Seth Godin has some reservations about HarperCollins new Author Assist program that allows their authors to build their own websites through HC, and thinks he should use his new “people-powered who’s who of the web” (aka Squidwho) to build author sites (or fan sites for your favorite author).
Anyone used (or plan to use) either of these programs?
What are your thoughts?
P.S. This interruption of radio silence will hopefully continue if a.) I can get my computer to stay on longer than ten minutes when I'm trying to do something of any importance on it; b.) I can get a new computer; or c.) I give up on my vow to avoid blogging at work (which is technically being bent and mangled even as I type.
4 comments:
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This is one of those times where I wish the blogger (Seth Godin) would allow for comments. There are a few things I'd like to say about his post but he's disabled comments across his blog, which is most unfortunate.
At any rate, I blogged about HC's service last week and as a fellow publisher I think it's a great idea. I'm not applauding it because I'm a publisher; I just tend to think it's a nice service for HC to offer, especially since it lowers the barrier to entry for many authors who are scared of technology.
Here's the real reason why I completely disagree with Seth though: Thanks to RSS it doesn't matter who hosts your blog! 95% or more of the blog reading I do doesn't take place at the source. I read almost everything in my RSS reader instead. So regardless of whether HC or someone else hosts the author blogs it doesn't matter because I'm generally not going to that domain to get the content. I'm not alone, of course, as many, many folks are finding RSS is a great way to consolidate and aggregate all your blog feeds.
So if the publisher, HC in this case, is willing to host and lower that barrier to entry, what's not to like?!
Btw, the post I wrote about this on my own blog can be found here: http://jwikert.typepad.com/the_average_joe/2007/09/harpercollins-a.html
Thanks,
Joe Wikert
Publishing 2020 Blog
jwikert@gmail.com
I prefer handling my own site, but it might be a good opportunity for others.
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