Fun with Answers (and Links)

Keep the commentary coming on the “Blogging to Build Readership: Does It Work?” thread. I’m compiling my thoughts into something coherent that I’ll hopefully post later today or tomorrow. For those of you who’ve already shared your opinions, here’s a little something to keep you busy:

The Inkwell Bookstore Blog is looking for answers to the following questions:

As a bookstore employee/owner, what does your store do to attract a crowd?

And as a bookstore shopper, what sorts of things do you look for in the stores that you frequent?

Follow this link over and give them your answer. Maybe they’ll be able to co-op the idea into something that will work for their customer base. Go and spread your book-luvin’ knowledge.

Since the last link was to a blog, and we’re in the middle of discussing blogging in reference to how it affects an author’s readership, be sure to check out Coding Horror’s Thirteen Blog Clichés. I freely admit that I’m bad about the apologizing and a few other things on the list (and by few I mean several), but I defend my “excessive blog roll” as it is meant to be used by y’all to do more research on your field. At least that’s excuse I’m sticking with.

Thanks to one of my fellow DPI grads, I’ve started following Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020 Blog. Joe comments on a wide variety of areas that affect the industry and gives some great advice. I’m still mulling over his thoughts about e-subscriptions for magazines. PW allows subscribers to read the magazine online, but I only got a chance to play with one copy before my subscription ran out. Since I was reading it on the large (overly so, in my opinion) computer screen they provided us at the bookie job, reading wasn’t an issue, but with my laptop screen? I don’t know.

Through Joe I discovered Lori Cates Hand’s blog Publishing Careers, which is probably a bit more interesting to me than it is to you as it is billed as “An online "informational interview" for college students, new graduates, and career changers interested in knowing what a job in publishing is like and how they can get one.” Still, you can never learn enough about the industry you’re working in.

Awhile back when I was doing research on whether or not to move this blog, I ran across this breakdown of blogging software that I thought I should share. I don’t know how up-to-date it is given the changes different blogging sites have instituted, but it is a good resource if you’re thinking of trying something new.

In the realm of pure fun, go find a picture of you and your significant other (or significant something) and generate your own romance novel cover.

The cardboard Mr. Nelson pictured with me here was made possible by the good people at Fulcrum Publishing (and my DPI roommate who took the picture) who are responsible for Willie Nelson’s newest book On the Clean Road Again, which discusses Willie’s thoughts on Bio-diesel.