book industry news

In true book nerd fashion, we’ve rounded up our favorite publishing-related links of the week for you! Read on to uncover the best in books this week. If you want to know about these links sooner than Friday afternoon, follow us on Twitter—@GreenleafBookGr.

• NPR launched the Back Seat Book Club this week, aimed at kids between the ages of 9 and 14—i.e., the secondhand listeners of NPR. They’re hoping to get tweens engaged by encouraging them to submit any questions or comments for the author of the month, who will subsequently respond on All Things Considered. This month’s pick is Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. Not gonna lie, we kind of want to join this.

• Mediabistro’s “Cubes”—a series of video tours of media headquarters—posted a video of Scholastic’s offices, headquartered in Manhattan. The office features a huge retail space, Harry Potter memorabilia, a living room, terrace cafeteria, and Scholastic’s credo printed throughout the office carpets (rumor has it there’s a misused comma in there somewhere—get it together, Scholastic). It’s pretty amazing—check it out.

• Having trouble coming up with enough great content to share with your audience? Have you considered tapping your entire organization’s brainpower? Content Marketing Institute recently posted a guide to engaging an entire organization to power content production.

• Twitter can be a crazy, chaotic place to navigate. Luckily, there are tons of resources to make it easier, including Xobni’s new “Implicit Twitter Feed” feature. They’ll help you locate social media users you should be connecting with based on your established online habits. Now you can find Twitter matches made in heaven!

• HBO is all about adapting books for television lately. Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections is in the works at the network, as is Mary Karr’s infamous memoir Lit. In addition, they’re tackling Karen Russell’s Swamplandia!, the adventurous story of twelve-year-old alligator wrestler Ava Bigtree. Michael Chabon, author of Wonder Boys and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, is also working on a script for HBO with his writer wife Ayelet Waldman; the show has been dubbed “Hobgoblin” and will center on a group of magicians who use their skills to battle Hitler in WWII (a premise similar to Chabon’s award-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay}.

• Mashable shared an infographic about Facebook today, and included random facts about the site’s users and habits. We didn’t realize that Facebook was the most-liked page on Facebook. How meta.  

• Halloween is around the corner! As you’re gearing up for the holiday, why not geek it up with some literary jack-o’-lanterns? (Seriously, if anyone can copy that Sleepy Hollow one, let us know). Too cool for pumpkins? Galley Cat rounded up the best literary costumes, and Good Reads listed the most effectively terrifying horror novels.

• Robin Sullivan of Write to Publish ran an author branding series on her blog, discussing the dos and don’ts of establishing a powerful brand. (Her first tip? Find your passion; write your mission statement.) Read it and supplement it with our own branding and platform development series!

• The sixteenth annual Texas Book Festival is this weekend! Lots of big names will be making appearances in our hometown of Austin, including Molly Shannon, Susan Orlean, Jim Lehrer, and Paula Deen herself! Check out the schedule here. PS: There’s a Literary Death Match going down. Need we say more?