• booksXYZ, an online bookseller specializing in new and hard-to-find books, has opened up shop. The project is a nonprofit, with all profits benefiting public education. You can even direct that 5% of your sale go to the school of your choice. Check ‘em out.
• Tingle Alley operates a little like a bureaucratic office in some far-off, capsized republic. What doesn’t get lost, we forget, and what we don’t forget gets stuck in the wrong file. Our office runner is named Gogol. This is why we’re just now linking to the VidLit for M.J. Rose’s Halo Effect. For every blog that links, $5 is donated to the literacy organization Reading Is Fundamental.
To tell the truth, I’ve lately grown ambivalent about the ways online marketing strategies are attempting to shape blog content. And I do mean “ambivalent”: On the one hand, I’m happy to help people out (and I heart review copies); on the other, I’m distrustful of having something that is a personal space co-opted. For me, these approaches can sometimes feel akin to having someone ask to hang a billboard from the back of my couch. I say this not to be ugly but because it’s an interesting side effect of blogging’s emergence as a tool for publicity. It’s something some bloggers won’t mind, and others will; and how much you mind will probably be a function of where you see your blog fitting on the personal to professional spectrum.
That said, this one is for a good cause, M.J. Rose is a good egg, and the VidLit is pretty cool. So here it is.
p.s. On my last trip to the grocery store, I was happy to note that The Halo Effect was number four in the paperback bestsellers. I picked up a copy for my next bathtub soak.
I’m also getting somewhat alarmed by the marketing pitches arriving in my inbox. First of all, it’s kind of annoying, but beyond that I find it odd that I – a blogger with an audience that, on a good day, could barely fill a movie theater* – am somehow going to turn a book into a bestseller. I love the personal emails I get from authors and publishing types, but the form letters and press releases and long rambling mass emailed pitches make me very queasy.
*One of those newfangled “stadium seating” theaters, not an art house, hut still!
Comment by Max — 7/14/2005 @ 5:08 pm
I hear your song! I get weird pitches daily as well. And as much as I wish good luck to every author, I don’t have time to read and review everything, nor do I feel comfortable turning my blog over to someone else (they could stain it!). And I know they are sending the same letters to every other blogger out there. Plus to be honest, sometimes the books they want to send me sound terrible!
Comment by bookdwarf — 7/14/2005 @ 5:55 pm
Funny, but I’m concerned about this issue too! I have two blogs and I get inundated. So thanks especially for mentioning the Reading is Fundamental drive. I really wanted to do something good at the same time as promote the book. I get tired of the me, me, meness of being an author.
And thank you so much for buying Halo, do let me know how you like it. (It strikes me as good in the tub. I thought up the whole idea for it while I was swimming.)
Comment by M.J. Rose — 7/15/2005 @ 7:33 am