Back To Basics

I posed a question last week and received no response. I didn’t expect one because it addresses issues great and small, depending on how you approach it. I was looking at it from a narrow perspective, but you know how it goes: the more you think about something, the bigger it becomes. So here goes. Are publishers undermining their own arguments through lack of quality control? I asked this question in the narrow context of ebook prices, addressing, specifically, the issue of lousy final layout in digital books. So much effort goes into the acquisition, editing, and marketing of a […]

There is nothing like October — the falling leaves, the shorter days, the endless aisles of Christmas ornaments. Around here, October says “Goodbye old year, hello new!” Or, people, it’s nearly time for me to stop staying, “People, it’s 2007.” Publishers and online retailers and content providers have this fascinating love affair with partnerships. Stay tuned for next year’s catch-phrase, “It’s 2008, what are you thinking?*” Today, in my normal reading, I stumbled across a press release from Barnes and Noble. In nearly-2008, “the world’s largest bookseller” has opened a Blackberry-enabled storefront. Yes, you read that right. And I know

We were doing some casual research over the weekend — nothing strenuous, early summer has hit SoCal and when the choice comes down to blogging or sleeping in a hammock, well, what would you do — and realized something a bit distressing. There is nothing worse in this world than the bio pages on author websites. Hmm, possibly that is an exaggeration, but we don’t think so. As a general rule, biographies, as written for publications (and as opposed to those thick tomes that serve as handy doorstops), are horrible things. If you do not believe us, we insist you

In response to our recent rant about an author who decided that the best way to help independent bookstores was to pull his book from Amazon, we received several interesting comments — and one fascinating comment (not a bad return on investment). In this case, the author noted that the costs of doing business with Amazon were not necessarily worth the benefits. Our commenter, Janet Szabo, who writes about knitting (it’s like the gods are telling us to finish the !@#$ project we started last fall), and she did the math, realizing that selling through Amazon resulted in lower profit

We had a lovely rant about finding reviewers for your work planned for this morning, but due to technical difficulties (ie, lack of caffeine), it was lost in the ether. However, we remember enough of said tirade to reproduce the intent of the post, if not the actual words. Our intent was to explain, gently, that if you are seeking reviews, you must do your homework. Approaching the wrong people with requests to review your brilliant work is not a positive career move.

We have been understandably worked up about this whole online presence thing this week. Hmm, maybe it’s not so understandable — it strikes us that you are not privy to our lengthy debates with the husband. Trust us when we say that nothing makes an evening fly by like a discussion about making the web a better place for the world. Today’s topic is links. You are familiar with them, we trust, but just in case, here is an example. In this case, we are linking to Jill Monroe’s blog, mostly because we cannot believe that she puts pictures like

Once your domain name is secured, you can breathe easy. No need to worry about someone grabbing your precious name and forcing you to spend hard-earned cash on buying it back (by the way, if you do spend said cash, do not feel bad; it happens a lot…in your next life, go with an unusual name). Your inclination will be to throw something up on the Internet and wait for the traffic to start driving through. Okay, we’ll allow you to do this: throw up a blog and then come right back here. Many hosting services allow you to do