Coming to a Barnes & Noble near you

October 9th, 2008 | By Kelsey | 7 Comments »

Got some great news today…

Most Barnes & Nobles stores are going to be carrying WAIW. This is really cool on so many levels. Now whenever someone asks me, “Where can I buy your book?” I don’t have to say “I dunno.”

It’ll be great sending them some place other than a website. While shopping online is convenient, it’s not nearly as much of an experience as strolling through a bookstore’s shelves.

I predict that the first time, if not every time, I find my book on the shelf in a store, I’ll be majorly geeking out.

The Economy is Rotten, but British Consumers Aren’t

October 2nd, 2008 | By Kelsey | No Comments »

A UK site, The Grocer, reports on a recent survey with some interesting findings (I saw this first on Impacct Limited):

- 92% of consumers are willing to pay extra for a product perceived to be ethical

- 76% said they would choose products benefiting people rather than the planet.

- 65% of shoppers are prepared to pay an extra 10p (approximately US $174,762) or more, according to the report by market researchers Feel.

But before we put the British consumer on too high of a pedestal…

- 66% thought economic issues such as price and quality were most important, 23% said their priority was social issues and just 10% first considered green issues.

There’s nothing wrong with consumers putting price and quality first – granted, I would have liked to have seen price and quality separated in the study because I think price is probably picking up qualities slack. But I was surprised to see social issues beating out the environment.

Overall, the study is somewhat in line with a sock study I write about in WAIW?, aka the best (only) book I’ve ever written:

From Where am I Wearing?:

A national poll conducted in 2004 for the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that 83% of those asked agree with the following statement:

“Free trade is an important goal for the United States, but it should be balanced with other goals, such as protecting workers, the environment, and human rights – even if this may mean slowing the growth of trade and the economy.”

And when asked, “If you had to choose between buying a piece of clothing that costs $20 and you are not sure how it was made, and one that is certified as not made in a sweatshop, but costs $25, which one would you buy?” Sixty-one percent of those polled said they would pay $5 more for the piece of clothing certified as not made in a sweatshop.

To test the poll’s findings, which were in line with other such polls, researchers at the University of Michigan and Northwestern University designed a study to observe the real world spending habits of sock shoppers at a “well-known department store” in Michigan. They labeled one rack of socks with a sign that said “Buy GWC…Good Working Conditions…no child labor…no sweatshops…safe workplace.” An adjacent rack of similar socks was unlabelled. They gradually raised the price of the GWC socks and found that on average a third of customers were willing to pay more for them. The researchers believe that because of some of the customers’ lack of understanding of the GWC label that the percentage of conscientious consumers is actually greater. However, even if a third of consumers are willing to pay more for GWC-like apparel, there is a major untapped market for such items.

Preorder WAIW and get the first chapter now

September 9th, 2008 | By Kelsey | No Comments »

My publisher gave me a PDF of my first chapter, A Consumer Goes Global, to give to anyone who preorders the book.

Here’s how to get your hands on the first 12 pages of “Where am I Wearing?” three months before the book is published:

1. Preorder “Where am I Wearing?” from your favorite online book store

Amazon.com
Barnes & Noble
Books-a-Million
Borders
Powell’s Books
Wiley & Sons (my publisher)

…or any other online store

2. Send the digital receipt to kelsey@travelin-light.com

3. I’ll email you Chapter 1

What people are saying about Where Am I Wearing?:

“Timmerman is a fun tour guide, rather than a stern moralizer. His quest to find community around the world is an inspiration to anyone beginning to ask what’s been lost in the new global economy.” - John Bowe, author of Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy

“It’s one thing to talk about our disastrous trade policy. It’s quite another to live with the consequences. Kelsey Timmerman takes us to sweatshops and shantytowns to meet the people – mostly very young and grossly underpaid – who make our clothes. Every Washington policymaker should come down from their ivory towers and read Where Am I Wearing?” - U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH)

A question of housekeeping

September 2nd, 2008 | By Kelsey | 1 Comment »

Does anyone use the categories to the right to browse WAIW?’s content? If so, speak now or forever hold your peace.

I’m thinking about chucking 90% of the categories. I think there might be too many of them to make them useful, plus they push the recent comments to the middle of the page.

A warning: There be reporters lurking

July 24th, 2008 | By Kelsey | No Comments »

I’ve been warned that I should watch what I write because the media is starting to lurk in these parts.

This is a good thing, but as I watch the number of visitors grow each month a bit of me longs for the day when most of the hits to my blog were me. And since I knew how stupid I could be already, there was no real concern about writing something stupid or posting, say, this photo.

