New York International Gift Show Report: Part 2

OK, so… it’s been two weeks since the last post about our trip left off, but we’ve been busy catching up on work (the kind that can’t be done over margaritas, like this).

Backtrack to where Part 1 left off…

Saturday 9 am (February 2nd): The Javits Center doors open and the booth looks fantastic, thanks to months of hard work by our Events Manager, Elizabeth. The twice-annual Gift Show is where specialty store buyers from around the world come to retailers’ booths like ours to scout out and order new merchandise. It’s the first time the show has started on a Saturday, so traffic is a bit slow. We’re not complaining, though–we’ve got one of every book Chronicle has in print, so it’s a chance to brush up on our backlist and learn all the new Moleskine details.

Did you hear we’re now distributing Moleskine? We know. We’re excited too.

Saturday 1:17 pm: Chronicle’s booth is in a new location this year, but by now we’ve been found and are slammed. Our IT Guy, Greg, is on hand to keep us all calm in the frenzy of processing orders on the digital barcode scanners.

Greg, Input Master

Saturday 2:16 pm: The lovely Lotta Jansdotter comes by to hang out for a while and charms us all. Her new book, Lotta Prints, is a hit at the show and will be available in March.

We’re kicking ourselves for not getting a photo with her because she is so! adorable!

Saturday 7:34 pm: BAM! Check out this bike:

Yeah, that’s what we thought, too. Turns out it’s part of a pretty controversial guerilla marketing campaign for DKNY. (And by controversial, we mean that the bike is completely defaced when we pass it again two hours later.)

Also on our trek down Spring Street: a Sergio Furnari sculpture based on the 1932 photograph “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper” by Charles C. Ebbets. Completed shortly after 9/11, it took Sergio a year to create and has toured across the country since.

Saturday, 7:50 pm: Luck is on our side as we snag the last walk-in seats for the night at Mercer Kitchen. We’re hoping to see Jean-Georges Vongerichten (Jean-boy to us) but no luck. Recipe we’re stealing for our next dinner party: the surprising and delicious mozzarella, prosciutto, basil, pineapple and pomegranate salad.

Saturday, 9: 32 pm: On the walk home:

One of us finds a cute store named after herself.

Sunday 8:19 am: In an effort to offset yesterday morning’s craaazy expensive breakfast at the Hudson, we do the breakfast buffet at Whole Foods across the street. Not everything this trip can be high rollin’. Our expense reports thank us.

Sunday 9 am: Day two of the Gift Show and Michelle B. is ready to rock (rock the sales floor, that is).

By noon, we can already tell which titles the buyers are most excited about: bring on the Porn! And woodland creatures! And dinner distractions! And men in aprons! And eco-friendly anything!

Sunday 4:47 pm: Denyse Schmidt visits the Chronicle team. Jodi and Julie get the scoop on her new hush-hush spring line… and it’s going to knock your knitted booties off!

Super saleswomen: Jodi, Jennifer K., Tyrrell, Julie R., Michelle B. and Hannah

Sunday 6:30 pm: We pile out of the van for dinner at Inoteca in the Lower East Side. Funny how wine really brings about some team bonding–we learn that Jennifer K. is obsessed with Pinkberry, Tyrrell worked at Mother Jones, and Christina A. is one of six Bay Area-dwelling sisters.

Sunday 9:12 pm: On the walk home, we encounter:

Babeland, where we have to go in and scope the wares (meaning our books, of course!).

This discreetly marked place:

We’re pretty sure Zac lives here.

A telephone wire decorated with ten pairs of shoes:

And another orange bike–this one at Spring & Sullivan.

By now we’ve learned a little more about them. Timed for Fashion Week, the campaign hopes to encourage New Yorkers to ride more by focusing on environmental and health benefits. DKNY has partnered with the NYC Department of Transportation, donating thousands of helmets and bike maps to help educate cyclists and bikers on the city’s safety improvement efforts.

Monday 7:07 am: It’s snowing!

…snowflakes that fall on my nose and eyelashes…

Monday 8:55 am: We pass this billboard on the way to the Gift Show:

Seems like it’s a sign to take a snow day… right?

