Check out the warning section about the side effects of reading from this promo for  Unbridled Books:

If you enjoy it, be sure to also check out their books on the Unbridled web site.

This is clever; Frommer’s is running a photo contest. The winner will have his or her photo featured on the cover of a Frommer’s book and will win $5,000 (contest ends 3/31).

How appropriate it would be if a librarian won, given what great travelers we are and how many Frommer’s titles libraries buy.

I’m no photographer, but just looking at the hundreds of photos that have already been entered serves as a mini-vacation.

There’s a book giveaway hidden in our top banner ad this week; if you click on it, you can enter to win five titles that fit in to YALSA Teen Read Week’s “Beyond Reality” theme. It’s part of Random House’s library marketing department’s “Shelf Help;” collection development “cheat sheets” aimed at helping librarians make sure they own essential titles in popular subject categories.

Many of you are already savvy to publisher’s library marketing departments. If not, you can think of them as your entry-way to publishing houses. They are happy to answer questions from when Nevada Barr’s next book is coming to how to get an author to speak at your One Community program (by the way, Random House has just created a new One Book guide with tips from the mother of all one-book programs, Nancy Pearl).

On EarlyWord, we maintain an up-to-date directory of library contacts for adult books at the various publishing house,s as well as links to their librarian newsletters, blogs, and even, in HarperCollins case, an online radio show for librarians.

Through the AAP, library marketing staff also organize various events for librarians at the BEA, ALA and PLA. This week, they are presenting their first “Librarians’ Spring 2010 Sneak Preview” here in New York.

Get to know these people; they are a key component in the publisher/librarian connection.

Sterling publishers is celebrating 60 years in the business by offering libraries a chance to win 60 of their books.

Entries must be in by July 24th. For more information, click here.

Library Marketing Director Chris Vaccari demonstrates just how many books that is:

Those clever guys at Unshelved may have just topped themselves. For BEA, they’ve put together “Publisher Confidential,” an ebooklet of pet peeves from librarians, booksellers and readers.

Such as:

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For more on the project, check the Unshelved blog.

Reminder: if you don’t suffer from the above problem and are actually looking for catalogs, you can get PDF’s of publishers catalogs from our links to the right (under “Download Publishers Catalogs”).

Publishers catalogs for April through August are beginning to arrive. To see the new ones we’ve posted, go to Publishers Catalogs — Spring/Summer ‘09.

Also, you can find current catalogs at the right, under “Download Publishers Catalogs.”

• Paperback:$18.00
• Publisher: Busted Flush Press, (December 3, 2007)
• ISBN-10: 0976715732
• ISBN-13: 978-0976715733

On Friday, the Houston Chronicle profiled a tiny (a one-man house, you can’t get much smaller than that) independent press that has just received its second Edgar nomination for Best Short Story. The goal of Busted Flush (named after Travis McGee’s houseboat in the series by John D. MacDonald) is to bring back out-of-print mysteries and to publish anthologies of mystery short stories.

The nominated story is “Uncle,” by Daniel Woodrell, which appeared in A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir.

In 2007, Bill Crider’s “Cranked,” from the anthology Damn Near Dead was nominated.

Ever wonder why publishers keep creating new imprints and what their names signify?

Earlier this week, NPR’s All Things Considered took a look at Twelve, an imprint launched last year by Grand Central (formerly Warner Books, part of Hachette, which was formerly Time Warner Book Group). It’s worth listening to the piece (don’t rely on the overview; it manages to miss the best bits) for insights on the publishing process.

It’s useful to get to know imprints and their characteristics. To see how an independent bookstore buyer uses such knowledge, check out this post on the blog “Kash’s Corner.”

As NPR points out, Twelve has had a remarkable ability to publish bestsellers (6 out of 9 of the titles they’ve released became bestsellers. By contrast, NPR says the industry average is one book in ten becoming a hit. I think that figure is high).

NPR also quotes the Bowker statistic of 290,000 new titles published a year. I always grind my teeth when I hear this figure quoted. It includes on-demand titles, every new edition, technical manuals, and titles from extremely small publishers (83,000 publishers are represented). A large percentage of those titles will never reach the radar of bookstores and public libraries. My own guess (which I checked out with some knowledgable industry observers, so it’s not completely out of thin air) is that the number of commercially viable titles is more like 30,000 to 50,000 each year.

NPR also featured a Twelve title that’s about to be released:

Fortune Cookie Chronicles by Jennifer 8. Lee

• Hardcover: $24.99
• Publisher: Twelve (March 3, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0446580074
• ISBN-13: 978-0446580076

It received a starred review (a “delightful first book on the origins of the customary after-Chinese-dinner treat by New York Times reporter Lee…There are satisfying minihistories on the relationship between Jews and Chinese food and a biography of the real General Tso”) in Publishers Weekly, 12/3/07. the author was also interviewed in PW (but no explanation of her middle initial).

Twelve’s Web site announces titles through August, and also lists those coming in the more distant future, from authors such as Christopher Buckley, Po Bronson and Ted Kennedy.