Looking at books

One of my favorite things to do is look at books. And I mean that exactly as I typed it. I don’t have to be looking ‘for’ a book… I literally can spend hours online looking at photos of other people’s libraries and book stashes.

And I’m tired of enduring this voyeuristic life alone…

Continue reading Looking at books

Readers get to vote on what gets published

There’s a new site in town, Worthy of Publishing. It sort of mashes the Threadless and MySpace democratic business models, to unpublished authors.

Basically, you sign-up and submit a synopsis, samples, etc. of your book. Then other people in the community go around reading and voting. The idea is that the cream will rise to the top and get the most votes/attention. Once that attention has hit a ‘critical mass’, publishers will step up sign the author and publish the book, banking on that ‘critical mass’ as an indicator of potential sales and interest in the title.

I’ve yet to find a self-published book that I enjoyed. I tend to have to lean on the profesional book folks to weed out the weaker stuff. Which I’m always greatful for them doing.

But this model intrigues me and I’m anxious to see if the “wisdom of crowds” theory applies here. I could see it happening…

Can’t decide if I wanna play

LibraryThing is hosting SantaThing this year. For $25, you get to play Secret Santa to someone. Which means you peruse a user’s library, decide what book(s) they must have/would enjoy and then tell Library Thing. They’ll buy and ship the book(s) for you and your done!

All the while, someone else is looking through your library/blog and turning in a list for you to get. What a cool idea! Though, it might be kinda scary what someone might send me based on their “impression” of my collection.

The downside, there is only one day left to decide, as the deadline is December 13th at high noon!

Too funny!

I ran across this pretty good analysis of Amazon’s Kindle just after I ran across a cool new (to me anyway) book blog The Written Nerd. That Kindle post almost had me crying! To quote one line…

“Kindle combines your love of reading with your even bigger love of putting your book down so it can recharge for three hours.”

Amen!

Books, Publishing and Birmingham