giveaway - Macmillan Library

TxLA13 Recap + Giveaway!

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Ali Fisher

Howdy librarians—Texan or otherwise!

We're happily exhausted after our adventures down in Fort Worth last month at the Texas Library Association's centennial Annual Conference. We had a fantastic time reconnecting with all of our librarian friends from the mighty Texas systems, giving away some of our most excellent forthcoming titles, and enjoying panels of the author talk and book buzz* variety.

*Download our TxLA Book Buzz handout here!

A huge thanks to all of our crazy wonderful authors who joined us for the madness including C.C. Hunter (Shadow Falls series), Diane Kelly (Tara Holloway series), Ellie James (Midnight Dragonfly series), Julie Kibler (CALLING ME HOME), and Gilbert Hernandez (MARBLE SEASON). Shout out to C.C. Hunter who spoke on three panels and then signed books at an event with—gasp!—real live teens.

TxLA Signed Books Giveaway:

We brought back a stack of signed books for one lucky librarian to keep or shelve as they please!

UPDATE: This contest is now CLOSED. Congratulations to winner Juanita Foster, Senior Librarian at Hennepin County Library!!

Send Library-at-MacmillanUSA.com an e-mail with your mailing address and your title (subject: TxLA13) by Monday, June 3rd to be placed in the random drawing.

This sweepstakes is open to librarians in the United States. More eligibility details below.

[...]

Know More...

A #FridayReads/Post-Valentine’s Hangover Giveaway!

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Ali Fisher

We've got the cure for your post-Valentine's Day love hangover (which we've heard can be fatal if left untreated): a sweepstakes!

We have one signed copy of Ben Schrank's adult debut, LOVE IS A CANOE, a novel full of both wise and unwise love advice. Here's a quick summary:

Peter Herman is something of a folk hero. MARRIAGE IS A CANOE, his decades-old book on love and relationships, has won the hearts of hopeful romantics and desperate cynics alike. When Peter's wife dies and he passes the time with a woman he admires but doesn’t love, he begins to question the advice he’s famously doled out for decades.

Then he receives a call from an ambitious young editor who wants to celebrate the 50th anniversary of MARRIAGE IS A CANOE with a contest for struggling couples. The prize? An afternoon with Peter and a chance to save their relationship.

And speaking of prizes...

Enter to win LOVE IS A CANOE:

Enter to win the author-signed copy of LOVE IS A CANOE by sending an e-mail with 1. your full name, 2. your mailing address, and 3. the library you work for to library-at-macmillanusa.com (subject: Love is a Canoe) by Friday, February 22nd!

This sweepstakes is open to librarians in the United States. More eligibility details below.

[...]

Know More...

Uncharted Pages #2: It’s Liiiiiive!

Posted on December 10, 2012 by Ali Fisher

The second installment of Uncharted Pages, my Speculative Fiction recommendation page, is now live! Go check it out!

To celebrate all of the "featured creatures" recommendations, we're giving away a stack of Macmillan books featuring all sorts of bizarre beings and brutish beasts:

UPDATE: This contest is now over. Congratulations to the winner, Debra Wischmeyer in the Readers' Services/Reference Department of Morton Grove Public Library!

Enter to win a copy of all of the titles pictured above:

Head over to Uncharted Pages, click the pale blue envelope icon under my picture, and send me an e-mail with your mailing address and your favorite monster by Friday, January 4th. [CONTEST CLOSED]

This sweepstakes is open to librarians in the United States. More eligibility details below.

[...]

Know More...

The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap Giveaway!

Posted on October 24, 2012 by Ali Fisher

Last week Wendy Welch, memoirist and owner of the Tales of The Lonesome Pine bookstore, stopped by the Flatiron with her hubby, Jack!

St. Martin's Press recently published Wendy's memoir, THE LITTLE BOOKSTORE OF BIG STONE GAP, about opening an independent bookstore in a small town in Virginia. I was curious to meet the woman who admitted in the first chapter of her memoir that,

"On something dangerously close to a whim, we became the broke and terrified owners of a five-bedroom, three-bath-with-one-working Edwardian mansion, complete with squeaky hardwood floors and a leaking roof. Under the influence of salsa and sangria, we'd decided to turn this house into a used bookstore, or die trying."

Wendy is unsurprisingly just as wonderful and charming as her memoir.

Publishers Weekly said it well when they said, "The whole narrative exudes enormous charm and the value of dreams and lives truly lived." And Booklist called it "a fervent affirmation of the power of books to bring people together." As book people you will undoubtedly connect to Wendy and her decision to live a life dedicated to passing along great stories.

Autographed Book Giveaway:

Wendy was kind enough to sign a finished copy of her book for us to give away to one lucky librarian!

UPDATE: This contest is now closed! Thank you for entering.

