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Only Remarking
We’re all just back from The City, where we held sales conference for the fall list somewhere in the Algonquin Hotel.
The purpose of every such excursion, of course, is to embed our own considered enthusiasm for upcoming titles — and their authors — into the discerning minds of our wide-flung sales force — twice a year, one frenzied day in the grey-light City of Ambition and Collusion.
And we always come with every tool we have — printed and digitized, verbal and visual, streaming, factual, emotive and rhetorical.
On the way out of town on Saturday morning, I picked up a copy of Michael Chabon’s ubiquitous new novel.
Have you seen the cover? Forget the cover; have you seen the spine? Here’s the copy — I mean the copy on the spine of the book:
“HARPER COLLINS PRESENTS THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN’S UNION BY THE PULITZER PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR OF THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY MICHAEL CHABON”
(All caps; no room left for punctuation.)
I mean, all of this on the spine of the book.
The spine.
Now that’s remarkable. So when I figure out what it says about the book-selling process, I’ll remark.
Fred Ramey
Posted 5/15/07
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