There’s been a lot of commotion in the publishing world about the Google Book Settlement in the last year, but it wasn’t until a friend sent me this link that I realized I had never explored Google Books and didn’t even know how to use it!

For all of you out there who are just like me, spend a little time figuring out how to search books by playing the Google Books Game. The actual game ended last week (each day the top three submissions were rewarded with Sony Readers), but you can still play for fun and test your book knowledge. The questions are a bit challenging, but luckily, even if you don’t know the answer you can still take advantage of Google’s gold mine of literary references.

1) You can scout for talent. Twitter grants you incredible access to high profile writers. Interested in acquiring food books? Have a look at who @ruthreichl is following. The same goes for politics (@maddow) business (@tferriss) – any category you can think of.

2) Keep up with your competition. I didn’t know Hank Paulson’s memoir is being published this January by Grand Central, but now I do (thanks @katelaurielee).

3) Early buzz machine. Why leave it up to your publicist to promote the book the month before it goes on sale when you can start publicizing it the day it is acquired? You’d be surprised how eager people are to have a window into the creative process: And when the book does go on sale, you have one more channel for publicity.

4) Be there first. By getting up to the moment information, you can immediately respond to breaking news or approach a writer you stumble across.

5) Watch and learn from innovative people outside of book publishing. @tedtalks @hotdogsladies @doctorow @jkottke inspire me.

*Bonus! Community. A lot of editors still associate Twitter (and blogs in general) with snark culture. Twitter can actually provide a great sense of community and positive energy. People are passionate about books. Just look at @booknerdnyc @randomeditor @debbiestier @spiegelandgrau

PS: This video of old school journalists talking about twitter was the impetus for this blog post.

Check out the new website (in beta stage), www.food52.com. It’s the brainchild of food writers Amanda Hesser (Cooking for Mr. Latte, The New York Times Magazine) and Merrill Stubbs, and it’s based on a series of year-round, weekly recipe contests—and HarperStudio will publish the cookbook that collects the winners at the end of the year.

book animation from Ian Hammond on Vimeo.

This week’s Mad Men mania perfectly coincides with Sammy Wasson’s book on Breakfast at Tiffany’s which I’m currently editing. I loved this:

“If there is one fact of life that Audrey Hepburn is dead certain of, adamant about, irrevocably committed to, it’s the fact that her married life, her husband and her baby, come first and far ahead of her career.

She said so the other day on the set of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the Jurow-Shepherd comedy for Paramount, in which she plays a New York play girl, café society type, whose constancy is highly suspect.

This unusual role for Miss Hepburn brought up the subject of career women vs. wives – and Audrey made it tersely clear that she is by no means living her part.”

- From Paramount Pictures publicity, released November 28th, 1960

Check out AMC’s website for details on the “New York’s Gone Mad” event calendar which includes a screening of ads form the 60s at the Museum and Arts Building, and various Mad Men inspired libations at hotel bars around town.

And don’t forget to Mad Men yourself!

I went to the Inman News Connect Conference last week. What a blast. Who knew a Real Estate conference could be so much fun. I have a feeling Brad Inman brings the magic with him wherever he goes.

Among the many discoveries last week was a site called Animoto. I heard about it from speaker Brian Boero.

Simply load your photos, choose some music (I used their music because I knew it was kosher)……and voila. Animoto makes magic. The whole process took about 3 minutes.

You’ve got to check out life on Animoto. Watch out……it’s addictive.

Jennifer Gilmore made this awesome trailer for her book using Animoto:

We enjoyed Preface publisher Trevor Dolby’s article in BookBrunch, questioning the traditional advance/royalty agreement. Indeed, HarperStudio’s model makes the author a full partner—if, that is, they are willing to take less up front (we pay advances of $100,000 or less; the author gets fifty percent of the profits, with no “Hollywood accounting” along the way). The good news is that we’ve acquired more than fifty books we’re enormously excited about on this basis, from a wide range of authors including business leaders like Michael Eisner, Tom Peters and Gary Vaynerchuk; chefs such as Emeril Lagasse and Mollie Katzen; anthologies edited by Toni Morrison, Harold Bloom and Erica Jong; single-topic studies by Eric Asimov, Stanley Fish and Roy Blount, Jr.; books by a wide range of people we like from the performing arts (Fifty Cent and Robert Greene, Isabella Rossellini, John Lithgow, Philippe Petit), not to mention ambitious narrative non-fiction from dozens of brilliant young journalists. The bad news is that most of trade publishing continues to work on the advance/royalty model, in spite of skyrocketing unearned advances and adversarial author relationships. As John Lennon sang, “We hope someday you’ll join us…” Come on in, guys, the water’s fine!

I’m at the Inman News Connect Conference in San Francisco this week (more on that another day). The conference is about the convergence of real estate and technology — and it is so quirky and cool and interesting……and utterly “Brad.” I LOVE IT! Just to give you some idea of what I’m talking about, he kicked off the conference with this video:

Anyone want to guess what the point of the video was?

I’ll leave the answer in the comments tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy the video. I loved it.

It’s actually a book lending machine (a Lending Library), spotted at the American Library Association’s 2009 conference. Libraries can install these (plus a book drop for easy returns) in convenient locations where patrons can access them 24/7. It’s like a book version of the redbox, but libraries could also include DVDs and audiobooks from their collections. If you ever need a good late-night read but the library is closed, all you have to do is bring your library card to the machine to borrow one of their stocked titles. I could see myself using this at Port Authority, grabbing a good book to read on my long bus ride home. (via AdamtheLibrarian)