Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with Books

How do I break into publishing?

prunes — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:37:48 -0800

How do I break into one of the larger publishing houses? So I have spent the past year and a half thinking really hard about what I want to do careerwise. My tentative conclusion is that I should pursue my interests in a position where I will learn a lot. From there, opportunities will follow. Well I think I want to be in publishing. I love books. I am obsessed with books. And if I could have my druthers I would be in science fiction publishing. Just my luck I picked an obscure, unpopular niche in a tepid (dying?) industry.

For reference, I received a BA in Economics undergrad and I have been working for nearly a year and a half for a Big Four accounting/consulting firm doing financial advisory. I do not have any tangible experience in the publishing business from extracurriculars such as editing the school paper. I do not work in New York, but I imagine that a career transition of this nature will necessitate my moving there.

So how can I make this switch?

What Terry Pratchett book should I read first?

alhadro — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 07:23:22 -0800

What Terry Pratchett book should I read first? I would like to get into a bit of Terry Pratchett. I have the book "Thud!" sitting front of me, but a few people have mentioned this might not be the best starting place for a Pratchett expedition.

What Pratchett book(s) would you recommend getting started with?

Are there "standalone" books that aren't part of a series I could begin with?

Classics of literature of the month club, cancel and Moby Dick is yours to keep? Where to find?

bartleby — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 01:42:11 -0800

Some publisher used to do a set of volumes of great works, supposedly quality bindings, via a "We'll send you another volume each month, and if you cancel, the edition of Moby Dick is yours to keep" model. Who was that? It was some kind of vague collection or literary works, but not the "five foot shelf of books" or the Brittanica Great Books collection.

I remember advertisements in the back of magazines, and perhaps a TV ad where there was fawning over gilt edges and marbled endpapers.

Does this still exist? Or if not, who was the publisher/company/service can hunt down some of the books, used?

How to buy a book early

headlessagnew — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 18:48:30 -0800

I'm headed out of the country for three weeks, and I'd like to buy the new Neal Stephenson book a few days in advance of its release. So next week the new Neal Stephenson book -- "Anathem" -- is being released. I am headed overseas for about three weeks, and I'd really like to save a cubic foot or so in my carry-on for this book. Unfortunately, my flight leaves on Saturday!

My question to you, Metafilter: is there any hope of buying this book a few days early? (It'd have to be Friday.) Pertinent details: I live in Palo Alto, CA, and I am willing to drive around to snag it. How would I go about persuading somebody to break the sell-date? Any place in specific I should try?

Thanks!

Espresso and turning pages

Happy Dave — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 10:18:56 -0800

Books, sofas, coffee and the Sunday papers - good independent bookshops in London that are made for relaxing of a Sunday morning? Me and the dear wife recently visited some friends of mine in Aberdeen, where I went to university, and we had a lovely morning in Books and Beans, an independent second hand bookshop/cafe hybrid. Now we're back in London, and looking for similar things in London. So far, we seem to be stuck in between the extremes of corporate bookshops with built-in Starbucks and musty Charing Cross Road places that smell faintly of mildew.

South London would be awesome, but we're willing to travel a bit for that perfect books, newspapers and coffee feeling.

One thing - we know about both the Waterstone's Picaddilly bar (not comfy enough) and the Foyle's Jazz Bar (also not comfy enough). Sofas and such are a definite plus.

Point me to some great examples of limited third person viewpoint.

ilike — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 02:57:21 -0800

Point me to some great examples of limited third person viewpoint. Hi, I am a beginning writer who wants to learn how to write in limited third person viewpoint. Almost all books I like are however written in first person or some kind of all-knowing godlike viewpoint so I need something to learn from.

Any suggestions are welcome but I am not a big fan of mystery, romance or thriller.

Books on Japanese etymology?

Citizen Premier — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 18:42:13 -0800

Are there any layman-accessible, English-language books or (less preferably) websites on Japanese etymology or the development of Japanese? If there's anything like etymonline for Japanese, I'd love to see it, even if it's Nihongo only. But I'd prefer a reference book.

I'd also like to read how Japanese culture is expressed in their language; for example, how "sen" can refer to the future and the past, and other such counter-intuitive facets of Japanese.

I love English etymology, and if I can start to understand Japanese word roots I know it'll be a big boost to my fluency.

Looking for some inspiration about overcoming shame.