Monday 9 am: It’s Paul Frank Day here at the booth, where the Chronicle team celebrates the exciting launch of our PF books and stationery.

And look! It’s Dave Borgenicht, author of the much-loved Worst-Case Scenario series. Dave’s also the CEO and Publisher of Quirk Books, one of our favorite distribution partners.

Lisa B. and Dave, who says, “I’ve never before felt anything quite like the power of a PDA in my hands, scanning my own books… awesome.”

Monday 3:14 pm: Taking a break…

Hannah catches up with Ivy & Bean.

Monday 6 pm: Phew! It’s been a long day. There were surely a lot of other cool things that happened, but since it was our busiest day of the week, we were too slammed to take note!

Monday 8:38 pm: We drag ourselves to dinner at John’s Pizzeria, an old converted church with stained glass windows still intact and a two-story mural covering the wall. Pizza + beer = yum. Lisa Anne is determined to rally for punk karaoke at Arlene’s Grocery afterward, but instead we’re so beat that we just call it a night.

But the fun doesn’t stop here… check back soon for our incredibly true adventures on a Thalia photo shoot, backstage at Fashion Week, loving a life-size Uglydoll, finding the dirtiest apartment ever, and climbing trees in Central Park!

Hannah Cox, Stationery & Retail Marketing Manager
Lisa Anne Logan, Entertainment Marketing Manager

Popularity: 7% [?]

I’m addicted to mashups. It started back in 2004, when Housingmaps.com forever changed the way I searched for apartments on Craigslist. Slowly but surely, maps have invaded my psyche. They’re everywhere you look on the Web these days. Almost anything you’re searching for can now be found on a map. Looking for a taqueria in San Francisco? With 165 places to choose from, Burritoeater has totally got you covered.

Millions of mashups have been created in the last few years, and the number continues to grow exponentially as the technology becomes easier for non-programmers to use. Google Maps Mania does a good job reporting on the latest and greatest in the world of mashups, but it’s impossible to keep up with the crush of information coming through my RSS feeds every day. Occasionally, however, I do stumble across something that catches my eye. When I recently discovered the “Places mentioned in this book” mashup on Google Book Search, I knew I was in for trouble.

A mashup of every location mentioned in one of my Chronicle faves, Hatch Show Print. Click on the image to see the map in Google Book Search. Yee haw!

Instantly I knew this was going to become a huge time suck. Sure enough, I started plugging in some of my favorite titles to see what turned up and three hours later, I decided I’d better turn this into a blog post. No longer “wasted” time, this became “work.” Unfortunately, as I learned through many, many trial and error entries, a good number of our books aren’t mapped yet. I’d love to see a mashup of Where Flavor Was Born or check out satellite photos of the locations mentioned in My Favorite Place. Guess I’ll just have to keep checking back for updates…

A snippet from Craig Ferguson’s hilarious novel, Between the Bridge and the River, magically plotted to a location on the map.

The actual mechanisms powering this tool remain mysterious to me. When they announced the feature last year on Google’s blog, a software engineer wrote: “Our team has begun to animate the static information found in books by organizing a sample of locations from them on an interactive Google Map, with snippets of text from the book, and links to the actual pages where the locations are mentioned. When our automatic techniques determine that there are a good number of quality locations from a book to show you, you’ll find a map on the ‘About this book’ page.” Hmmm… I think I’ll call it “magic.” Ah, much better.

Switch to the satellite view and you can even zoom down to see the waves breaking at Maverick’s, the title break in Matt Warshaw’s awesome illustrated history of big wave surfing.

Guinevere Harrison
Copywriter

Popularity: 6% [?]

New York International Gift Show Report: Part 1

Sunday 12:25 am (right now): Crowds of Giants fans are whooping and hollering in the street outside our hotel window. Good work, boys. Inside, we’re collecting our photos and trying to remember everything that’s happened in the past 72 hours without first falling fast asleep.

Backtrack to…

Thursday 9 am: Team Chronicle boards Jet Blue for a fun-filled five hours of in-flight entertainment (read: Hannah knits an adorable scarf and takes in everything she can from the Food Network, while Lisa Anne reads Killing Yourself to Live and takes incriminating photos of passed-out colleagues.)

