Welcome to my3books, a book blog.
In my day job, I'm an independent sales rep for publishers. I represent publishers across a broad cross-section of the publishing world - from university presses to indie literary presses to pop culture publishers to art books to journals and gifts.
When I'm not out 'selling the books to the people', as my daughter once described it, I'm involved in the social networking side of publishing - from Facebook to Goodreads to Twitter. I've been inspired by the community of connected booksellers, publishing professionals, lit-bloggers, authors, and plain old readers, who have found each other on the web.
The basic principle of my3books is that it's useful to fuzz out the giant piles of books published throughout the year and really focus on 3 books at a time, to consider why those 3 books might be your next favorite books.
If my3books was a series of posts about only the publishers that I represent, it would be a pretty good blog. After all, there're a lot of new books coming out from my publishers all the time, and I've always got something great to talk about!
But my larger wish for this blog is to throw the doors open to lots of voices - other passionate sales reps, frontline booksellers who handsell every day, great editors and publicists who know what's coming next year, book bloggers who see all the advance copies come across their doorstep - and make it a wonderful place for readers.
Here's my 140 character 'Twitter description' of this blog: "my3books is where the social network of book lovers can bring their great book picks, 3 at a time, to share why they're excited about them."
I hope you'll find your next book here.
John Mesjak
About the my3books staff
John Mesjak:
I'm an independent sales rep with Abraham Associates, a rep group that covers the midwestern US, representing many small to medium-sized independent publishers and distributors to the book trade. Prior to my current job, I was a field sales rep for Publishers Group West, worked at Chronicle Books in the operations department, and was a bookseller at three different independent bookstores: A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books and Book Passage in Marin County, California and Anderson's Bookshops in suburban Chicago, Illinois.
See John's entries on my3books.
Angela Sherrill:
Angela is the children's book buyer at 57th Street Books in Hyde Park, and one of the most discerning readers of YA and teen fiction I've met. The tall bookshelf above her desk looms with a literal wall of soon-to-be-published ARCs. All of the shelves at 57th Street Books are liberally garnished with shelf talkers by Angela and her fellow booksellers, but what leaps to the eye in the YA section are all the reviews written by young customers who've been recruited to read and comment on books new and old.
