December always sneaks up on me: suddenly, I’m inundated with Black Friday sales emails, and I realize I have a full list of Hanukah and Christmas gifts to shop for and not a lot of time to do it in.

In case you’re in the same boat: here’s our top 5 best gift bets from our last 12 months of new releases. We’ve also added a few related non-book gift options to round out each suggestion—just in case you really like the person (or your Secret Santa lower limit is higher than a list price of $16.95).

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For the Mad Men fan, the foodie, or the history buff:

The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook

You’re especially in luck if your giftee is all three. Every …

» Continue Reading “The Smart Pop gift guide: books and more”

Thanks to everyone for commenting on our Psychology of Twilight giveaway! The answers were really interesting and really split. In case you’re curious about what movie came out on top, here’s the breakdown:

Total votes: 45

• Twilight: 12 votes or 27%
• New Moon: 3 votes or 7%
• Eclipse: 15 votes or 33%
• Breaking Dawn: 14 votes or 31%

Eclipse is just barely the winner!

Now, the winners of the book:

Congrats to Diana (#33), Stepany (#19), Sarah (#1), Maria Belen (#42), and Lauren (#17)!

I’ll be in touch shortly, to make sure your winning copy gets to you quickly. Enjoy!

For all other readers, you can get your own copy and sign up for book updates (which also gets you …

» Continue Reading “The Psychology of Twilight giveaway winner!”

If you’re already signed up for certain book mailing lists, you’ll have heard about the exciting new initiative we’re starting. When you sign up for designated mailing lists (they’ll be paired with the above graphic), you’ll not only get the latest news on the book, but we’ll also email you a free PDF of book content. There are thirteen excerpts you can download right now and there’s no limit to what you can sign up for, so go crazy if the mood strikes you! Scroll down in the post to see what we have available; we hope you enjoy.

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From our back list, you can get excerpts for the following titles (just click on the book titles, and scroll down until you see …

» Continue Reading “Sign up for our mailing lists, get free excerpts!”

Since Leah introduced The Psychology of Twilight a few weeks ago, I’m sure many of you have been eager to pick up a copy of Smart Pop’s latest anthology for your own (in time for the big movie release of Breaking Dawn: Part 1).

If you have wanted to read this anthology, today just may be your lucky day. We’re giving away five copies of The Psychology of Twilight to five (randomly selected!) commenters.

We’ll leave this giveaway up through the weekend—in case you’re busy fighting the crowds at the theater instead of sitting at your computer—and announce the winners on Monday. ETA: Deadline for entry extended through Monday at midnight CST! (We’ll announce Tuesday.)

Simply comment with the answer to this Twilight …

» Continue Reading “The Psychology of Twilight Giveaway!”

The media coverage is just getting started for The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook—you can read some great local coverage from Needham’s Wicked Local and the Boston Herald. But we particularly wanted to share this great video the Boston Herald shot of Judy and Peter talking about the book and even putting together a few of the recipes. (You also get a little visual taste of the book itself, as they flip through.)

And of course, don’t forget you can get the introduction and some sample recipes by signing up for our Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook news and update list, on our book page, and a few more by liking The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook on Facebook!…

» Continue Reading “Watch our Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook authors in action!”

Thanks to everyone who entered our Halloween book giveaway! There were lots of entertaining comments and creative costume ideas that really put my burglar outfit to shame.

Here are our five winners, who will get their choice of Fringe Science, The Psychology of Twilight, or Triumph of The Walking Dead!

John Bradford (Mad Scientist)

Dale Donovan (Envy, of the seven deadly sins)

Mandy (Hello Kitty)

Matt (Land Shark)

Susan (Cleopatra)

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If you didn’t win this time, we’ve got plenty of giveaways coming up in the next couple of months, so be sure to check back on the blog or sign up for book updates below!

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» Continue Reading “Halloween “Costume” Contest Winners”

. . . we’d like to announce—very, very early—the future publication of The Panem Companion: An Unofficial Guide to Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games, From Mellark Bakery to Mockingjays.

The Panem Companion, to be released December 2012, is written by V. Arrow, better known to a lot of Hunger Games fandom as aimmyarrowshigh, the creator of this brilliant unofficial map of Panem—which was my first introduction to her, actually, long before there was any talk of books. (And I have to give a quick shoutout here to the always fantastic Adam and Savanna at Hunger Games Fireside Chat, for introducing us to V. a few months back!)

We’re so excited about this book, from the updated (and gorgeously illustrated) version of that original …

» Continue Reading “Because there can never be enough Hunger Games books in the world . . .”

Have a corgi dressed as Doctor Who:

(more corgis in costume, via buzzfeed.com)

And a reminder: You can still enter to win a copy of Triumph of the Walking Dead, Fringe Science, or The Psychology of Twilight until midnight Central time tonight.

Happy trick-or-treating!…

» Continue Reading “Happy Halloween!”

We’re big fans of any holiday that encourages dressing up, and to celebrate Halloween, we’re giving away everyone’s favorite prize . . . books! Five lucky winners will get their choice of one of three Smart Pop titles: Fringe Science, The Psychology of Twilight, or Triumph of The Walking Dead. All you have to do to enter is tell us what you’re going to be on All Hallow’s Eve in the comments below by midnight on Monday, October 31 Central Time; we’ll announce the winner the next day. (Sorry—U.S. and Canadian entries only.)

Happy Halloween, and happy reading!…

» Continue Reading “Halloween Treats!”

Each season we announce our new titles individually, each in their own post, to give you a little extra background behind the book. If you’ve missed any, you can check them all out here. Fall 2011′s intro posts are here.

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There are a lot of people who are tired of hearing about Twilight. The feedback our sales folks got from a lot of independent bookstores when they were trying to sell in the book was that vampires aren’t really selling anymore– that, even with two Twilight films to go, the Twilight craze, too, had died down. It’s a totally fair point; neither vampires nor Twilight are the hot new thing anymore. But we don’t think that means they’re dead (or even undead) …

» Continue Reading “Introducing The Psychology of Twilight”