Book Lovers, You Have Three New Reasons to Spend More Time in Airports
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 06.08.11 | 10:55 AM ET
Just tweeted a Wall Street Journal piece about authors promoting their books at airport bookstores. The appearances are known as “fly-bys” and, apparently, nobody does them like second-tier celebrity authors such as Ice-T, Rob Lowe and Joan Collins.
David Roth writes:
Airport book signings won’t supplant traditional book tours anytime soon, but maximizing publicity opportunities, even during an author’s travel layover, makes sense for publishing houses as marketing budgets shrink and traditional bookstores vanish. Hudson News’s transit locations make up 10% or more of total sales for some books that the retailer keeps in heavy stock, said Sara Hinckley, a company vice president.
The story brought to mind a couple literature-goes-to-the-airport pieces I liked in recent months. Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport recently opened the first airport library for ebooks. And The World profiled the real-world library that opened last summer at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.
Here’s the video that accompanied The World’s report:
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
Mary Arulanantham 06.27.11 | 6:28 PM ET
Not quite on topic, but I often find very interesting reads in airport bookstores, especially Asia. I often read non-fiction before a trip, but I love to read local fiction in the weeks after; stories with a strong sense of place and history about Singapore, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, etc. I could probably find some of these books online, but there is nothing like thumbing through the real thing, still carrying the recent experiences of my trip. Reading Orfan Pahuk’s Istanbul now; looking forward to what I will find to read on my way home from Turkey in a few months.