News Nuggets

How's that for an alliterative title?

I'm trying to catch up on all my news so thought I'd pass along some of the more interesting tidbits as well as the source from which I gleaned the info just in case you'd like to subscribe too.

Twilight Rules Book World
(from Galley Cat)

This is awe-inspiring. Stephenie Meyer sold 16 Percent of all books in First Quarter 2009. The series held the top 4 slots. Translating 16 %: that means 1 in every 7 books last quarter was written by Stephenie Meyer. Don't foget her vampire series premiered as a movie franchise last year too.

Amazon Free Shipping Made Easy
(Kim Komando Newsletter)

This tip is about the free shipping Amazon offers on purchases of at least $25.00. I went to the site to check it out. At Superfiller.com, you fill in the dollar amount of how much more you need to reach the magic $25.00 amount, and they give you a list of products for that price so you don't have to browse and probably spend more money than you went.

PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories
(from Pub Lunch)

Anchor Books has partnered with the PEN American Center. They'll rename their story prize program and collection the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories.

Over To The Youth Side
(from Bookshelf)

Even Andrew Klavan is writing young adult. His latest hero is 17-year-old Charlie West who likes jet planes and karate and girls, of course, The Last Thing I Remember. I love Klavan's books so I'll probably give this one a shot even though I don't normally read young adult. Ads say target reader is age 10 to early 20's. That's some range. Of course, that seems to be the profit bottom line range.

ISBNdb.com
(from GalleyCat)

I use IMDB.com all the time so I'm excited about ISBNdb.com which will be a similar digital database for books. The website archives digital records for 4.2 million books, collected from 10 million different sources. According to the site, they get their data by scanning libraries worldwide for book information. The scanning is random and similar in a way to how general purpose web search engines scan web sites. Scanned results are parsed and stored in th website's searcheable, browseable database. They try to cross-index the database by author, publisher, genre, etc., but that's apparently in beta phase."

Takeaway Truth

A writer must stay up to date with not only publishing news but also technology/internet news too.