Daughter of Darkness, by VC Andrews - Video using Final Cut Express and the kaleidoscope video effect.

Pocket After Dark

Pocket After Dark is a new community for Urban Fantasy, Paranormal Romance, and Contemporary Romance fans. The community allows fans to communicate with one another and with popular authors in the genre. I designed this Pocket After Dark widget using KickApps Widget Studio for participating authors to place on their highly trafficked web sites and social media pages to drive traffic to the community.

Custom Facebook Tab for CAKE BOSS!!!

My first ever custom Facebook tab was for the CAKE BOSS! He has well over a million fans on Facebook, and they're totally engaged. It was a real pleasure to work with the talented TLC team who runs the Cake Boss Facebook fan page!

ZooBorns

It's not often enough that you get to work on a project as adorable as ZooBorns! I designed this widget to be shared on the ZooBorns blog and be shared on social media by lovers of adorable creatures.

Too many Facebook friends?

This Gallery Books author is a dog trainer to the stars with an interesting problem... too many friends! More specifically, she was trying to migrate her thousands of Facebook friends over to a new fan page for her new book. She also has a Facebook fan page for a previous book. With a situation like this, it's important to examine what the message and goal for the social media presence(s) should be, and then migrate people as possible.

Also, instead of thinking of the people who have not migrated by a certain date as "lost" think of the new list as people who are really engaged and really in tune with your message!

I designed this customized tab through the FBML app using HTML and assets from the book cover.

Jerry Della Femina - From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor. This classic advertising book was re-released with a distinctly Mad Men look and feel to appeal to fans of the hit series. I created this animation in Final Cut Express using the book's cover elements.

Books and Bollywood Cross-Promotion with Saavn

I worked with two talented, smart and hard-working young women to arrange this fun cross-promotion. Sneha Mehta of Saavn Bollywood and Nina Pajak of Simon & Schuster (imprint) collaborated to create this beautiful, high-energy custom landing page featuring Tarquin Hall's novels and two Bollywood blockbusters!

http://pages.simonandschuster.com/vishpuri/

Big Girls Don't Cry by Rebecca Traister.

I edited this video from some footage taken on a flip cam by an audience member.

Jane Slayre by Charlotte Brontë and Sherri Browning Erwin

As soon as I glided in the door at Simon & Schuster, they put me on an amazing campaign for the book Jane Slayre. It's a mash-up of the literary classic Jane Eyre with Vampires - so fun!

I did two projects for this campaign. The first is a flash animation:

And the second is a really funny short animation from GoAnimate:

GoAnimate.com: Jane Slayre by Simon and Schuster

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

1230 Avenue of the Americas, I Have Arrived

Well, believe it or not, it happened! I got a new job... Penguin is a great company and I learned so much and made so many great friends there. I can only hope they remember me as fondly and as often as I will think of them. But it was simply time to leave the nest. My new gig: Online Marketing Manager at Simon & Schuster! Simon & Schuster is such a respected name in publishing and I'm thrilled to be here working with my new talented, passionate coworkers.

The office is exciting as well. It's in midtown, right in Rockefeller Center. It's such a thrill to be in the heart of it all. My window overlooks a fountain below, and a little plaza. The shopping is great, there are awesome food carts (including the famous 53rd St Halal Cart's daytime counterpart). Here are some pictures of my new stomping ground.

(These pictures are from a variety of blogs using Google Image Search - Thanks to the contributors!)

ABPA Video Work

The American Book Producers Association (ABPA) has monthly brown-bag lunches and has recently started offering the video for people who want to view remotely. The password to view the full 70 minute video is available for $10 by emailing the ABPA.

I've created videos for the following Brown Bag Lunches:

November 2009 - Jan Constantine, General Counsel for the Authors Guild Discusses the Google Class Action Suit and Settlement

December 2009 - Kate Klimo of Random House and Andrea Davis Pinkney of Scholastic Discuss Packagers and Publishers Working Together on Juvenile Books

February 2010 - Will Schwalbe, Founder and CEO of Cookstr.com Discusses Web Companies and Book Publishers Working Together

I shoot these using my personal hand-held digital camera to capture both the audio and the video, so the quality is not as professional as my other work. That said, the quality of the information is fantastic and these videos are a goldmine of expert advice and insight into the changing landscape of the publishing world.

The Davids - 2010 - I won!

Read the official post and look at the photos on the Penguin Blog!

I am a winner!!! My video and audio work was nominated for the "Davids" (think the Emmys but awarded by the Penguin CEO David Shanks) in three of the four categories: Best Short Video, Best "From the Publisher's Office" Radio Episode, and Best On-Screen or On-Air Personality. And not to be cliche, but it was really an honor to have been nominated in so many categories!

I actually won for Best Short Video. Elda Rotor of Penguin Classics and I were both honored with a David Award for The 10 Essential Classics! The whole Penguin Online team pitched in as extras, production assistants—and practically the whole company showed to film the party scene. I sincerely thank everyone for the hard work they put in to this project. Here is some surprising insider news (or maybe not so surprising, if you've ever read an interview with an Emmy winner): the little golden statue is really pretty heavy!

And yeah, it's a little like The Dundees, laugh it up, but whatever! This award is for something slightly more relevant than the "whitest sneakers" or whatever award Pam won. Plus, I have another feather in my cap: the other videos that were up for this award were totally created by professional videographers (at least that's what I've been told). The 10 Essentials video was written, filmed, and edited by... me! With plenty of help from the company, my department and Penguin Classics, of course.

I'm very proud and very humbled to be in the midst of so much talent. It's actually not at all shocking to learn that publishers make good video producers. Making a video is like weaving a story, and the people of publishing are master storytellers. Publishing attracts those lovers of literature who know how to establish place and time and mood through small details, and how to compose funny dialogue, and how to build up to a powerful climax and then resolve the action to the satisfaction of the viewers or readers. The people who work in publishing are old hats at telling a good story and now that they've gotten a handle on the newfangled moving picture machines, they're going to be unstoppable! Hollywood, here we come.

The video below was taken on my mobile phone by my nice boss and I've uploaded it here. My speech is the first one after the announcer talks about the nominees and then the president announces the winner, 10 Essential Classics. My co-winner, Elda Rotor, has a much more composed speech after mine. I just pretty much shout, "YEAH Penguin!" I hope to have a better video to post eventually, but for now, this gives you the gist of the whole thing.

Classic Literature... Retold in 60 Seconds

GoAnimate.com: JaneEyre by SarahCFu

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!