Thursday 5:26 pm: We collect our bags with some embarrassment – Lisa Anne having had to pay the “heavy” fine, and Hannah with one suitcase for clothes and a second for shoes.

Thursday 6:42 pm: We loooove the Hudson. Love it. Love. It.

Thursday 8:17 pm: Japanese-Italian fusion? Why not. The concierge recommends Natsumi and we’re feeling adventurous even if jetlagged.

Thursday 10:52 pm: A carafe of nigori later… we curl up in pjs to check the barrage of work emails and watch Worst-Case Scenario author Dave Borgenicht on Conan. The highlight: Conan announcing he’ll be using “How To Save a Choking Cat” on the front of his holiday card this year. What about that isn’t festive?

Friday 9:15 am: The pouring rain can’t deter our parade as we catch the subway down to Chelsea Market for delicious breakfast quiches at Amy’s Bread.

Friday 10 am: Setup begins. Chaos ensues. Open box. Unpack box. Stack books. Restack books. Sort books. Rearrange sorted books.

Friday 2:36 pm: Although not so obvious here, progress is being made…

Hannah tackles the Food & Drink titles area.

Friday 7:30 pm: We’re supposed to be at dinner. Across town. Right now.

Friday 7:47 pm: Soaking wet from getting off the wrong subway stop and adding a few extra blocks (miles?) to our walk, we finally arrive at Public in NoHo. We should have taken photos of the romantically municipal interior with its card catalogs and exposed brick (big fans here) but we were too enthralled by the food: beet & ginger risotto, roast duck, sweet chili scallops, lentil salad with avocado & pecans, sticky toffee pudding, and a most refreshing Gruner. We highly recommend eating here if at all possible, as well as keeping an eye on your umbrella as they tend to disappear from the front stoop.

Saturday 8:50 am: Back at the booth, ready for the first day…

Art & Design titles.

Parenting, wedding, and mind/body/spirit area looking very peaceful before the mad rush.

Check back soon for an update on how the show is going… For now, we’re beat!

Hannah Cox, Stationery & Retail Marketing Manager
Lisa Anne Logan, Entertainment Marketing Manager

Popularity: 6% [?]

They are immediately recognizable – the little black notebooks with the rounded corners. I first noticed them nestled in a half-open cupboard drawer in Christopher’s Books in San Francisco. They were so simple, so elegant. I bought a handful and gave them as gifts, but one I kept for myself. Little did I know that I was joining a loyal fan base that stretches from San Francisco, to Milan, to Tokyo, and on across the world. We are united in our affection for the perfect notebooks: our Moleskines.

Who needs a notebook in this day and age, when we navigate the planet (and our daily lives) clutching our iPhones, our battered PDAs, and our slimmed down laptops? Why on earth would anyone need to bring a pen, much less something to write in? Because they feel so darn good. There’s something about the quality of the paper (high) and the binding (sturdy) that positively demands use. I make notes in mine, and I’ll catch myself running my fingers across the paper as I think. That paper is like butter and it takes ink like nobody’s business. After countless legal pads, steno pads, and blank books of all description – nothing has ever felt this good.

Oddly, my little notebook sits comfortably next to my PDA. I would feel lost without either one. The PDA is the right side of my brain, sending messages out across the airwaves and keeping me on track throughout the day. The Moleskine is the left side, freeing me to write, imagine, draw, and dream. I tuck a ticket stub into the back pocket, slip a photo between the back pages, copy down a poem, and secure the whole thing with the handy elastic strap.

Is my infatuation ridiculous? Of course. I have a crush on paper. What could be more silly? But this last year, when I traveled to Milan with my colleagues, to meet the company that creates this line, I was thrilled. We were there to build a partnership. Chronicle Books was preparing to take responsibility for selling and delivering Moleskine to stores in the U.S. We spent three days with this small and dedicated team and walked away with a whole new appreciation for their craft. I realized that the feeling a Moleskine engenders is not accidental. The people behind it put an amazing amount of thought and care into creating an object that is beautiful, functional and well-made. I came home and demanded that my friends and family inspect the Smythe-sewn bindings and the well-constructed back pockets. “Did you know that every one of them is hand-finished in Milan?” I queried them. “Look. Here’s the quality control number. Have you read the story of where they came from? It’s tucked right here in the back. Look. Here. Right here.” They humored me, because they love me and they are fans of their Moleskines, too.

