*Good Luck to
the Winter Paralympics US Sledge Hockey Team*
"As he
spoke my spirit climbed into the sky
I bid it to
return
To hear your
wonderous stories
Return to hear
your wonderous stories . . ."
--Yes, Wonderous Stories
1) FRINGE . .
. First
of all, I anticipated Alice Hoffman's Museum of Extraordinary Things (9781451693560)
27.99 to be her big breakout book. In my opinion, she was on the
cusp. I wasn't expecting her book to have numbers like new-found Indie
darling James Patterson, but hey, I thought that Clive Cussler-type sales was
an attainable goal, especially since her last release The Dovekeepers (9781451617481)
16.00 did really well for us in tradepaper. She's done everything
right. The reviews have been glowing, she did the obligatory Q&A for
the author interview in the NYTBR, and coincidentally, American
Experience aired an episode on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which
is the centerpiece of her new book. So what gives? I did see that
Ms. Hoffman chooses the images for her bookcovers, and I don't want to go all
Occam's razor on you, but the cover is the most important part of any book, and
just maybe, that's the obvious answer. I've always thought that an author
should be involved in this process, but perhaps there is a good reason that
publishers hire professionals to handle authors' cover art. Hopefully,
this one will build by word of mouth, instead. Stay tuned . . .
2) THE X-FILES . . . I'm
nursing a Winter OlympicsTM hangover. It took me four years to
forget how biased the scoring can be in figureskating, how boring it is to
watch the 50,000 km crosscountry skiing, and just how much I really despise
Vladimir Putin in general. And I missed the %&$#@ curling events, so
I was kinda ticked about that, too. However, next Sunday, we can segue
into the OscarsTM and feel pretty darn good about
ourselves. As long as cinema has been around, there has been an odd
symbiotic relationship between books and movies. There are movies based
on books, and there are books based on movies. (I'm looking at you Peter
David.) This year is no different. The movies with the most nominations
are based on books, such as Jordan Belfort's The Wolf of Wall Street
(9780345549334) 16.00, A Winter's Tale (9780544320420) 15.99 by Mark
Helprin, Michael Sixsmith's Philomena (9780143124726) 16.00 with the
incomparable Dame Judi Dench in the starring role, and of course, Solomon
Northrup's Twelve Years a Slave (9780143125419) 16.00. And then
there are the movies that may not be OscarTM calibre
but continue to sell like gangbusters, such as Robert Edsel's The Monuments
Men (9780316240055) 17.00 and Marcus Luttrell's Lone Survivor (9780316324106)
17.00. Finally, John Feinstein's new title Where Nobody Knows Your
Name: Life in the Minor Leagues of Baseball (9780385535939) 26.95 released
yesterday, and I believe it could be a great movie. Oh wait! It's
already been a TV show called Eastbound and Down.
Odds
& Sods
I spoke to Sonny
Longtine a long time ago when he was living in Grand Rapids and still
self-publishing a couple of titles about Native Americans in Michigan. He
is one of the nicest guys you'd ever meet. Now, Sonny has a new book with
History Press called Murder in Michigan's Upper Peninsula (9781626193550)
19.99. We've already sold out, but we should have stock in a few days...
You wouldn't
know it from the weather, but I believe Spring is supposed to be right around
the corner, which means it's almost time for The 2014 Great Lakes & Midwest
Catalog. You can check it out online: http://partners-east.com/documents/GLC2014.pdf
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