Musings
« Previous Entries Next Entries »Stressful day. Multimedia. Bullet points. Rebookings.
Monday, January 14th, 2008Stressful day running around putting finishing touches on a Chinese food Dining story for this Wednesday that looks like it should be pretty good — involves a lot of multimedia (yay for Sylvia and Patrick, who put it all together, and Josephine, for making the video happen on such short notice). Also tomorrow, a big […]
What it looks like 7 weeks before a book comes out…
Wednesday, January 9th, 2008So seven weeks out from the book’s pub date (March 3), it’s all about waiting for the media stuff to gel, which is very unstable and unpredictable. Like just today, I was booked by a television show, dropped by a radio show, and picked up by another radio show. Also, there is all these politics […]
March 12 Reading at Upper West Side Barnes & Noble on W. 82nd Street
Friday, January 4th, 2008I just got booked for a reading, along with Eric Weiner (author of the awesome Geography of Bliss) for March 12, 7 p.m. at Barnes & Noble store #1979 Upper West Side at 2289 Broadway @ 82nd St. (I have a running list of appearances) During high school, I worked at that very Barnes & […]
Happy two-oh-oh-eight!
Thursday, January 3rd, 2008It’s 2008. For New Year’s I went to my friends’ apartment where one of my closest friends and his partner cooked lovely food they had learned from a cooking class: garlic shrimp, gingerbread cake, sherry mushrooms, lamb and beef and almond meatballs. (So much progress from the Rice-a-roni style boiled frozen veggies and breaded fish […]
My best post on City Room this year
Saturday, December 29th, 2007I was asked to put together a funny highs and lows for 2007 on NYC. Which is interesting, because I had never done that before and had to figure out how to make humor work. I actually kind of came up with a few methodologies, and consulted my friend, Rachel Axler, whose a writer for […]
Who’s Here? Who’s Queer? Who loves books about Chinese food?
Saturday, December 29th, 2007So I went to a party last night at the home of a high school/college friend who is gay. It was basically me, four straight women, and 40 gay men (plus like one random straight guy who had been brought along without advance warning on what he would encounter. The Evite was titled “Who’s Here? […]
Fortune Cookies (along with Spitzer and Ahmadinejad) in the New York Sun’s office pool?
Wednesday, December 26th, 2007From the New York Sun’s editorial page today, an office pool for 2008: 2. The surprise breakout nonfiction bestseller of the year will be a) Natan Sharansky’s “Defending Identity” b) Jonathan Mahler’s “Hamdan v. Rumsfeld: A Historic Challenge to the President” c) Steven Waldman‘s “Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in […]
Available in white in five different sizes.
Tuesday, December 25th, 2007My friend, Tim Layman, sent me an e-mail with the subject line “amazon.com” and the body “Why can you buy ‘I Love Jennifer 8. Lee’ t-shirts from there?” I was like, what are you talking about? He wrote back: “went on Amazon to look up your book but I searched for “Jennifer 8 Lee” instead […]
Tasty, Charming, Breezy, Likeable. Me? No, the book. (Kidding) From Kirkus Reviews
Thursday, December 20th, 2007Cary Goldstein (to reiterate, one of the best publicists in the business) just sent me a congrats for the review from Kirkus Reviews. Yay. (The food-related analogies seem to be irresistible to these writers) Lee, Jennifer 8. THE FORTUNE COOKIE CHRONICLES: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food A quest. With eggrolls. Debut author Lee, […]
My galley, still on world tour, in Istanbul
Tuesday, December 11th, 2007My galleys continue their world tour, I guess. This is in front of the Istanbul’s Blue Mosque. I guess it goes to say that anyone who wants to send me a picture of my book in a weird place, please send it in.
