Week 5, Building Base Knowledge (Part II)

Week 5, Assignment 1

I chose to follow Salon.com and RT Book Reviews (Romance Times)

Salon: So, early on in my bookish blog I mentioned I'd love a good source for audiobook reviews. I was delighted to discover (this week, actually) that Salon.com has a regular audiobook review feature called The Listener. Yay!  

Overall, I've found that the reviews are more in-depth than other review sources. In addition to a nice mix of literary fiction reviews, it also covers lots of non-fiction and memoir titles, as well as publishing industry trends. Check Laura Miller's best reads of the summer list, "What's 2013's 'Gone Girl'?" for something besides James Patterson and Dan Brown.

RT Book Reviews: This resource has been so useful in trying to sort out the "what's next in this series" questions we get all the time from our romance readers.
Their reviews are also great for determining how hot & heavy the sex scenes are going to be. Some of our romance readers want things tame and some want them extra steamy. RT rates each novel "MILD, HOT or SCORCHER" based on how graphic things get.

Looking through the RT Reviewers' Choice Best Book Awards, I was amazed at how many genres/subgenres of romance there are. Everything from paranormal/sci-fi erotica and Scotland-set historical romance to inspirational mystery/suspense/thriller.

Week 5, Assignment 2

North Point has a good mix of popular fiction, genre, and narrative nonfiction readers. We also circulate lots of DVDs, so Movie & TV adaptations tend to generate interest in specific books so it's good to keep up with book-to-movie news. That is one of the many reasons I love my weekly emails from Early Word.

I'd forgotten about things like "Display Ideas" and didn't realize the website had an archive of PEOPLE magazine book reviews.

Week 5, Assignment 3

According to The Atlantic's "Books to Look Forward to in 2013" Stephen King's Joyland comes out today (in paperback only, no e-book just yet). It's a spooky summer story set in 1973 at a small-town amusement park featuring ghosts and an old (possibly unsolved?) murder. The cover is deliciously vintage and looks like the sort of pulpy crime novel you want with you at the beach or on a summer camp-out. I know lots of our customers will be clamoring for it.