Trends

As the holiday season nears, one Reddit user posted this inspiring picture of a Book Christmas Tree. UPDATE: Explore our growing Book Christmas Tree Farm for inspiring photographs of other holiday book trees.

The Book Christmas Tree has already earned thousands of views. It is a simple but powerful way to show your support for print books and bookstores in this digital age. If you build your own, be sure to email GalleyCat a photograph.

We only have one question: What book will you put on top of your Book Christmas Tree?

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

As Halloween nears, it’s time for our annual feature on literary costume ideas. The blogosphere was bursting with ideas last year, but we’d love to hear more suggestions–especially literary costumes for this GalleyCat editor’s one-year-old baby…

Share all your ideas at the #literarycostumes hastag created by Random House. 

Adventurous Writer pointed us toward a brilliant Curious George Man in the Yellow Hat costume (pictured, via).

The Book Bench set up a Flickr page collecting the best photos of literary Halloween costumes.

 

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The Books They Gave Me is a new Tumblr blog collecting memories of books shared by lovers.

Here’s one story from the blog: “He, lovelorn literary loser, just like me—but better at even that than I was, for I was a mere apprentice—gave me a hardcover edition of the complete poems of William Blake. I’d brought him to the legendary Hyde Park, Chicago Powell’s, and the Blake edition was on my shopping list. I was back in school at 34, newly divorced, to finish the BA in English Literature I should have taken the first time around. Starry-eyed, in love with the man and the poems, I found the book, but sadly noted its $70 price tag…”

So we just had to ask: What’s the best book you ever received as a gift from your lover? If you want to share the story of that particular gift book, email the blog with your submission. The guidelines are simple: “submit a few paragraphs and a valid URL for a cover image of the exact edition you were given, if possible.”

 

The next time somebody asks you “What is steampunk?” just show them the trailer for the upcoming documentary, Vintage Tomorrows. (embedded above).

The documentary already includes authors Cherie Priest and Cory Doctorow, so we look forward to the parts about steampunk books. This GalleyCat editor has found himself stumbling to explain the word “steampunk” in the past, a unique blend of science fiction, historical fiction and crazy creativity.

Here’s more about the movie: “Trailer for the coming future casting documentary ‘Vintage Tomorrows’ about what Steampunk can teach us about the future.”

Trying to write about hipsters but don’t speak the language? No problem. There is a new website that can help you generate hipster lingo automatically.

Hipster Ipsum helps you create “Artisanal filler text for your site or project.” You can get four paragraphs of hip words in your choice of flavor: “Hipster with a shot of Latin.,” or “Hipster, neat.”

Here is the first in series of meaningless hipster jargon that the hipster writing machine created for us: “Beard lo-fi cred, yr scenester art party vinyl put a bird on it. Farm-to-table 3 wolf moon locavore, wayfarers portland carles high life leggings tumblr. Skateboard portland farm-to-table mustache, banh mi tofu ethical. Salvia synth four loko lo-fi, artisan master cleanse +1. Banh mi raw denim aesthetic whatever retro food truck. Artisan echo park freegan sartorial 8-bit bicycle rights, farm-to-table cosby sweater twee tattooed fanny pack whatever Austin messenger bag williamsburg. Mustache lo-fi next level master cleanse before they sold out put a bird on it scenester, cosby sweater cliche retro lomo mixtape bicycle rights.” (Via BoingBoing)

Writers Veronica Roth, Marie Lu and Erin Morgenstern all landed movie deals for their debut novels.

Roth released Divergent in May; Morgenstern’s book The Night Circus is due out in September and Lu’s title Legend will hit bookstores in late November. Lu sold her book’s movie rights to CBS Films. Summit Entertainment snatched up the rights to Roth and Morgenstern’s novels.

According to Variety, Harry Potter film producer David Heyman is interested in The Night Circus film. Deadline reported that Twilight film producers Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey are looking at Legend. All three authors made an appearance at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con.

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In the video embedded above, YA writer John Green revealed the title for his new book (The Fault in Our Stars) and promised to sign every single one of the 150,000 books in the first print run.

Even though the manuscript is currently unfinished and the cover has yet to be finalized, the title hit #1 on the Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com bestseller list recently. Green said the publication date has been moved up from May 2012 to January 2012. The author will be video-recording himself throughout the entire signing process; the video will be available on the Vlogbrothers YouTube channel he shares with his brother, Hank Green.

Here’s more from Green’s announcement: “I am doing this because 1. I like my readers, and 2. I want to find a way to thank them for choosing to read my books in this media-saturated world, and 3. I can’t tour everywhere, and it seems weird to preference readers who live near big metropolitan areas of the US over other readers, plus 4. I think it will be kind of fun unless my hand falls off.”

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Goodreads has partnered with First Book, a charity group whose mission is to make sure children who reside in low-income communities are able to have access to books. Together, these two organizations will be fighting illiteracy using the Goodreads Book Club.

Every time 10,000 Goodreads members add A Visit From the Goon Squad to their shelves, the organization promises to donate 1,000 books. So far, 25,000 members have added the book. If another 5,000 members follow, then Goodreads will provide 3,000 books.

Here’s more from the site’s blog post: “Our initial goal is to donate 5,000 books—which means we need 50,000 people to add A Visit From The Goon Squad by August 2, when the Book Club concludes with a live video chat with author Jennifer Egan. If more than 50,000 people add the book before the end date, we will honor our pledge and donate up to 10,000 books!”

RadarOnline.com speculated this weekend that Maria Shriver could receive $15 million or more for a hypothetical tell-all book after her divorce from former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Despite the provocative post, Shriver has not expressed any desire to write such a book.

Here’s more from the article: “One top publishing exec told RadarOnline.com that California’s former First Lady could garner more than the all-time advance record, the $15 million paid to Bill Clinton for his memoir, My Life … But a tell-all about growing up a Kennedy and especially her life with the cheating Arnold and learning he fathered a child by their maid, that’s a whole different story — literally — and it could set sales records.”

Shriver has written three nonfiction titles and three picture books. Her 2000 title, Ten Things I’d Wish I’d Known Before I Went Out Into The Real World, was based on a commencement address she gave at the College of the Holy Cross. Shriver has also established a successful career as a television journalist with two Emmy Award wins under her belt.

The popular social gaming company Zynga has filed for a $1 billion I.P.O.. The company behind games like FarmVille and CityVille counted a $90.6 million profit last year in the filing.

Here’s more about the I.P.O. from the NY Times: “The start-up, founded four years ago by its 45-year-old chief executive Mark Pincus, said it expected to raise about $1 billion in the offering, based on a figure used to calculate the registration fee … According to people briefed on the matter, Zynga is expected to ultimately offer up to 10 percent of its shares at a valuation near or above $20 billion.”

Last year we offered tips on how book publicity efforts could focus on related communities, matching genre with social gaming audience. Read more in our post, “How Publishers Can Use Social Games.”