The Big Bad Book Blog

The history page on Simon & Schuster’s website proudly declares that its founders made it “the first publisher to offer booksellers the privilege of returning unsold copies for credit—a practice that revolutionizes the book business,” happily oblivious to all the anger and controversy their little invention has caused. continue reading

According to a Pew poll, six million adults—almost a third of the number who own personal audio players—have downloaded podcasts. A lot of people are listening. A podcast is a self-published online radio show available to download from the Internet. Although the concept was only born four years ago, Apple’s iTunes directory currently lists more than fifteen thousand podcasts available for download and receives more than a thousand podcast submissions each week.

One of the reasons for the podcast’s quick rise to popularity is how easily one can be created. Desktop programs like Apple‘s iLife ($79) include everything you need to record your own. You can get a detailed how-to at Podcasting News or listen to a podcast about how to podcast at Apple’s iLife tutorials. Of course, unless you have your own recording studio, using do-it-yourself programs will make your podcast sound like you did it yourself. If you are trying to sound professional and want your podcast to reflect that professionalism, then you should look into a company that will help you record and edit.

Here are the essentials to make sure your podcast rocks the trend and ensnares faithful listeners everywhere: continue reading

You turn and look, and there she is—beautiful, mysterious, seductive in the midst of her drab sisters. Your breath catches in your throat. More than anything, you want to pick her up—caress the soft, smooth texture of the cover, trace the line of the emboss, smell that new-paper perfume. The outlines of the die-cut are a little rough to touch, teasing you with a glimpse of the case beneath her dust jacket. Before you know it, you’re lost in her flap copy, still stroking the silken front cover as you fall deeper and deeper under her spell.

It’s called Feel Appeal—the textures, colors, and effects that make you want to touch what you see. A book with strong feel appeal gets noticed, admired—and taken home, far more often than her plain siblings. A bookstore browser looks at a book’s cover for only a few seconds, but if that cover entices a reader to pick the book up, it’s far more likely to go home with him tonight. Feel Appeal is a powerful allure—if a book looks interesting to touch, it’s going to be picked up.

The Feel Appeal Index measures four categories of a book’s attractiveness and rates its overall seductive qualities—a perfect 10 on the FAI is that beauty in the first paragraph; a 1 is a piece of dirty Xerox paper on the floor. What does the FAI measure? continue reading