MiggySawdust — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 14:58:01 -0800

Looking for some inspiration about overcoming shame. Anybody have any suggestions for an inspiring book or movie about someone overcoming immense feelings of shame for who they are and then living a fulfilling life? Preferably from a straight 40ish masculine perspective. Thanks.

spontaneous generation /= peanut butter

es_de_bah — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:26:13 -0800

Could you point me towards some good sci-fi about creating life? In particular, I'm interested in stories about the possibility of human scientists discovering a means to create life out of previously non-living matter. even more in particular, i'm looking for sci-fi that discusses the possible social/political/philosophical ramifications of such a discovery within a cultural climate analogous to our own. whew! prompted by this!

i'm reasonable enough to believe that a few eons have gone by without generating life more than once on this globe, but I don't believe that so much time would've gone by without sci-fi authors coming up with a few interesting responses to the "peanut butter" argument.

Looking for examples of marketing or blurb lies or bait-and-switch on book jackets.

dobbs — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:37:26 -0800

Do you know any books that have blurbs on the back which incorrectly describe the plot of the book? So, I picked up this book called Samedi The Deafness which says on the back:

One morning in the park James Sim discovers a man, crumpled on the ground, stabbed in the chest. With his last breath, the man whispers one word: Samedi. What follows is a spellbinding game of cat and mouse..."

I picked up the book, but that's not what happens in it. Yeah, the guy is stabbed and dying, but he doesn't whisper one word. Their conversation goes on for like two pages.

This is not the first time I've bought a book with a summary on the back that has been false. I'm wondering if anyone else has some examples of the same.

Thanks!

Do you know of small towns in the Adirondacks?

Nillocsoc — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 09:47:29 -0800

What are some small towns in the Adirondacks (NY)- with nice community, local food, and art? I am looking to spend a few months in the Adirnodacks and am searching for small towns that offer a nice sense of community: art, food, music, books, outdoor activities. Ideally not too touristy, but even that would be okay.

All ideas are appreciated, and anything details about the places would be great!

Thanks.

Tall ships and Flying saucers.

meta87 — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:09:33 -0800

*For a Friend: I was looking for a specific book that is made up of mainly pictures. I think it was illustrated by one of the Star Wars conceptual artists. the image from the book that has stuck in my mind was of a tall ship with a huge flying saucer right next to it. No clue what the title was but I really wanted a copy of it so any help finding it would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Subtle kink in popular culture?

Anonymous — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:31:26 -0800

Books and movies with BDSM overtones? I'm trying to find books and movies that are not, strictly speaking, erotica, but which have hints of dominant/submissive relationships between characters.

Things like Secretary and The Story of O definitely qualify, but I'm looking for films/books where the theme is far subtler. Two examples that I can think of are Lust, Caution and (to a lesser extent) Gone With The Wind.

Thanks!

bibliomania

crazylegs — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 06:24:45 -0800

Looking for book auctions in Ontario and Quebec... I'm returning to Canada from the UK, and hoping to continue my book dealing. I used to live in Kingston, where the only 'auction action' is at Gordon's. Sometimes they have some good books there, but they don't specialize in them. I've gotten spoiled here in the UK, where one of the only things I like more than Canada is the book auctions. Now I'm trying to find auction houses that specialize in rare books within a reasonable distance of Kingston. I guess that means Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. Any suggestions?

Resources wanted - cultural diversity, youth, arts

divabat — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:20:02 -0800

Cultural diversity, youth, and the arts/creative industries - where do I start looking for resources? I'm doing a work placement with an Australian youth arts organization (non-profit) that provides advice and services to young emerging artists. I've been tasked with preparing a cultural diversity strategy, both to get more young people from culturally diverse backgrounds using their services, and also to make their current programs more respectful of cultural needs.

I've never actually written a strategy paper before, but I personally find the topic interesting so I'd like to do as much work as possible. I'd like to know where I can get more information.

I'm guessing this is largely a question of terminology, as searching for resources in my local libraries haven't given me much - what should I be looking for? So far I can think of:

* Brisbane/Australia's policies re: cultural diversity and the arts sector
* How other countries and cultures regard the arts and creative industries (no idea how to search for this)
* Examples of strategy papers
* Efforts in integrating different cultures, not just with young people and/or the arts world

What else should I be looking at? What resources fit the above list and what else should go on that list? Are there any universities/organizations that would be helpful?

How does a strategy paper look like anyway? It seems like right now I'm writing a plan for a strategy paper. (This project is only a week old so far so there are opportunities for adjustment.)

The org is Queensland-based and has offices in Caboolture and Brisbane, but resources from anywhere in the world are fine. My supervisor's worked in Eastern Europe and USA, and I'm from Malaysia, so we're all pretty good at taking our multicultural backgrounds and incorporating it into our work. I don't want to rely on stereotypes though, so I'd like to look at as much info from everywhere.