I’m pretty sure I haven’t said anything that stupid or offensive the three years I’ve been blogging. Most of the credit for this should go to Annie who has silently lurked on my blogs from Day One, making sure that I don’t say anything that embarrasses her.

Thankfully she has enough shame for both of us.

I’m sure that in the future (unless the internet implodes) my seventy-year-old self will stumble upon Where am I Wearing? and perhaps even the good ol’ days of Touron Talk and think, “What the hell?”

A kind of preview…

June 22nd, 2008 | By Kelsey | 2 Comments »

I pasted the Prologue and Chapter 1 of Where am I Wearing? into Wordle and here’s the cloud it produced.

See the larger version HERE.

Wordle in its own words:

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

I learned about Wordle on John Scalzi’s Whatever.

13 fellas

June 12th, 2008 | By Kelsey | 16 Comments »

I officially turned in my manuscript to Wiley yesterday. Woohoo! One of my editors, Tiffany, laid out the remaining path to publication.

First it’s off to production where someone will read over the manuscript looking for excessive vulgarity or endorsements of Hitler. Once it passes that it heads to a copyeditor who will edit punctuation, grammar, and style.

It was in her explanation of copyediting that Tiffany paid me the best compliment I’ve had as a writer, “We’ll send notes to the copyeditor telling them to preserve your style. We’ll tell him to keep all the fellas.”

There are two reasons why this was such a big compliment:

1) I’m honored to have a style that someone feels is worth preserving.

2) I’m really happy the fellas won’t be going anywhere because fella just might be my favorite word. In fact, at the most recent writer’s conference I attended, a fellow attendee wanted to talk craft. They went into great detail about their influences and their genius of melding styles – somehow managing to take all of the good stuff from the greatest writers of our time and none of the bad. They went on for about 10 minutes. When they felt they had sufficiently hashed out the depth of their style’s glory they asked me about mine. My response: “I like to use the word fella.” After their craptastic craft spiel, I couldn’t muster up anything else.

Out of my manuscripts 68,792 words I use 13 fellas. Allow me to introduce you:

1) more of a Warner Bros. fella
2) A fella sat on the maroon couch
3) A new fella has taken a seat
4) this poor fella lost his business
5) a short Kiwi fella
6) this fella vigorously scribbles
7) pretty jovial fellas
8) one fella is in shorts
9) a fella named Brice
10) a muscular fella with grey stubble
11) two fellas that couldn’t be more different
12) a fella obsessively moving at random from rack to rack checking out women’s clothes
13) the fella who watched the demolition

I’m 4 of the 13 fellas. Any guesses as to which 4? An Advanced Reader Copy of the book to anyone that gets them first try.

Galley Cat

May 28th, 2008 | By Kelsey | 2 Comments »

Oreo modeling one of the galleys I received in the mail from Wiley yesterday.

A galley is an uncorrected proof of a book that’s sent to people for endorsements and other stuff. I’m not sure what the other stuff is. I’m new to all of this. I’ll let you know when I find out.

This particular galley has a first chapter that’s probably going to get chopped to hell and a few facts that were a bit off, including one that was about $160 billion off (oops!).

Is it bad when you can’t remember the title of your own book?

May 24th, 2008 | By Kelsey | No Comments »

Really, should I be seeking help?

I can remember the whole Where am I Wearing? part, but it’s the subtitle that always gets me. Let me look it up…

Oh, there it is…A Global Tour to the Countries, Factories, and People that Make our Clothes

The problem I’m having is that we’ve (editor, editor’s assistant, Marketing gurus, Me) considered many different subtitles. The one I originally submitted was: A Global Quest to Meet the People who Made my Clothes. They thought Quest was a little too esoteric so we tried several others. Here’s just a few of the many, many variation of subtitles that were tossed around of the lists I submitted:

A Factory Tour to the Countries that Make America’s Clothes

A Global Quest to Meet the People that Make America’s Clothes

A Journey to the Countries that Make America’s Clothes

A Search for the People that Make America’s Clothes

A Search for the Factories & People that Make America’s Clothes.

Quest became Journey. Journey became Search. Search became Tour.

My Clothes became America’s Clothes, America’s Clothes became Our Clothes.

So, this is why I can’t remember the name of the book I’ve written. I suppose it still isn’t a very good excuse.

Look Ma! WAIW? is on Amazon!!

May 22nd, 2008 | By Kelsey | 5 Comments »

I did a little dance when THIS popped up in my Google update for “Where am I Wearing?”. I tried to leave an “I love it” five-star rating, but it doesn’t show up. I suppose that Amazon won’t let you rate a book before it’s been published. Currently, I’m the only one that knows it’s worthy of an “I love it”. Hopefully, my editor is too. I talk to him soon.