How to Enter: Leave a comment below with your full name and the library you work for by [UPDATED!] Friday, November 16th to be entered into the random drawing. And make sure the e-mail you use is correct, so we can contact you (it's not posted publicly).

This sweepstakes is open to librarians in the United States. More eligibility details below.

[...]

Know More...

Tuesday Fun Day! (9/4/2012 Edition)

Posted on September 4, 2012 by Ali Fisher

Happy Tuesday, librarian cats! I hope your long weekend involved many adventures and much napping in the sun!

We have some winners to congratulate this week, so let's get on with the applause:

The big news from the weekend is that AMONG OTHERS by Jo Walton (a title that I just won't shut up about) won the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Novel! Huzzah! Earlier this year it won the 2011 Nebula Award for Best Novel.

See the full list of Hugo Award-winners here.

And now on to our recent contest winners:

The winner of the final Grammar Girl signed-books giveaway is:

Betty H. Lee
Adult and Young Adult Librarian
Rockville Memorial Library

The winner of the A MEMORY OF LIGHT stuffed backpack giveaway celebrating our new SF/F blog, Uncharted Pages, is:

Brianna Glenn
Library Director
De Soto Public Library

Congratulations, Betty and Brianna! Your prizes are in the mail.

And finally, the winner for Best App Ever according to us: CatWang!! Major thanks to Peter from Academic for the recommendation. Here's CatTalia holding a balloon in her office and CatAli holding AMONG OTHERS while wearing wings:

[...]

Know More...

A Romantic Whirlwind Getaway… er, Giveaway!

Posted on August 29, 2012 by Ali Fisher

Dearest librarians,

We're running a romantic giveaway on Twitter today. Whoever sends us the sweetest tweet will get a pile of love from us including:

GUILTY PLEASURE by Lora Leigh

INSATIABLE by Opal Carew

KEPT BY SEDUCTION by Jaymie Holland

HOW TO ROMANCE A RAKE by Manda Collins

The winner is free to shelve them at the library or at home. Share or hoard the love as you see fit!

Here's the scoop:

Feeling romantic? @ reply with something sweet! I'll send this stack to whoever tweets the sweetest. #HOToffthepress twitter.com/MacmillanLib/s…

— Macmillan Library (@MacmillanLib) August 29, 2012

xoxo, Macmillan Library [...]

Know More...

Macmillan Library Presents: Tips from Grammar Girl #3

Posted on August 16, 2012 by Ali Fisher

Grandmaster grammar wrangler Mignon Fogarty (a.k.a. Grammar Girl) has agreed to teach us the proper way to talk to librarians about the books and genres we love. We'll be posting her monthly tips here on the blog. Take it away, Grammar Girl!

How to Write a Better Résumé

Talia and Ali tell me that librarians are helping almost as many people find jobs as they are helping find books. One important thing to check for on a résumé is that the bullets match. Not in that fashionable-detective way in which a lady’s bullets match her shoes, but in a slightly less delightful grammatical way: It’s called parallel construction, and this is how it looks:

Activities and Accomplishments

• Hungered for deeper meaning

• Longed for a raise

• Resisted throwing myself out a window

Although that may not be the most appealing list of activities and accomplishments to a potential employer, your candidate won’t be rejected for grammar errors. Note how each bullet point is a sentence fragment that starts with a verb in the past tense. Using a fragment is OK in a bulleted list, and the parallelism of the verbs is pleasing to the eye.

Note how the following list, although more respectable, seems jumbled and wrong because of the lack of parallelism.

Activities and Accomplishments

• Shelving goal of 5,000 books per day met

• Convinced 30 volunteers to work for nothing but doughnuts

• I single-handedly reroofed the library.

Want to help job candidates avoid other errors on their résumés? Check out GRAMMAR GIRL PRESENTS 101 TROUBLESOME WORDS YOU’LL MASTER IN NO TIME and visit Grammar Girl at Grammar.QuickandDirtyTips.com.

We're running our third and final giveaway of one full set of her latest Quick and Dirty Tips books (this set includes four signed(!) books and one unsigned audiobook).

UPDATE: This contest has ended. Congratulations to our winner: Betty H. Lee, Adult and Young Adult Librarian at Rockville Memorial Library!

Enter to win these signed books by sending your name, your library, and your full mailing address to Library-at-MacmillanUSA.com (subject: Grammar Girl) by Friday, August 24th.

This sweepstakes is open to librarians in the United States. More eligibility details below.

[...]

Know More...

Macmillan Library Presents: Tips from Grammar Girl #2

Posted on July 17, 2012 by Ali Fisher

Grammar goddess Mignon Fogarty (a.k.a. Grammar Girl) has agreed to teach us the proper way to talk to librarians about the books and genres we love. We'll be posting her monthly tips here on the blog. Take it away, Grammar Girl!

