Tour of Hachette Books

Another NYC highlight this past week was Kelly giving me, Daniel, Steph (Reviewer X) and Nicole (Linus's Blanket) a tour of Hachette's offices on Monday morning. Kelly took nearly two hours out of her day to answer our questions and show us around. Thank you to Kelly and the whole online team at Hachette. You are doing a great job reaching out to bloggers.

Group shot (Kelly Leonard, Anna Balasi, Miriam Parker, Nicole, Brianne Beers, me, Steph, Valerie Russo)

Our first stop was to visit Alice in the Little, Brown Young Readers division. I can't tell you how cool it was to see her desk piled high with ARCs of HATE LIST, ASH and PROPHESY OF THE SISTERS (all spoken for). No stack of BEAUTIFUL CREATURES because they went superfast!

Alice's desk

She told us a bit about her job and that she gathers up ARC requests and then deals with them all at once about once a week. She loves digest e-mails, so if you owe her links to several reviews, it is best if you wait to send them all at once.

Me and Alice Morley in front of this season's Little, Brown Young Readers sign

We walked around and looked at a couple of the other departments and imprints, with Kelly telling us about what they do.

Kelly points out the various imprints

And of course, she had to show us the ARC closet that Brianne recently organized. I am sure I squealed when I saw it.

Brianne shows off her handiwork

Kelly showed us Hachette's video studio and then took us to a whole different floor to check out Hachette's in-house, state-of-the-art audio recording studio where actors and authors come in to record audio books.

What I'd look like if I was recording an audio book
Hachette is very pro-book blogger and were very early adapters in online marketing. They are both amazingly accommodating and genuinely thrilled to be working with us.

They've set up a platform on ning where book bloggers can sign up to host a Hachette giveaway and another platform where book bloggers can request upcoming titles for review.

Thanks again Kelly!