http://www.erinbalser.com Sat, 12 Jul 2008 21:39:05 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I got an iPhone today. My luck in waiting only 10 minutes to get a phone is completely due to suckers like Matt who waited all day yesterday with a broken service system to get theirs, taking hours and hours to activate a single phone, leaving the Fido flagship no ... http://www.erinbalser.com/2008/07/12/iphone-and-publishing/ And it hurt. But mostly it made me sleepy. I wish I had a real excuse for why I've ignored this blog thing for as long as I have. The excuse is that I have a job now. Since March, I've been working as the Sales Assistant at Kate Walker & ... http://www.erinbalser.com/2008/07/01/i-fell-off-the-wagon/ The Boston Globe published a piece today that questions that validity of the non-fiction book Bringing Down the House, which inspired the recent hit film 21, starring Kevin Spacey. (I actually just read the book this weekend, and saw the film the weekend before that, but that proves no point ... http://www.erinbalser.com/2008/04/08/non-fiction-gone-wrong-or-right/ I want this book. Titled ABC3D and written by Marion Bataille, it's sure to please any typography enthusiast. It's too bad it won't be for sale until October. http://www.erinbalser.com/2008/04/06/3d-alphabet/ The other day, HarperCollins US announced a radical shift in their publishing policies when they launch a new imprint soon. The entire Wall Street Journal article is here, if you'd like to read it, but here's the short version: Authors will no longer receive large advances Book sellers will no longer be ... http://www.erinbalser.com/2008/04/06/harpercollins-new-publishing-format/ The other day I received an email from a small American book publisher wondering if I would like a review copy of their latest book so that I could review it on my blog. I write a whole bunch of other blogs and this particular one is Chic By Nature, ... http://www.erinbalser.com/2008/03/31/books-for-blogging-reviews-for-books/ Descant (one of my favorite literary magazines!) recently wrote a post about cleaning off the bookshelf. Some titles are impossibly hard to part with, no matter how embarrassing. Yes, I'm talking about my entire Baby-Sitters Club series. Others, not so much. Their suggestions range from the charitable to the communal to ... http://www.erinbalser.com/2008/03/29/spring-cleaning-culling-books/ Thanks to Descant, I recently discovered an online service called Book Mooch, where people all around the world can trade and share books. All you do is sign up, type in the books you want to give away. Once they are given away, you receive a "point" which allows you to ... http://www.erinbalser.com/2008/03/27/book-mooch-where-its-okay-to-be-a-mooch/ Papercut, the fabulous NY Times book blog, came up with the "seven deadly sins" of book reviews today--popular words in books reviews, used to sound "intelligent" and "literary." The list includes the gems poignant; compelling; intriguing; eschew; craft (used as a verb); muse (used as a verb); and lyrical. In the comments ... http://www.erinbalser.com/2008/03/26/being-a-reviewing-cliche/ A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal wrote an article about how Borders was going to increase the number of titles they shelve face-out, as to further entice buyers to a wider variety of titles. This article resulted in several very strong letters in protest. For example, Scott Ehrig-Burgess wrote: We ... http://www.erinbalser.com/2008/03/25/facing-out-titles-turning-away-readers/