Not my experience. Grew up in a tiny town in western Maine and regardless of whether you're there or in a city like Boston, no one spontaneously talks to you in the stores. It's considered rude!
I was raised in the north and have lived in the south for seventeen years and this is THE biggest difference in daily life. I couldn't figure out why people were talking to me in the stores when I moved here and now when I go home, people look at me crazy when I yap at them.
I know a few folks who had their first in the early 1960s who were able to get a booster here, so it's worth asking!
Trying to explain to an intern why PM announcements are the way they are by saying, "so we used to have these things called fax machines..."
new pb design from me for HOTHOUSE BLOOM! Coming in August (witha sneaky deep red duplex cover)
[john mulaney voice] "YOU SPENT IT ALREADY?"
They announce the outbreak spots on the radio daily here (ie "an infected person ate at the burger king on highway 11") and I've had a background dread that it might happen in my bookshop. Hasn't happened yet so I guess the anti-vaxxers aren't big readers lol
The measles outbreak here in SC (that started in the ukrainian churches and charter schools) is slowing down after 1000+ cases. The fact that it's now picking up speed in Utah says a lot about the damage the no-proof religious exemption for vaccines will inflict on a generation of children.
(but we're also a nonprofit, so the economics are very different)
Wow that is some 90s design! Well, for fwiw, our two top selling frontlist novels last year were both under 60k. We do them in paper over boards (the jacket costs as much as the book!) and price them at $25, which is sort of between pb and hc. It's worked great for us.
right now, with the state of the world, that's the sweet spot for me for reading in general. I envy the schattenfroh crowd but I have trouble caring past that point. (This is if I'm reading for acquisitions, but also somewhat true in reading for pleasure, too.)
It's always funny to watch the inverse in paperback, if they even go to pb--tight lines to make it as short as possible. Sometimes the books are half the size they were in hc.
I think the same can be said for agented novels, that often seem like they may have been good at 60k but they were told to inflate to 90k. No one wants to read 100 bad pages.
100% agree.
(It's all l dumb economics, be the problem is if you pay a lot in advance and need to put $32+ on each copy to even start to recoup, you need to make sure that book is 250+ pages in hardcover, which means, stretched text, big leading btw lines, groundwood paper [lots of air in it])
I can defend very little about South Carolina except the first few weeks of spring, where it's warm but not yet humid and every ditch and roadside tree is covered in wisteria. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
I've said it a million times but the reason I was so equipped to live in semi-rural South Carolina was that I grew up in very rural Maine. Those votes outnumber Portland and they like candidates who don't quite make sense to outsiders.
I 100% could be wrong and we have a lot of time left but I feel less uncertainty about this one than I feel about almost anything else.
Having grown up in Maine--whose identity hinges on caucuses, being a bellwether ("As Maine goes, so goes the nation"), and liking heterodox candidates (early Collins, Olympia Snowe)--I feel like he's going to win. It's now less about the campaign and more about what this means for him governing.
This was supposed to be CASELESS but it's also careless to put a guitar loose in a car?!
Who is he?? Joe Bonamassa?
Still from a Cadillac commercial where a man is putting a Les paul guitar into the back of his car without a case
I know there are more pressing matters, but I am really trying to wrap my head around this commercial where a man appears to purchase a Les Paul from a vintage guitar shop and then place it, careless, into the back of his Cadillac EV.
I know that the people who need to read this aren’t here, but here goes:
Rules of engagement aren’t for the enemy. They’re for you. They’re for your soldiers when they’re captured or wounded. They’re for your civilians when they’re in range of the enemy. They’re for your allies, to reassure.
Everyone talks about ageism in publishing, but no one is talking about how masterfully the publisher concealed the fact that Virginia Evans is actually a millennial.
I think the big secret is that all but about six of those books are really nonprofit endeavors.
It's also very much a "2000 books published every tuesday" problem lol
I do the Weds afternoon dart 🤣
I say this with love but: people who go to awp on Tuesday boggle me. Why would you want even more days of that place?!
I know it has its enthusiasts but so far the most consequential impact of AI has been to allow certain humans to kill other humans with far greater speed and efficiency. Well done, nerds.
stunning moment
