Thanks for all your sharing your great entries to our “Share Your Glee” contest. Reading your stories about how Glee‘s characters and music have touched your life was (much like Glee itself) even more affecting than I expected.

You’ll get to read a few of them yourselves this fall. Specifically, submissions from:

Debbie Duncan
Suzan Hyssen
S.R. Johannes
Caitlin Marceau
Maria Mora
Jacob Sanchez

Congratulations to all of you!

We’ve teased a few of our upcoming books (by asking you to vote on covers and, of course, running that contest for our Dollhouse anthology), but today we’re officially unveiling the titles and covers for all the Smart Pop books we’ll be publishing through the end of 2010.*

Next to each book you’ll find a sign-up form to be added to that book’s notification list—something new we’re trying out this year. Signing up for one of these lists means we’ll send you any big news associated with that particular book: a link when it’s available for purchase, naturally, but also any special discounts and a head’s up when we post free essays from it, so you won’t…

For those of you unfamiliar, BEA—Book Expo America—is “the largest publishing event in North America”: a yearly gathering at which book publishers tell the rest of the world (via media, booksellers, librarians, other publishers, etc.) what books they’re excited about. It’s huge, and a little overwhelming, and the energy there is one of my favorite things about working in publishing.

For those of you both familiar and planning to attend, we thought we’d give you a quick rundown of Smart Pop at BEA:

Smart Pop Itself. Jennifer and I will be at Table #4112 (under the Perseus Distribution banner) with the rest of BenBella whenever our schedules permit; come say hello! We’ll have copies of our 2010 Smart Pop Sampler, which includes essays from…

While you’re waiting for Inside Joss’ Dollhouse to read the 18 winning entries from our essay contest, check out some of the other great entries:

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“A View From the Street”

The interviewees [in "Man on the Street"] fall into three distinct categories. There are those which see the dollhouse as a positive, wish granting entity. There are those which see the dollhouse as a negative, human trafficking agent. Finally there are those which are no so much concerned with what it is, but rather its greater implications for the world at large . . . The show doesn’t paint a picture of good and bad, instead Dollhouse challenges the viewer to analyze various viewpoints and come up with their own logical conclusion,…

There are two things I was really looking forward to, when we started this blog last fall: getting more direct feedback from readers, and getting to share a little more about what goes on behind the scenes at Smart Pop.

The couple of cover polls we’ve done have been a great opportunity for the former. But our most recent cover poll, for Filled With Glee, also struck me as a great opportunity to do the latter: talk a little bit more about how we (and, I suspect but cannot guarantee, other publishers) evaluate covers.

Great Covers

At the very strong risk of oversimplifying, a great cover does two things:

1. It accurately reflects the book’s content.

This part is (mostly) straightforward. If a novel…

First, let me say, thank you all for making this essay contest such a great experience. As I mentioned before, we received a ton of great entries, which made the choices hard in the very best way. I continue to be grateful I wasn’t the one to have to make them.

Or, in our judge Jane Espenson’s much more articulate words:

I just wanted to let you know that I found the entries in this contest to be extremely illuminating and heart-warming. I’m delighted that so many people were willing to devote so much time and effort to exploring the deeper aspects of the show. There were so many sharp insights that it was very hard picking out the best four. All of

…

Thanks for all your comments on our Filled With Glee cover poll (positive and negative)! The winner by a pretty significant margin:

We’ll be making a few tweaks before we end up with the final cover, and we’ll share it with you as soon as we can. (And later this week, look for an inside peek at our cover process!)

Our A Taste of True Blood poll went so well, we wanted to do it again—this time for our upcoming book on Glee.

Part of me feels like this is a no-brainer. But I would have picked the cover that lost (by a lot) last time around . . . so that shows how much I know, right? Let us know what you think!

As of a few minutes ago, the big blue “BETA” is gone from our banner. But that’s not the only thing that’s been changed. We’ve done some polishing up of the site top to bottom, responding to your early comments as well as finally launching things we’ve been thinking about and working on since last summer.

Some new things to watch out for:

1. A more streamlined design. You’ll notice this all over, from our main page all the way to our blog pages, but the place it’s probably most obvious is on our individual essay pages (see today’s essay, for example).

2. Improved comments. Let’s start with the blog. Comments on posts are now a heck of a lot more attractive and, I…

If you’ve glanced a few inches upwards here at Smartpopbooks.com, you may have noticed a banner change: from our black Dollhouse contest banner to a (fittingly bright!) green banner calling attention to our upcoming Smart Pop on Glee—and your chance to be a part of it.

We’re asking Glee fans to share your Glee: to tell us how Glee has impacted your life, from the silly to the sublime. We’ll publish your stories alongside the book’s essays and special reference sections. (The book’s scheduled for release this fall; more details to come!)

We have another month to wait before we get more Glee; have to use that time for something, right?