Morning Brief — Thursday, November 20
Pretty much everyone working in publishing has heard of The Four-Hour Work Week, the catchily-titled book that made it to The New York Times bestseller list. Some of you may also have heard that the book (and author Timothy Ferriss) made waves online. Mashable talks with Ferriss about his online marketing efforts, which included reaching out bloggers as far as a year in advance of publication. (I’ve sometimes been told not to contact bloggers too far ahead of time, I guess because bloggers and people who read blogs, well, just DON’T know how to preorder books online. Or something.)
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If you need to send large files (Powerpoint presentations or JPEGs, for example), Mashable reminds us we can use You Send It.
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It seems we’re reading about layoffs in the newspaper / magazine business every day now. Even Lucky, one of the most successful magazine debuts in recent years, has met its match.
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Over in New Jersey, as I’m sure everyone has heard, the Newark Star-Ledger has been busy slashing its staff. Editor & Publisher lists the names of journalists *not* taking buy outs. Book editor Deborah Jerome-Cohen’s name was not on the list, so this may not bode well for us.
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Not surprisingly, book coverage has really suffered from the downturn in the print business. My company subscribes to Nexis / Lexis and our librarian has set up daily searches of reviews / mentions of all our imprints’ books. I used to scroll through maybe 50 stories a day that mentioned our books. For the past month or so, I don’t think I’ve seen more than 10 a day.
