Marketing books has become more than just good reviews and snappy jacket copy. Social media, You Tube and other viral engagements are now baseline for getting the word out on books. More and more, readers want to connect with authors, and book trailers are making huge inroads in service to this need.

Across my desk today is a new book by Rick Smith called "The Leap." Anyone disenchanted with old school ideas associated with working for pay, might do well to pick this up for a read during holiday time off--before making those all-important New Year's resolutions.

I really like this recent post on the Dystel & Goderich blog. The continued harangue about the publishing industry's plunge in the toilet is getting old and tiresome. Yeah, less people are parting with their cash for hardbacks. The super stars can't make the B&N cash registers light up the way they used to. Okay. But building readership, cultivating a loyal audience should be done in real time, through human interaction

Two years and two months ago I started a novel that has been slowly percolating its pages through my overly-committed schedule. The book was inspired by a trip I took to Rhode Island a couple of summers ago, where I stayed with friends in their Watch Hill "summer cottage"--a gorgeous dwelling in the Gatsby tradition of power, fortune and scandal. From the very scant factual nugget, an idea for a novel emerged, one that explores "fitness gone awry." Darwin meets Frankenstein, maybe.

This is a story about a nearly 100-year-old book, bound in red leather, which has spent the last quarter century secreted away in a bank vault in Switzerland. The book is big and heavy and its spine is etched with gold letters that say “Liber Novus,” which is Latin for “New Book.”

In "Twitterville," Shel Israel figures out how to write a timeless book about a dynamically morphing platform.

Read the book to find out how CEOs, students, nonprofit activists, small business owners and others used Twitter to advance their agendas. Powerful stuff.

Do you love books? We do. Do you want to make a difference? We do. Buy your books at BetterWorldBooks and make a difference in the lives of others. Oh, and free shipping!

When it comes to electronic rights for out-of-print titles, whose side are you on? Microsoft, Yahoo and the the nation's top copyright official--or, Google, libraries, tech groups and various activists. Should Google win the monopoly on e-production rights, or should we heed the warnings of the U.S. Copyright Chief, Marybeth Peters, who worries that Google's win would undermine Congress' ability to govern copyrights, and spell disaster for books published overseas.

It's odd, to me, however, that Microsoft would be crying foul when it comes to monopolies. Just saying...