on Monday. Yes, publishers and agents and authors and booksellers and Yorkshire lasses will meet and greet, sell subrights, build up buzz for hot titles and break for afternoon tea. Insert your own British sterotype here.
This isn’t quite book publishing related, and it didn’t really happen this week, but I have to say that the May issue of The Atlantic is pretty darn incredible, including an article by Mark Bowden (BLACK HAWK DOWN) about how US interrogators broke down terrorists to figure out the location of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and a report by Nadya Labi on homosexuality in Saudi Arabia. Surprising fact: Labi quotes multiple people Saudi Arabians saying it’s easier to be gay than straight in Saudi Arabia. Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. They’re not even paying me to tell you this.
In very depressing news, Cody’s Books is closing its San Francisco store on April 20th. The San Francisco all but writes an obituary for the cozy bookstore. Fortunately, I have it on good authority that all bookstores go to heaven.
Thomas Nelson CEO/blogger Michael Hyatt explains why they don’t have any imprints anymore. The jury is still out on whether imprints go to heaven.
And finally, as reported by Publishers Marketplace, a THE SECRET parody has been acquired by Nation Books: Jim Gerard’s WHO MOVED MY SECRET? The Ancient Wisdom That Tells You It’s OK to be Greedy and that Bad Things Only Happen to Good People Who Vibrate on the Wrong Frequency. Jones postulates that the real Law of Attraction “means that if you’re gullible enough to believe in it, The Secret folks will be attrcted to your credit card number.” I will not comment on this sale out of fear that The Secret believers will think really hard about me falling into a trash can.
Have a great weekend!
Brian says
Have fun in London.
Nathan Bransford says
Oh, actually I’m not going to London next week. I’ll be here in sunny SF.
brian_ohio says
Have fun thinking about London.
Len says
San Francisco is just all right. I wish I were there. Or in London. On some days, Azuza sounds good.
Dave says
I not only had to read “who moved my cheese” for work but I had to watch the movie and spend two hours in discussions about it.
“Who moved my secret” sounds like a fun read for my poor, retired eyes.
😉
Marti says
I have to admit, the parody sounds pretty funny!
Ugh to Who Moved My Cheese. I sell used books on Amazon and I must have gone through a dozen of those…picked them up at garage sales for a quarter and re-sold them. I read it and thought people had to be crazy to be spending ten bucks for it – but I was happy to make the profit – LOL
Hope all of you have a terrific weekend!
David says
It would be delightful if the parody outsold The Secret.
It won’t happen, but it would be delightful.
Anonymous says
Nathan, what do agents do at London Book Fair? Sell foreign rights? Network? Pick-up North American rights for Eurpean books? Thanks!
Nathan Bransford says
Anon-
All of the above. That’s a good summary of what agents do at book fairs.
j h woodyatt says
You gotta admit, that was a pretty high rent space for a general bookstore.
Bryan D. Catherman says
Arab homosexuality is an odd subject because it doesn’t seem to be a life-style thing. From my observation, it seems to be about practicality. No heterosexual behavior outside of marriage so dudes have really, really good male friends. Then after marriage: no more of that sort of thing. Some men marry more than one woman, so the market odds of marriage for a less than attractive male are not great. It’s somewhat outlined within the first 10 pages of 1,001 Arabian Nights. But before people start screaming at me, understand this is only from my observations and I didn’t investigate this subject to deeply.