Ali, a sci-fi nerd from planet 645 asked, "I have trouble with verb tense in our present timeline, but when I time travel, I get especially confused. Can you help?"

Ah, the complexities of time travel. If you think the hazards of disrupting the space-time continuum are daunting, consider the grammar. Time travel requires some of the trickier tenses:

Simple Future

Tomorrow, I am going to be born. [going to + verb]

Future Progressive

The robots will already be waiting to kill me. [will be + present participle]

Past Perfect Progressive

Ali had been lying unconscious for three days before she was able to locate herself and surreptitiously attach the beacon that would send her home. [had been + present participle]

Past Perfect

She had made this trip before, so she knew how it would work out. [had + past participle]

I hope that helps, Ali, and stay safe in the future. It can be a dangerous place.

Thank you, Grammar Girl! Unfortunately in my time traveling experience there's no such thing as a simple future or a perfect past, but one can always hope!

See Grammar Girl's previous column in which she taught Talia how to talk about her favorite gory mysteries! Look for 101 TROUBLESOME WORDS YOU'LL MASTER IN NO TIME available now from St. Martin's Griffin. Visit her at Grammar.QuickandDirtyTips.com.

Also, we're giving away one full set of her latest Quick and Dirty Tips books (this set includes four signed(!) books and one unsigned audiobook).

UPDATE: This contest is now closed.

The winner is Ramona L. Grimsley of the Berkeley County Library System!

Enter to win these signed books by sending your name, your library, and your full mailing address to Library-at-MacmillanUSA.com (subject: Grammar Girl) by Monday, July 23rd.

This sweepstakes is open to librarians in the United States. More eligibility details below.

[...]

Know More...

More UNSHELVED Readers?! Yes, Please!

Posted on July 10, 2012 by Ali Fisher

Well, well, well. If it isn't another Unshelved reader... Duck!

I just threw a handful of confetti and glitter and ducks at the screen. You're so welc—Uh oh, did I get some in your eye? No wait, you're just tearing up because you've never felt SO welcome at a blog before! We totally understand.

Whether you're new to this blog, a long time reader, or you clicked on Talia's nose to get here yesterday and wanted to click on my nose today, we're glad you're here! (And if you don't know what I'm going on about, check out the banner ad/masterpiece running over the Unshelved comics this week.)

Like yesterday, we encourage you to browse through our recent posts, take a peek at our digital catalogs, and sign up for our Booklist webinar.

But wait there's more! We have yet another giveaway! And this time it's just the type of bloody thriller that you can't get Talia to stop reading...

We have a small stack of hardcover copies of THE NIGHTMARE by the absurdly charming pseudonymous Swedish writing couple, Lars Kepler!

UPDATE: This giveaway has ended!

Want one? Introduce yourself in an e-mail (to: Library-at-MacmillanUSA.com) that includes your name, the library you work for, and the full mailing address where you would like to receive the book.

Best, (No, you're the best!)
Talia & Ali
[...]

Know More...

Win a Signed ARC of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore!

Posted on June 27, 2012 by Ali Fisher

**THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED**

Winner: Chaunacey Dunklee, Fullerton Public Library!

Happy Wednesday, library friends! We're officially back in action after ALA Annual today, if somewhat red-eyed and yawn-prone. We haven't been crying! And you're not boring! We're just still living in the past (a.k.a. Pacific Time).

After getting galley request after galley request at BEA, ALA Annual, and in my inbox, I think it's time to give a loving shout-out to one of our most anticipated debuts of the Fall: MR. PENUMBRA'S 24-HOUR BOOKSTORE by Robin Sloan! We're ecstatic that so many of you want to get your hands on this literary adventure!

If you haven't heard about this one yet, think William Gibson conspiring with Haruki Murakami at midnight in the darkest aisle of a 24 hour bookstore in San Francisco. It's also part DA VINCI CODE and part You’ve Got Mail, but remains totally original. You get me? No?! Well, I guess it's just one of those books that you have to read for yourself!

And if the book weren't great enough, Robin is an absolute charmer! Warning Librarians: Author-Crush Zone dead ahead... At BEA Robin created a secret society of booksellers (I know!) and this summer Robin is hosting a Summer Reading series on his blog to share the backlist books he wants to talk about with you. We love it. Boing Boing loves it. You'll probably think it's pretty cool, too.

SIGNED GALLEY CONTEST

Robin was kind enough to sign an advanced reader's copy for us to give away to one lucky librarian! Leave a comment below with your full name and the library you work for by Monday, July 2nd to be entered into the random drawing.

Best of luck!

This sweepstakes is open to librarians in the United States. More eligibility details below.

[...]

Know More...