Did it spoil the magic to understand how these notebooks are created? Just the opposite. If anything, it gave me a greater appreciation for the fact that they exist at all. There is such an overwhelming amount of cheap and disposable merchandise in our world. I’m as guilty of consuming it as anyone else. When you stumble across something real – something meant to hold up under use – it’s almost a shock to the system. When that same thing is elegantly and understatedly designed, you have to take pause. When it feels as good as it looks, you’re hooked. At least, if you’re me.

So, I take my Moleskine everywhere, and when it’s full, I’ll tuck it on the shelf, next to the one from Christopher’s Books. It will be a part of me by then. They say a blank Moleskine is “a book that has yet to be written.” I wonder what story the next one will tell.

Anna Erickson
Director of Distribution Client Services

Popularity: 7% [?]

In response to my recent post about the slush pile, reader Frank Renfro asks some pertinent questions about how editors think about the dozens of projects that come over the transom every week. To quote:

“As an editor who receives plenty of unsolicited manuscripts–the slush–how do you discern the good, the bad, the ugly, the great? Is there an intuition that you sense from the opening sentence or paragraph of a new work of fiction, cookbook, essay, or collection of poems?

Is it important that the author be known to you beforehand, that is, even if a stranger, that there be a referral from another trusted source? Or, if a stranger, how much time do you spend reviewing a new piece of slush?”

Here’s my Philosophy of Slush, combined with some advice:

Relevance: It’s easy to reject a great deal of proposals right off the bat because the subject matter is inappropriate for Chronicle Books. A quick review of our website should make it clear that we don’t publish books on traffic safety, psychology textbooks, etc. I know there are books that list the addresses of hundreds of publishers, but those should only be a starting-off point for an aspiring author. Research the publishers you are interested in. Find published books similar in subject or spirit to your own and see who published them.

Intuition: There is an element of intuition about what’s not going to make it, combined with the experience of opening thousands of envelopes. For example, a thin packet is usually a query letter (which we don’t accept). Long, meandering, highly personal cover letters usually introduce projects that appeal to a very small audience. A proposal that features lots of branded, trademarked terms with ® or © symbols doesn’t feel very Chronicle to me. Lots of misspellings (especially my name!) and crazy formatting often portend an inattention to such small details as researching competitive titles or determining the market for the book.

Audience: When the author says that their book appeals to “everyone” or “everyone who watches Oprah,” I am skeptical. Not even the Bible is for everyone and that’s the biggest selling book of all time! Think it over and give me information I can use. If your book actually only appeals to 20-something urbanites, Don Rickles fans, or suburban moms of teenagers, that’s still a whole lot of people. It’s often easier to publish successfully to a smaller, specific audience–just look at our publishing to see what I mean.

The Author: It doesn’t matter to me if the author is known to me personally, or endorsed by someone I trust, though my curiosity is piqued if the author is published or has a platform. (By platform I mean being known to hundreds of thousands of people, by, say, hosting a show on HGTV. Blogging rarely fits this profile.) But every proposal gets the same fair chance. This I can say is true for every editor here. We keep reading until we find something that tells us it’s a no.

Recipe for Success: As for what works…there’s no formula I can offer. Sometimes it’s a cool new topic, or a very well-executed take on an evergreen topic. Sometimes it’s a person with a platform, or a very credentialed author, but often it’s an unknown author who has a genius idea or really “gets” Chronicle. Usually, though, the winning entries (or strong runners up) have put a lot of thought into what they are doing and are familiar with our publishing.

This is an exciting moment for me as a new blogger…dialogue! I hope this is helpful for aspiring authors. Some of our most exciting acquisitions have come out of the slush pile, so please keep it coming. Hopefully my posts on this topic will increase the success rate for all of us.

Lisa Campbell
Associate Editor

Popularity: 8% [?]