Orbit Books Shares Details About 2009 Fantasy Cover Art Trends
Orbit Books has been running a series of fascinating infographics that reveal fantasy novel cover art trends for 2009. Orbit's Trends in Fantasy Cover Art chart shows that swords, glowy magic and dragons were the most popular fantasy cover art elements in 2009. Orbit Books also has information and infographics about heroines in urbany fantasy, the most popular color choices for dragons and a word cloud showing word trends in fantasy titles in 2009.
The listing on eBay for J.D. Salinger's toilet says, "Here's an item you won't come across everyday!" The listing also promises that the toilet will come to you "uncleaned and in it's original condition when it was removed from Salinger's old home."
The asking price for the commode is $1 million. It is unclear why anyone would want to pay anywhere near that much for it. The listing tries to entice buyers by suggesting that Salinger may have thought up some of his stories while sitting on the toilet. The listing says, "Who knows how many of these stories were thought up and written while Salinger sat on this throne!" Actually, we do know the answer to this question. The toilet was made in 1962, which is after Salinger published most of his novels and stories. The Catcher in the Rye was published in 1951.
Author Jonathan Franzen is back on the literary radar with his new novel, called Freedom. Franzen has landed the cover of Time and he has a write-up in Vogue. Jonathan Franzen made an author video even though he dislikes them. The fact that a lot of commerce now happens online seems to have made him willing to make them.
Jonathan Franzen says, "This might be a good place for me to register my profound discomfort at having to make videos like this. To me, the point of a novel is to take you to a still place. You can multitask with a lot of things, but you can't really multitask reading a book. You're either reading a book or you're not. To me, the world of books is the quiet alternative, an ever more desperately needed alternative. I understand that not everyone sees it that way, and I understand that a lot of commerce happens online now, so I think it makes good sense to be recording little videos like this."
Search and PR strategist Adam Sherk has compiled a list of the most overused terms in press releases. He used PRWeb's press release archive to find the most frequently used terms. Many press releases are full of words used to praise the products and the people mentioned in them. Words like leader, best, top, unique, innovative and great made the list. Below is a list of the top ten most overused press release buzzwords. You can view the top 100 list here.
A. N. Devers launched an interesting website earlier this year called Writers' Houses. A. N. Devers says his decision to launch a site dedicated to documenting writers' houses came from "a growing obsession, since childhood, with books, travel, and making connections between a writer's work and place."
The Writers' Houses database can be browsed by author, city, state and country. Some of the authors in the database include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Edith Wharton, Thomas Wolfe and William Faulkner.
Author Jonathan Franzen is back on the literary radar with his new novel, called Freedom. Franzen has 
A. N. Devers launched an interesting website earlier this year called 