All posts by trav

At the heart of it all, I’m a fan. A fan of books and bookstores. A fan of fiction and non-fiction. A fan of authors and publishers. And most of all I’m a fan of great conversations sparked by books. All that to say - I really need more bookshelves.
Book Talk

New Site Focuses on Business Books

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Simon & Schuster has launched 250words.com, which professes to be a “publisher agnostic” site focused on business books.

Staffed by five folks from with in S&S’s ranks, they report they will deliver daily a short single 250-word single post sharing some business wisdom or inspiration gleaned from a business book.

250words.com bookshelf

At launch, the seem to already have dozens of posts written. No doubt there will be no shortage of topics and titles to discuss. It’s amazing how many business books get published every year.

This year book publishers are aggressively going after “verticals” or “niches” or “silos” or “walled gardens”, etc. This is a tactic to answer the way people search and buy books these days. It’s something that has been refined by tor.com (one of my favorites) and narnia.com, plus a few others.

I’m anxious to see what the folks at Simon & Schuster make of 250words.com. They are also on Twitter and Facebook, if you want to check them out there.

If 250words.com doesn’t fit the bill for you, I would recommend you check out:

  1. 800CEOread – a blog about business books that I really enjoy. It’s certainly one of the most consistent ones out there
  2. Todd Sattersten – he’s a consultant for writers of business books, but his posts and twitter feed are always on my “to read” list
Authors, Book Column, Writing

Amor Towles Talks Writing

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Amor Towles’ Rules of Civility was one of my favorite books I read in 2012. It’s such a good book and so well written. I just ran across this very short interview with Towles asking about his writing and writing habits. I was surprised that Rules of Civility was written in just a year! And it was intentionally done so:

I gave myself one year to write that first draft because I wanted to maintain the brightness, the lightness, the nice poetic urgency that is part of the first draft.

You see, that makes sense to me. That’s actually encouraging. In the interview, Towles also offers some thoughts on inspiration and finding time to write (he had two young kids when he wrote Rules of Civility).

Amor Towels

But I also like what he had to say about revising his work:

I revised Rules of Civility from beginning to end three times in three years. All of that revision work was driven by the goal of economy.

It wasn’t about just the poetry or turn of a phrase, though if you read Towels’ book you’ll see he nailed those as well. I like the idea of writing with economy in mind. That has a very ‘newspaper’ feel to it. A feel that a reader would find useful and appreciate when reading a long novel.

Go read the full article. It’ll only take you a few minutes, but it’s packed (economically so) with wonderful insights that are immediately applicable to your own writing. And Amor Towels pulls no punches when it comes to “being a writer”:

Writing is a craft. It’s not a mystical state. It’s not a single emotion. It is craft.

And a craft can be learned. Very insightful and encouraging!

Book Column, Games for Readers, Gifts for Book Lovers

Book Trivia Board Game

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Here is a great “gifts for book lovers” that I stumbled upon: It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, is a book trivia board game all about books.

book trivia game

I haven’t played this one yet, but it sounds like something I’d enjoy. Basically, you and your friends move around the board while trying to identify books by their opening lines or book covers.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night has been for sale via a few sites around the interwebs for a while. The price floats around the $30 mark. A few of the book trivia categories are:

  • novels
  • poetry
  • mysteries
  • children’s books
  • science fiction
  • books made into movies

I have to admit that identifying a book simply by its opening line sounds tough, but maybe it’s all multiple choice. That’d be better.

Good luck and let me know if you’ve played It Was a Dark and Stormy Night. I’d like to know if it’s as fun as I want it to be.

Book Column, Book Talk, On the Web

Google Explore For Book Lovers

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Last week Google launched a new search feature for their Google+ social network. Basically, it adds groupings, tags, etc. and makes the network all searchable so that you can skim through all of the content generated on Google+.

So what’s the first thing I did? I did a few simple searches through Google Explore to see if I could find any books and book-related content that was of interest. I really wasn’t looking for people “curating” (like pinterest or tumblr), but for real content that harkened back to the days of book blog rings and such.

So I clicked on the “Explore” button up top…

google explore book search

and searched for “Books”. I was thankful for the Google Explore displayed all of the books-related tags that I could follow and check out.

google explore books

Early on I found these not worth following because of all the ads, spam and sales pitches:

  • #free
  • #eBooks
  • #kindle
  • #kindlebooks
  • #author

The rabbit holes I really enjoyed falling down through Google Explore were:

  • #Reading
  • #BookReview
  • #AuthorInterview
  • #BookLovers (the best of the bunch)

google explore book lovers

As you can see, once you click on #BookLovers you’re presented with a whole new slate of sub-categories and tags to click through. As new as the feature is (and as under-used as Google+ is) it’s not hard to quickly separate the signal from the noise and find folks worth following. From there it’s a single-click to add them to a new (or old) circle to keep up with them.

When I next have a few free moments I’m going to click around with category, subject and book genre searches. Hopefully those will yield more leads to books worth reading. So check it out and let me know if you find any bookish folks worth following.