How do I know if former library books for sale really are former library books?

jamaro — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:26:13 -0800

I have some books I purchased online that are purportedly retired from their originating library's collection. How do I know if they are retired or on the lam? I frequently purchase used books from Amazon Marketplace. The sales description of the book will state it is a former library book (or retired library, ex-library etc) and when the book arrives, sure enough it will bear stickers and stamps common to library books. Usually the books will also be stamped with words to the effect of “Removed from XZY Library collection.” However, this week I received two used books from different vendors which have no such stamp. Further, the description made no mention that the books would be ex-library, and the only modification to the books are the Sharpie scribbles over the library inventory bar code. This makes me nervous because I’d hate to think that some schmucks are fulfilling book orders by ‘shopping’ in the aisles of his or her local library. Checking back through previous purchases, I've found several other suspect books. Short of calling these libraries all over the country, are there any other ways of determining if these books were really retired from collection vs stolen?

None of these books are out of print or otherwise rare. Most are children's picture books.

Can you recommend some Good Books for my dad?

Metroid Baby — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:02:56 -0800

My dad recently read The Shack and really liked it. Can you recommend other books with a spiritual leaning (not necessarily Christian) that he might also like? A bit of background: Metroid Dad lost both his father and his younger brother earlier in the year, and for the past several months he's been fighting an uphill battle with cancer. We're not sure how much time he's got left, but he's been in remarkably good spirits.

As might be expected in this situation, Dad's been waxing a bit ontological lately. Give him a free ear and he'll talk to you about his thoughts on God and the afterlife, on relationships and love and how we'll all meet again. He prefaces a lot of this with "I'm not sure how, but I believe…" or "Now, I don't go to church that much…" or "I know this might sound kinda flaky, but…" In other words, he's not dogmatic or judgmental, but appears to be approaching these questions with gentleness and an open mind. He was raised Protestant, but believes that all religions are really working towards the same thing and concedes that religion doesn't have to be a central part of anyone's life.

He read The Shack a month or two ago and, though he thought parts were kind of lame, on the whole it really spoke to him. Really, a whole lot. (I read it at his urging, and my reaction was more "hmm, okay.")

Given all of the above, I'd really like to find more reading material in a similar vein – stuff that might also speak to him, comfort him, or get him thinking. Fiction, nonfiction, religious texts, any or all of the above. Doesn't have to be Christian, doesn't necessarily have to have religion or God or spirituality as the main focus. I'd like stuff that’s intelligent but accessible (and readable while in the hospital and woozy), so nothing too dry or too schlocky. And I'd like to avoid proselytizing, Kool-Aid, and scary REPENT SINNERS!!!1! type stuff.

He loved the history books I got him for Christmas at your recommendations, and I'm hoping you guys will have some good ideas yet again.

(I doubt it'll be an issue, but just in case: please, no hurf durf Shack reader or hurf durf God believer here. Dad's not reading this thread, and I'm not going to engage him in any metaphysical arguments, so there's not really any point in it. He'd respect your beliefs, so please respect his.)

Thank you in advance, as always.

Books whose title is a specific year?

mediareport — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 16:04:21 -0800

Looking for popular history books whose title is or starts with a specific year - 1776, 1491, 69 A.D., etc. A subtitle after the year is fine, but the title needs to start with a specific date. Thanks! London 1945 doesn't quite fit, since it doesn't start with a year, but something like The Year 1000 and April 1865 are borderline ok. So far I've found 1215, 1421, 1434, 1453, and 1700.

Help me choose a book to travel with.

mosessis — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:38:48 -0800

I need a longish, interesting, well-written book (fiction) to read on an upcoming trip. Any suggestions? I'm going on a trip where I'll have plenty of time to read and not much space to pack books. I need to find a good novel-type book that could last me at least a couple of weeks. My trip is for a couple of months in non-English speaking countries, and I want something captivating to fall into as a respite from journeying.

I have read both Portrait of a Lady by Henry James and Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder in this same situation, and those worked perfectly for my purposes. I wish I could just bring one of these again, because they were so perfect - dense, interesting, thought-provoking, lend themselves to rereading passages - but I'd really like to find something new.

My general tastes run towards late 18th Century (Burney Lennox, Austen, etc) and turn of the twentieth century (James, Wharton, Wilde, etc). I generally steer away from serializations that have been turned into novels (Dickens, Forster, etc) and overly romanticized, gothic, heroic, dramatic love type stories (Les Miserables, Goethe, etc). But of course I am completely open to trying new genres and authors that I might not yet know I love.

What book was in your backpack that kept you going through the lonely times? What's the best longish novel you've read that you wish you had had the time to just sit and read? To slightly complicate this, I'm leaving in 36 hours and will have to find this on the shelf at one of my (luckily many) local book stores.

