After Christmas is over, could I suggest we continue with the spirit of giving? Perhaps, books at birthdays, anniversaries etc. It would be great to match the spirit of giving with the spirit of reading.
A Happy Caring Christmas, Everyone! ]]>
Why not a double gift? Rather than going to a commercial bookstore, buy your ‘Santa’ books at a neighborhood charity thrift shop where you may find almost-new books going for a proverbial song, thus benefiting the charity and the needy child.
Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing ™: Yet another great idea!
]]>Put a bookshelf in the local food bank fill it and put the word out to Feed the Mind …customers want to help with gently used books, and the kids get the books. It is magic …we have watched it grow.
Hope you can spread the word.
Cathy Jesson
Black Bond Books
Surrey British Columbia
bookcrosser meetings in almost every city in the U.S. Bookcrossers share books with others by leaving them in places where they will be found by someone else. We put a bookmark or card inside telling the finder of the book that they have just found a terrific read and to please share it with another after reading it. On the website, you can actually track a book’s path from reader to reader sometimes.
Donating books is always a good idea. Checking local literacy groups, libraries, etc. where book gifting is organized can expedite your gesture.
Books have always been my destiny. I’ll tell you a funny story. My maiden name is Tana Reed. Tana in Japanese means bookcase (I’m not Japanese, but because my mom died when I was young, I have no idea where she got that name). I began reading and writing a few years after birth and worked in libraries all the way through graduate school (guess what my degrees are in) and a year after, for a living. I was going to be a librarian, in fact, but turned to publishing instead–for 25 years! Lately I’ve taught college (guess what courses).
Now I’m in the second half of Act 2 of my life. Can someone advise me on a new career path? I don’t want to return to corporate publishing, and, in brutal honesty, I detest teaching kids who won’t do their homework. Nearly 100% of the students I teach say they hate to read and write. They couldn’t parse a sentence if their life depended on it.
Any suggestions?
Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing ™: Well, I’m not sure I’d recommend being an author, unless you’ve got a lot of money stashed under the mattress! Thanks for dropping by again, Tana. I actually just sent a note to the editor of the Wall Street Journal in which I mentioned your name. They had a front page article, “Why Book Industry Sees the World Split Still by Race,” yesterday, and I recommended that they read the very wise comment you left after my controversial (to put it mildly) October 17th posting! Are Black Authors Getting “Nigger Treatment?” Is “Niche” a Dirty Word? Is Millenia Black Really Suing Penguin Group Over White v. Black Characters?
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Great idea for a column, about donating books.
Kids in unfortunate circumstances need food for their minds more than cakes and candy and used video games.
Tom Clavin
Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing ™: Hey, Tom! I’m reading your book right now!
]]>I happened to love the local Barnes and Noble’s idea a few years ago. You picked a card with, for example, ‘boy age 9′ on it. Then you bought an appropiate book. You could personalize the a book plate for it and those books went into backpacks for kids going into foster care.
Our kids’ teachers recieve so much at Xmas that are candles, mugs, etc..so I did something different—for every teacher and spec. needs therapist involved with my kids, I did a book at Barnes and Noble and donated it in a teacher’s name. I tried to tie the book to something with the teacher.
One of the teachers I know has 2 boys, so I made sure for her that I picked a young girl. For my son’s Sp-ed classroom teacher, I picked The Black Stallion because my son is named for the main character.
I thought the teachers would like the idea and was actually surprised by how enthuastic and emotional they were over it. This year the Barnes and Noble near me has their books going to a family literacy charity and I’ll be heading there soon.
]]>But then the publishing world is full of stuff like this (I love the phrase “bean counters who assume the mantle of dignity by calling themselves publishers”–as the friend of at least two people with decades of work history between them who just got dumped by Random House right before the holidays, it really resonates with me). For instance, what’s going to happen to 400,000 copies of the aborted OJ book? I would say I heard Judith Regan was going to compost them for sustainable agriculture, but it’s not April Fool’s day.
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off the covers, dump the books and return the covers to prove to the publishers that they’re not pulling a fast one with their accounts.
Wouldn’t it benefit everyone if the books’ barcodes could be scanned and registered in some database, thereby satisfying the publishers, and the entire book could then be made available for anyone who wants to simply take it?
A lot of those paperbacks are probably genre fiction that young readers eat up in vast quantities.
It would be great if these books would go to readers who want and can’t afford them all year round, instead of being wasted in the most miserly fashion because of the bean counters who assume the mantle of dignity by calling themselves publishers.
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