Work with bookhead
bookhead is a project created by Sam McAlilly. It includes the software marketed on this website and a consultancy that helps book-ish enterprises thrive in a digital world.
I can help your independent bookstore, library, or software company with any technological, digital marketing, and design needs. Email me at sam@bookhead.net if you're interested in working together.
I'm a programmer, fiction writer, and former bookseller. I have experience selling and marketing books online, promoting events, and designing websites and print materials for independent bookstores. I'm also experienced at building software to help libraries, journalists, and local governments.
I currently live in Burlington, Vermont. Spent several years in Birmingham, Alabama (one of the best food cities in the South). I long for my home in North Mississippi.
I love books. A true bookhead.
Notable work
I've worked for an independent bookstore, a software company that helped libraries with marketing, and a civic technology company that specialized in data visualizations and maps.
- Square Books is where it all started. As you know, a bookseller can wear many hats. I was a print and web designer, and also managed social media and email marketing. I redesigned their e-commerce website within the constraints of an IndieCommerce theme, improving the sales with data-driven design decisions based on collaboration with our team. I promoted and helped facilitate a ton of readings, like Scott McClanahan, John Grisham, and everything in between.
- Patron Point has a suite of marketing automation tools that serve libraries across the world. I maintained and built components of a system that emails recommendations to library patrons based on their reading interests. The recommendations were generated from Library Thing's recommendations, as well as recommendations created by library staff (what an independent bookstore would call "staff picks").
- DataMade is a civic tech consultancy based in Chicago. I was a lead developer, which means that I built software and managed projects. I made interactive maps, data visualizations, web applications, and data pipelines for local governments, journalists, and researchers.
- I've worked as copywriter, edited writing that was published by national lifestyle brands, and edited other random stuff along the way. I'm revising a novel, and hope to have it finished soon. In the meantime, you can read a little bit of my writing on my Neutral Spaces page.
Let's work together
To get in touch, email sam@bookhead.net.