Ferguson Library Donations Continue to Grow, Hachette to Sell Books through Twitter, and More

by
Staff
12.9.14

Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—from publishing reports to academic announcements to literary dispatches—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today’s stories:

Donations to the Ferguson Municipal Public Library have so far raised upwards of three hundred fifty thousand dollars. Monetary and book donations have continued to flow in after a Missouri grand jury’s decision not to indict officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of unarmed Michael Brown on November 24. The library served as a haven for the community amidst the riots and protests that followed the decision. (St. Louis Today)

On December 11, Hachette Book Group will begin selling books directly through Twitter. Tweets from certain authors will contain buttons allowing customers to buy the books from the social media site. The first book to be offered through this service will be Amanda Palmer’s The Art of Asking. (Publishers Weekly)

The Jane Austen Centre in Bath, England, has declared December 16—Jane Austen’s birthday­—Jane Austen Day. The center, which hosts the annual Jane Austen festival, utilized social media to expand its reach to a global audience of Austen fans, and to suggest ways to celebrate the day around the world. (Los Angeles Times)

“Today, I get the sense that memory is much less sure of itself, engaged as it is in a constant struggle against amnesia and oblivion. This layer, this mass of oblivion that obscures everything, means we can only pick up fragments of the past, disconnected traces, fleeting and almost ungraspable human destinies.” Read Patrick Modiano’s full acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Speaking of Nobel Prize–winners, novelist Doris Lessing, who passed away last year, had her personal collection of over three thousand books donated to Zimbabwe’s Harare City Library. Lessing helped open libraries in Zimbabwe after the country declared its independence in 1980. (GalleyCat)

“For some reason, I’ve always felt that slacking at my day job to do more writing would be cheating.” At the Morning News, Liz Entman Harper leads a roundtable discussion with writers who have full time jobs.

Amazon is testing out plans to offer a fast bike delivery service to its New York City customers. The Amazon Prime Now service would guarantee delivery in Manhattan within an hour from the company’s new building on 34th street. (Wall Street Journal)

Comments

I think using Twitter to sell

I think using Twitter to sell books is a smart idea.  Self-published authors have been using that platform to sell for a while now.  It will be interesting to see how effective Twitter is as a sales tool and if other publishers/authors follow suit.  Janelle www.janellefila.com