Category Archives: Booksellers

No-One Likes to See This as a Result

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Well… poop.

It seems that Borders USA is looking even less likely to continue business than before last week’s auction.

For those of you just joining the saga, Borders USA has been battling the “Going Out of Business Sale” demons for nearly a year. Borders UK folded a couple of years ago, and the Australian version a few months ago, but the American chain looked like a solid contender for continuing life; especially when reports of Barnes & Noble were filled with stockholder revolt.

What with local, long term businesses such as Duthies and its offspring Ardea Books, plus specialty shops like Biz Books and others finding it impossible to operate and pay ever-increasing costs for city property and commercial business taxes, adding the above to the mix makes one wonder “will I ever walk into a book shop again?”

When it comes to pass that — as is the case with Borders’ auction last week — no one is even interested in placing a bid for a multiple-location, national chain of stores, no matter what those stores offer, you really have to wonder about things.

Sorry, no answers here, nor even much in the way of hope, just a post to note the placing of another brick in a construction of something. I’ve no idea even what that construction is shaped like, but one does feel a tad that the final form will look a bit dreary.

Blast.

The Condensed Othello

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The Condensed Othello

The Condensed Othello

Welcome to the Twenty-First Century.

Heightists!

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books for tall people

books for tall people; this place must be in the US

Selling Out: How Presales Can Make Your Book a Hit

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To whom it may someday concern, in a minor way

Dear Author Arbitrageur

Who: The Shebeen Club presents author, speaker, and sales trainer Shane Gibson

What: Selling Out: How Presales Can Make Your Book a Hit

When: 7-9pm Monday, October 25th (one week later than our usual date)

Where: A private dining room upstairs at Revel Room, 238 Abbott Street just off Gastown, near the Woodward’s Building

Why: Because Shane’s latest book sold out its entire first printing before it was officially available for sale. We want to know how, and so do you!

How (much): $20 early-bird tickets/$25 at the door includes dinner and a glass of wine or beer

I worked as Shane’s editorial assistant on his latest book, Guerrilla Social Media Marketing (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson, the Guerrilla Marketing Guru) and while I was typing it up, I kept thinking what a great book it was. This is by way of disclosure, not puffery. Seems thousands of others feel the same way: the book officially sold out its first printing on September 30th; it wasn’t actually in stores until October 3rd.

That is what you call a successful book launch.

Shane is here to tell us how he and Jay did that, and teach us techniques that we can use on our own book launches, whether we’re publishers, editors, or authors. I only know one tip: 85% of life is showing up, so show up on October 25th and prepare to learn powerful tools for marketing your book from an author who’s not afraid of success! At this point, it just might be scared of him!

Shane Gibson

Shane Gibson

Shane Gibson is an international speaker and author who has addressed over 100,000 people over the past sixteen years on stages in North America, Southern Africa and South America.

Shane’s books include Sociable! How Social Media is Turning Sales and Marketing Upside Down, Closing Bigger: the Field Guide to Closing Bigger Deals, and his new book published by Entrepreneur Press (McGraw Hill) called Guerrilla Social Media Marketing, co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson.

Blogging since 2002, and podcasting since 2004 Shane drives the majority of his business from social media, and social networks. He has been published in numerous publications as an authority on the topics of leadership, marketing, social media, and sales performance. Some of these publications include CMA Magazine, the Financial Post, the Globe and Mail and Profit Magazine.

7-7:30 Meet & Mingle

7:30-8 Listen and Learn

8-9 Grinning maniacally while counting on your fingers and phoning your accountant

Tony Blair, criminal mind?

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Tony Blair

Tony Blair, crime fiction author?

There’s a new  and amusing Facebook Group in town: Put One of Tony Blair’s Books in the Crime Section of Your Bookshop, and there’s some new evidence that they should at least be in Fiction generally.

The Torygraph (via Gawker) reports that contained within my Secret Boyfriend‘s autobiography is a passage cribbed, apparently, from the movie The Queen, and completely, utterly made up.

In A Journey, Blair claims that the Queen said to him: “You are my 10th prime minister. The first was Winston. That was before you were born.” In [screenwriter Peter] Morgan’s script to the 2006 film The Queen, Mirren, in the title role, tells Michael Sheen’s Blair: “You are my 10th prime minister, Mr Blair. My first was Winston Churchill.”

As a longtime reader of Majesty Magazine, I can tell you that there is very, very little likelihood that the first quotation is correct. The Queen just does not express herself this way in a formal and historically loaded context. She would surely have said “Churchill” or “Winston Churchill” if she said anything. And the screenwriter is adamant that he didn’t base it on any facts, just made it up entirely. So, when you do your substitution at the bookstore, you’d best put his book with Crime Fiction rather than True Crime!