As an author concerned with selling books, I’m very interested to see how publishers market, and, of course, compare it to my own experience. A trade show is only one aspect – and some would argue, an aspect of declining importance – in marketing, but it’s still instructive.

First, you gotta give stuff away. Everyone has bags and candy, of course, but that’s not the end of it. We got loaded down with little flashlights, pens, rulers, t-shirts, microwave popcorn, packs of cards, a PGA water bottle, and yes, even books. Children’s book publishers seem to be the most free with copies, even of hardback picture books. Katie got bound galley copies of almost every major fall release in which she’s interested (except for the newest Lemony Snicket which, of course, is as tightly wrapped as Harry Potter). Children’s publishers are also big with posters and all kinds of geegaws. On my part, I was startled to see Harvard U. Press be so free with bound galleys, setting out stacks of all their fall releases, from GI Jews to Four Cultures of the West for the taking.

I took.

My general impression of both shows: no really fascinating, compelling religion releases on the horizon. One of the bigger fall novels (advance copies of which were, of course, not available) is Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Strauss – the FSG people were all decked out in collegiate gear and handing out pompoms in promotion of the title, which interests me a great deal. I’ve been following this novel since Wolfe started talking about writing it. At first, it was going to be centered on the study of the brain in academic settings, and on exploring advances in that field and implications for our sense of human nature. Now it’s about

Dupont University–the Olympian halls of learning housing the cream of America’s youth, the roseate Gothic spires and manicured lawns suffused with tradition . . . Or so it appears to beautiful, brilliant Charlotte Simmons, a freshman from Sparta, North Carolina (pop. 900), who has come here on full scholarship in full flight from her tobacco-chewing, beer-swilling high school classmates. But Charlotte soon learns, to her mounting dismay, that Dupont is closer in spirit to Sodom than to Athens, and that sex, crank, and kegs trump academic achievement every time.

Which sounds a little more up Wolfe’s alley.

I also understand that Wolfe spent some time in Gainesville, at the University of Florida, researching the book. Should be interesting.