Morris Rosenthal is a book publisher. He keeps an eye on the Amazon rankings and has recently seen changes in the system. The link takes you to an article in which he reverse engineers the rankings and let’s all writers learn what he’s discovered about the numbers they can’t help but obsess over.
A funny collection of pictures of people, including some celebrities, reading.
Amazon.com: Books: A. J. Jacobs
What’s notable about this book is that it has 85 reader reviews two weeks before the pub date. And most of them sell the book.
Pauline, one of the two English ladies whose lives in Iraq are the subject of Lynne O’Donnell’s High Tea in Mosul, sends Lynne emails every few days describing what life is like in Dohuk, where she is living these days. They are fascinating for their descriptions of daily lives, which are punctuated sometimes by the violence of war, and always in its shadow.
Walking Broad author Bruce Buschel wonders why his hometown has the first professional sports team to lose 10,000 times.
http://asktheauthor.gather.com/groupInvite.jsp?ref=ata_dc
Dan is discussing the Tour de France and his book Lance Armstrong’s War this afternoon at 2pm at Gather.com. The address above may not be a link (for a reason I can’t figure out right now), but you can cut it into your browser to join him.
Jon Stewart’s Take on the Presidential Faux Pas – Wonkette
The latest Booknoise author, Peter Wallsten (with Tom Hamburger), has a new book, One Party Country, coming out next month, but this week got some surprising extra media coverage (and an apologetic phone call to his cell) when the president decided to rib him during a press conference.
We’ve long wondered why the Bookscan numbers have not achieved the same marketing currency as the music industry’s Soundscan numbers, the best selling debuts of which are announced each week. Maybe because most books don’t jump off the shelf the first week of sale, the way records do. And that’s not a bad thing.
Read the first chapter of The Swamp on the New York Times site.
