User:StaceyHamilton/BlogEntry: 2009 June 05 15:56:14 EDT
From sasCommunity
George McDaniel, Acquisitions Editor, SAS Press, is our blogger this week.
Last night I attended a reading and book signing at Quail Ridge Books, located a few miles from us here at SAS World HQ. Quail Ridge is a fine independent bookshop, which has managed to survive and even thrive in the age of big box national chains. They do this by knowing their customers and their suppliers, i.e., the authors of the books those readers like to read. And they bring those groups together by holding frequent, almost daily, events at the store. Last night’s event featured Alexandra Sokoloff, a California novelist who makes Raleigh her part-time home nowadays. Sokoloff has just had a new novel published entitled The Unseen, an entry in the supernatural thriller genre of which she is fast becoming a master. The novel is set on Durham’s Duke University campus and the J. B. Rhine Research Center. I just started reading it, but if the first five chapters are any indication, she’s got a winner.
Several members of the audience last night were not only readers and fans but authors themselves. Quail Ridge has been successful in both catering to a large community of readers and in helping to build a community of local authors.
Bringing authors and readers together, and at the same time encouraging authors to read each others’ work and readers to sometimes become authors, is something we try to do at SAS Press. Sometimes we do this in real space and time, such as the authors’ dinners we sponsor at conferences. Increasingly, however, we are reaching an expanding community of authors and readers through our online and social networking efforts. This blog is one example. Another example is our individual presence on Twitter (follow me at http://twitter.com/georgemcdaniel). You can friend us collectively on Facebook or follow the lot of us on Twitter. If you’re a LinkedIn fan, you can join “Fans of SAS Books.” We’re reaching out to bring you news of authors and books and sometimes just our own particular slant on things. There’ll be lots more ways in the future that we’ll be working to bring authors and readers together—like Quail Ridge—to talk and learn about our books and about writing them. We hope to see you out there.
