If you, like me, have a permanent Amazon search for “Smart Pop” as one of your browser bookmarks, you might have noticed a new book that popped up a few months back, to be published in late June 2012: Beyond the Wall: Exploring George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, a collection of essays on the books. You might have also noticed that this page has remained stubbornly absent of cover image.

Today, I’m very pleased to share Beyond the Wall‘s front cover, which you’ll see over there to the right of this paragraph. The design is the always-excellent work of Charles Brock over at Faceout Studio, who not only put together a whole set of fantastic comps for …

» Continue Reading “Beyond the Wall: Unveiling the Cover”

We’re guessing that the Stephanie Plum fans out there are getting pretty excited about the One for the Money film premiere later this month, and thought it only appropriate that we give Stephanie her due with a Perfectly Plum giveaway!

Through midnight (EST) on February 8 you can enter to win one of three signed copies of Perfectly Plum. Just leave a comment below to be entered (U.S. and Canadian-only entrants, please).

And if you don’t feel like waiting until February to get your hands on a copy of Perfectly Plum, then there’s no better time than the present to purchase a copy for Kindle: it’s currently only 89 cents! You can grab it on Amazon here.

Finally, for the next four …

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A few weeks ago we announced a special The Psychology of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo-themed giveaway to celebrate the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movie release. Over 200 of you, Smart Pop readers, entered to win, and the following ten have won the prizes listed here! (All winners were chosen with the help of random.org.)

Grand Prize Winner

BRONSON

Runner Up Winners

JOHN V. DEVITO

LESLIE

Book Winners

LYOLA SHYBANOVA

LISA

LINDSEY

CHRIS PETERSON

BRANDI

HILLARY WEBB

BRIAN

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For everyone who didn’t win, we can at the very least offer a free PDF excerpt download when you sign up for The Psychology of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo mailing list below. We’ll also send you occasional updates about …

» Continue Reading “The Psychology of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Giveaway Winners”

Why are we putting out a Movie Edition of The Girl Who Was on Fire?

Well, book publishers love new editions. (It gives bookstores a reason to take a fresh look at an old book.) And who am I to resist an excuse to jump back into the Hunger Games series and have a few new writers write a few more great essays?

For our new edition, we drafted Brent Hartinger, Jackson Pearce, and Diana Peterfreund to write essays for us: on mixed opinions of Mockingjay; why we shouldn’t forget about Gale, just because he wasn’t the one Katniss picked; and the game theory of the Games, respectively.  I think they all make incredible additions to the original edition’s fantastic line-up …

» Continue Reading “The Girl Who Was on Fire – Movie Edition”

There’s only one more week until Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara hit the big screens in David Fincher’s new film adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and I don’t know about you readers, but we can hardly wait to see it. What with H&M’s new movie-inspired clothing line launch, and all of the coverage leading up to the movie, we can’t stop talking about Lisbeth at Smart Pop, and we figure she’s probably on your radars too. In anticipation of the movie launch, and in celebration of our recent release, The Psychology of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, we’re holding a Dragon Tattoo giveaway.

One grand prize winner will get . . .

• A $100 H&M gift card

…

» Continue Reading “The Psychology of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Giveaway”

If you’re a Mad Men foodie, the only thing better than trying the recipes from The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook would be eating at the restaurants featured in the show. Thanks to very generous donations from some of the food establishments that contributed to the book (pictured above), now you can!

Starting immediately through midnight on April 6, 2012 (CST), you can enter our “Dine Like a Mad Man” sweepstakes for a real chance to dine like Draper and drink like Sterling (which will include ordering an old fashioned or martini, natch). Six lucky entrants will each win one of the following prizes—altogether worth over $1200:

Grand Prize

Dinner for four at Barbetta (valued at $500)

First Prizes

Gift certificate from the Russian Tea Room…

» Continue Reading “Announcing The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook “Dine Like a Mad Man” sweepstakes!”

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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On December 21, 2012, the American film version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo premieres. I confess: I haven’t seen the Swedish version. I hear it’s pretty incredible. But at least judging by the trailer, this new version looks pretty incredible too:

In the months since the film was first announced, most of the discussion has—as it did for the book—surrounded the Millennium trilogy’s heroine, Lisbeth Salander . . . the subject of the latest addition to our Psychology of series, …

» Continue Reading “Get inside Lisbeth Salander’s head: The Psychology of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”

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 …

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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!”