Book Talk
Publishers are encouraging authors to produce and star in their own book trailers, i.e., video advertisements designed to target media outlets and the YouTube crowd. Examples are at book-trailers.net or featured on interactive channels like BarnesandNoble.com’s “B&N Studio,” a site that offers book-related content such as “Book Obsessed,” a B&N series profiling book fanatics.

Grab Your Notepad
More written word news of note: a new term, Blook, for a book that originated as a blog or website, and popular enough to have its own award, The Blooker Prize; naughtybettyinc.com, a line of risqué but very witty greeting cards targeted to women entering midlife; Blogger Exhaustion, the insane pressures to post 24/7, causing an increase in stress and sickness among bloggers; and, lastly, Stephenie Meyer, Morman-housewife-turned-young-adult author, who is being hailed as the next J. K. Rowling as a result of her popular “Twilight” series of vampire fantasy books. There’s even a website for fans over 25: twilightsmoms.com.

Source: Futurist, July/August 2008; Time, 5/5/08; Media, 6/08; More, 9/07; WSJ, 6/7/08