What Happened: Scott McClellan’s book available for download.

Hey, wanna listen to Scott McClellan’s tell all about the Bush White House now?

And I mean right now.

Like, right this instant.

Well you can by going to the Sno-Isle Digital Library and checking it out.  Sno-Isle has this book available in Maximum Access which means there will never be any holds on it ever!  There will always be a copy available for you and thousands of your closest friends.

How do we do this? Blackstone Audio, the publisher of McClellan’s book sells their titles to libraries in two ways.  One is the traditional one copy one listener model we’re all used to with books.  Maximum Access is the other way they sell their audio books.  Sno-Isle pays more per title for this option but we can swap out titles in the Blackstone catalog that have past their prime for other ones like What Happened, that everyone wants.  Blackstone is the only audio book publisher that has this program with OverDrive, so most other titles have to be purchased using the one copy one listener business model.

To find What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, go to the Sno-Isle Digital Media Library and search on Scott McClellan.  Do not search the CARLweb, or CARL solution because the record hasn’t been loaded into the catalog yet.

Well, why is that?  One of the beautiful things about digital media is instant gratification.  Literally moments after I place an order for a digital audio book it becomes available to Sno-Isle customers.  Our Catalog Services, Acquisitions, and Materials Processing department are wonderful and can move mountains but they’ll never be able to match the speed of digital media.  Because the book is available instantly through the Sno-Isle page, it takes a while for the MARC record  to be received from OverDrive.  This is because OverDrive has to get it from OCLC, and OCLC sends it to OverDrive and then OverDrive sends it to us.  All this sending back and forth means that there will always be a delay between the time that the book is available for download, and the time that it reaches CARLweb and CARL Solution.

So download an audio book today.

FYI An order for the CD version of this book has been placed and  will be in the catalog soon.  More copies of the print edition are on order as well.  Currently there are 152 people waiting on the hardcover.

Currently this book is not compatible with the iPod, as has been mentioned here before OverDrive will be releasing more information about iPod compatible titles at ALA at the end of the month.

Stephenie Meyer in Seattle

Stephenie Meyer will be in Seattle in August to promote the publication of the final Twilight Saga book.  This will not be a traditional book tour, but the Breaking Dawn Concert Series.  The event will be held on August 12 in Benaroya Hall.  Meyer will begin the evening with Q&A with the audience and then will be joined by Justin Furstenfeld of the group Blue October.

Meyer says that several of Furstenfeld’s songs were inspirational in the writing of her books and they are included in her playlists which she made for each novel.  She will talk about why she chose a particular song, Furstenfeld will talk about the process of writing it, and then perform it.

The concert series: New York on August 1 at the Nokia Theatre at Times Square; Chicago on August 5 at the Harris Theatre; Los Angeles on August 7 at Royce Hall and then in our own Seattle on August 12.

Attendees in Seattle can bring a Stephanie Meyer book of their choice for her to sign after the concert.

Tickets for the series cost $20 and will go on sale this Saturday at 10 a.m.; more details are available on stepheniemeyer.com and thetwilightsaga.com. Breaking Dawn will be published at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday, August 2, with a 3.2 million-copy first printing. There are 7.7 million Twilight Saga books in print in the U.S.

Jon Stewart beats Oprah!

despite typos and a lack of information regarding the demographics of respondents and full methodology (apparently not made public), Random House commissioned an online survey of readers that is worth a quick read.  a couple of questions not asked: do you prefer to buy online or at a brick and mortar store (sort of implied by the question of “Where do you most often buy books,” pg. 4, in which online is at 43%) and if 62% of respondents are browsing online without a specific book in mind, pg. 7, what guides them?  also, if the most sold genre is romance and only 7% of respondents are buying this genre online, pg. 5, does that mean that most are buying at brick and mortar, getting them from the library, e-book viewing, or….?  not quite sure what the “with passport” and “without passport” distinction means, pg. 9, perhaps a reference to citizenship?  the reference to “residents of planet earth,” pg. 9, made me question the authenticity of the survey, but it does seem to be legit.  via Dear Author.