My first review: Starred, from Publishers Weekly
Thursday, November 29th, 2007My agent, Larry Weissman, sent me my review in Publishers Weekly (scroll 1/3 of the way down), which is out today : * The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food Jennifer 8. Lee. Hachette/Twelve, $24.99 (308p) ISBN 978-0-446-58007-6 Readers will take an unexpected and entertaining journey—through culinary, social and cultural history—in […]
My first review is out next Monday in Publishers Weekly
Wednesday, November 28th, 2007Which is weird to think — the idea of being formally reviewed. Publishers Weekly is one of the big four industry trade publications. The others are Kirkus, Library Journal and Booklist. PW did ask for the image of the orange book cover because they might feature it on their table of contents, which Cary assures […]
Ted Kennedy’s memoir goes to Twelve for a reported $8 million
Tuesday, November 27th, 2007After a six-day auction between nine publishers, Twelve landed Ted Kennedy’s memoir for a reported $8+ million “people close to the negotiations said.” That’s an impressive coup for Jon Karp and Twelve. ($8 million is the ballpark amount for what Hillary Clinton and Tony Blair got for their autobiographies). The book, tentatively scheduled to come […]
My book on world tour (well…only to the UK)
Saturday, November 24th, 2007So my galley went on a trip to the UK and friends sent me a photo of my book galley from Oxford… It also went to Scotland (and maybe Wales too? actually I think it skipped Wales) on this trip. (Btw. I used Splashup.com to edit it online. Amazing. It’s Photoshop in your browser)
A book dedication to Ms. Right and the yet-to-be-born
Sunday, November 11th, 2007My friend Shawn and I were IMing about our dedications in our books. I dedicated mine to my parents (“For Mom and Dad, who left their homeland so their children could follow their passions, and for all other moms and dads who have done the same.”) But his, the best I have ever seen, takes […]
Cary Goldstein, book publicist extraordinaire
Friday, November 9th, 2007Cary Goldstein (very patiently) trekked across five cities with me to attend dinners that he and his assistant Carolyn had carefully arranged. As my friend Nicole (who attended two dinners, in Boston and San Francisco) put it, you couldn’t even tell he was a publicist at the dinner. It’s amazing what a good book publicist […]
It’s cold in LA
Friday, November 9th, 2007wtf.
Our copyeditors seem to like it thus far…
Friday, November 9th, 2007My editors have been telling me that the copy editors who have been working on the book, have said nice things about it. (three cheers for copy editors, they catch the most amazing thing). One email forwarded to me by one of the copy editors: I did manage to get it back one day sooner […]
Galley demand
Friday, November 9th, 2007From one of the sales reps …to the publicist after the prepub dinner in Seattle @ House of Hong. Which is in theory, why we do the tour in the first place, so yay. Hi, Jennifer 8 Lee was such a hit in Seattle that my accounts are clambering for more galleys. Can you send […]
I’m going to lose my voice by the end of this week
Wednesday, November 7th, 2007meep.
A mad rush of a pre-pub tour: four dinners in four cities in four days
Monday, November 5th, 2007This week I am on a pre-publication tour, going to different cities and having dinner at (where else?) Chinese restaurants with booksellers and local media. Julie Bosman does a nice job explaining the motivation for pre-pub tours in this piece from The New York Times. As she writes: Unlike the postpublication book tour, which focuses […]
It’s like, he showed up in my apartment and wanted to talk about my couch
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007A few nights ago, I had dinner with my friend Seth, who had a copy of the galley and was reading it. He wasn’t inherently interested in Chinese food a a topic, yet he was drawn in by the book and could see people telling each other to read it (I was trying to figure […]
Enthusiastic, unprovoked word of mouth from our sales reps
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007My editor forwarded me some nice comments from the sales reps, who are now reading the book to gear up to sell to independent bookstores. As it was explained to me, two things move books: national media and word of mouth. Word of mouth works best when the sales reps get excited, pass that enthusiasm […]
Sending out my galleys
Monday, October 29th, 2007This is the view from the conference room while I was stuffing my personal galley mailings (to go with the ones that my editor, Jon Karp, and the publicist, Cary Goldstein, did). I sent out 100 galleys, with handwritten notes. My hand hurt. Over the weekend, my mom sent me an email on behalf of […]
An elevator button with the perfect fortune cookie message
Wednesday, October 24th, 2007This is in every elevator in the NYTimes building, pointed out to me by the mysterious artist, who created a digital tribute and then made me guess where it was from… If only this were true in real life…
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