Is there anything wrong with taking pictures of Library books and then posting said pictures to a blog?

inviolable — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:30:12 -0800

Is there anything wrong with taking pictures of Library books and then posting said pictures to a blog? I work in a university library and would like to start a blog about special, unique, or interesting books that I find on the shelves. Along with writing about the books, I'd like to take pictures of them - specifically of the covers, the binding, and (maybe) a page or two of text. Would I be violating any laws?

How to fix a warped book?

Merzbau — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:52:23 -0800

I've just laid out money on a very expensive book, and to my chagrin it arrived with its pages warped and wavy from humidity (I live in a very humid city in the southeastern US), even though it was shrinkwrapped. How should I go about fixing this?

Looking for a self publishing service provider who support storefront branding

tomwheeler — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:45:35 -0800

Is there a self publishing service kind of like lulu.com but which lets you "brand" the storefront with your own stylesheet and logo? One that lets customer buy electronic copies as well as printed versions? One that you've had good experiences with? The company I work for sells a highly technical manual with a fairly limited audience. I doubt that it's as much of a profit source as it is a service to our customers who need the documentation for reference. So it's important for goodwill which helps build brand recognition.

Until now, I think they've just had a printer create a limited run of the books and then sold these to clients who call in. It occurs to me that it would be cheaper for us and probably easier for the clients if we could do this through a service. I'm aware of lulu.com and it seems like they'd be a good choice, but it does not look like they support branding (important for brand recognition). Hopefully the hivemind can tell me who might.

Help me become a Flash guru in a flash

dosterm — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:47:04 -0800

What are your recommendations for teaching myself Adobe Flash quickly? I'd like give myself a crash course in Adobe Flash 8. I have years of experience designing with print software (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Quark), and I can pick most any software up quickly, so I want something that will get me designing animations and learning neat tricks fast.

Any recommendations for books, online tutorials, websites with tips/howtos, or other sources? Thanks all!

Yes, I enjoy predictably irrational long tail freakonomics.

joshrholloway — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:27:04 -0800

Recommend some works similar to The Long Tail, Predictably Irrational, and Freakonomics. Within the past year I have read all three of these books and I absolutely loved them. I personally saw a common thread among them that really intrigued me, and I'm looking for more of the same.

I really like how they take on the common perceptions of how aspects of our world work and flip them on their heads, and expose the psychology and the underbelly of whole mindsets. I guess I'm looking for things that challenge the popular way of thinking and reveal possibilities about how stuff works that most people haven't thought about. If you've read any or all of these books, you'll understand what I'm talking about

I already have Everything Bad is Good For You by Steven Johnson, which I think will go along with this theme somewhat as well. So, AskMeFi, throw out some recommendations. Any books, articles, or similar are appreciated. Audiobooks (or podcasts or whatever) would be particularly awesome, because I have a moderately long commute that I like to use wisely.

Book reviews and when not to care about them

Anonymous — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:28:10 -0800

Question about small presses and book reviews. So I wrote a nonfiction hardcover book that I'm pretty proud of. Then it came out and it didn't get reviewed anywhere.

While this sucks, I have no illusions about how hard it is to sell a book these days. Still, just out of curiosity, I'm trying to determine how common it is to get no reviews.

Some factors: The company, which is small but enjoys wide distribution at places like Barnes and Noble, packaged and presented the book in a way that I suspect was a turn-off to potential reviewers. The product came off as musty, arcane, and irrelevant; the press release that went out was awful; and the cover didn't match my goal of writing a cool book; now I know how Kilgore Trout felt.

Mostly, I'm just curious: Does anyone out there, either as an author or in the publishing industry, have first-hand insights into how this all works? Do certain companies, by dint of their relationship with Publishers Weekly, etc., have a better chance of being reviewed? This company, for some reason, has a track record of consistently not getting their books reviewed, despite buying table space at bookstores.

The second part of my question is: I've also been weighing whether I should try to solicit reviews myself, all this time later. Not having my own shipping and handling department, and tired from a long book tour, and soooo over the book itself, I've been of a mind to cut my losses, chalk it up to experience, be glad I'm on library shelves, and move on.

Is that crazy? The way my royalties are set up, I see no chance of meaningful profit, just the slim possibility of some modest recognition, a review somewhere saying my book isn't half bad. But I'd rather let it go than grub around for reviews this late in the game, if it's not worth it.

Or maybe someone out there has had success turning around a dead-horse book that flopped on launch? I just want to get some perspective on how I should look at all this. Thanks...