Bitchin' Blog Posts
: Twitter
February 23, 2012 | Thursday | 54 Comments
While listening to presentations at Digital Book World's Book Marketing Summit in January about the role of social media venues in book marketing, I got to thinking about how very different Twitter and Facebook are. One slide I saw showed Twitter a distant third behind Facebook and StumbleUpon as sources of social media traffic to specific websites, but the two I find myself on most as a reader (and author) are Facebook and Twitter. I randomly mused in Notepad about how the two I use most are so different from one another, and how I am learning the language of…
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November 21, 2011 | Monday | 54 Comments
So many readers have recommended this book to me. SO MANY. It has a 4.49 average after 1,728 ratings on GoodReads and 4.5 stars after 100 reviews on Amazon. Readers on Twitter have told me how much they adore this book, how they love the hero, love the story, love every one of the 200k pages of this book (which ends on a cliffhanger and continues in volume two, Fifty Shades Darker). Alas, this book didn't work for me. I kept trying, and going back to it more than I normally would because of the number of people who adore…
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June 06, 2011 | Monday | 39 Comments
It’s been awhile, but our multi-blog campaign to Save the Contemporary is back. If you’re not familiar with it, don’t worry - it has been a very long time since we’ve run one. If a contemporary romance makes both Jane and myself squee like squeeing has never been squeed before, it’s time to pimp the ever lovin’ holy moses out of a book. This time it’s Yours to Keep by Shannon Stacey. We ask for help spreading the word about a contemporary romance that rocked our worlds, and we award prizes during a week of pimping mayhem. Jane said over…
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March 14, 2011 | Monday | 18 Comments
It’s time to fill out your brackets for the 2010 DABWAHA tournament of books. If you’re not familiar with it, the DABWAHA is a bracket-style tournament that echoes the NCAA basketball tourney, only instead of college basketball, we’re using reader votes to determine the book of the year. I’ve got a lot of DABWAHA news, in convenient bullet-list format. The reader nominations are in - and each category is now complete with 8 nominees, one in each picked by readers! I am going to post the top 10 reader nominations in each category - because you need more books to…
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March 02, 2011 | Wednesday | 61 Comments
On Twitter I recently asked the following question: “If you could buy digital books in a physical bookstore, would you shop there?” I asked because I saw a eReads article about digital book kiosks in physical bookstores, an idea I would LOVE to see. I’ve been thinking a great deal lately about how I shop for books, what I look for when I go buy a book, and I realized, I seek a specific title when I go make a purchase. I haven’t browsed a romance section in a bookstore in a very, very long time. Yet I have a…
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February 22, 2011 | Tuesday | 47 Comments
There’s a software update coming to the Kindle, with some features that I suspect users will very much enjoy. First, page numbers, not locations, so as to make the citing of passages easier for people who cite things regularly. 2 WOOHOOs and a fist pump for that. Second, public notes. And I quote: “Any Kindle user—including authors, their fans, book reviewers, professors and passionate readers everywhere—can opt-in to share their thoughts on book passages and ideas with friends, family members, colleagues, and the greater Kindle community of people who love to read.” (emphasis mine) So, hold up, instead of changing…
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February 18, 2011 | Friday | 30 Comments
The highlights of the first day of ToC included Margaret Atwood, Indie booksellers speaking confidently and knowledgeably about building community, and two days of hot lunch. I love hot lunches like you have no idea. The opening keynotes of ToC were rather awesome, mostly. First was Theodore Gray, who discussed the creation of his periodic table table, and the book and then the iPad app that were inspired by his strange collection. The ipad app is jaw dropping - then comes the Outer Space one, and I about leapt off my chair to go home and get my iPad so…
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January 27, 2011 | Thursday | 18 Comments
It’s a tradition for me that when I go to a conference, I start a list of the most common terms heard and begin pondering how much to drink for each one. So, here it is, the Digital Book World 2011 Drinking Game! Form factor - 2 sips Are you ready for what happens next? - 1 sip Digital transition - 1 sip Transmedia - CHUG. Get a refill. Drink that. In fact, drink until you’d swear your radio is dressed up like your HD TV. Vertically oriented - 2 sips Verticals - 1 sip @TomThompson: #dbw11 CEO metaphors: we’re…
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January 15, 2011 | Saturday | 74 Comments
Via Colleen Lindsay, a big ol’ heads up with impending ORLY? surrounding FirstOne Digital Publishing. FirstOne is a new digital press (Wait, why do I hear popcorn popping? Stop that!) that opened its doors this week with a contest that raised a few eyebrows. Aside from what Laura Anne Gilman noted in her entry as the standard hyperbole of a newly launching digital press, there’s a contest with a rather high entrance fee of $149 and a clause that has an Absolute Write thread discussing the entire concept in detail. The clause reads, on the FirstOne website: All submissions become…
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January 13, 2011 | Thursday | 31 Comments
I am home with Hella Flu, so sick I am nonsensical, so here, have some links, and my attempt to explain why I’m linking them. If I make no sense, blame Ny Quil. First, from Philippa, a link to a re-reading of a very old Harlequin Historical, Unicorn Vengeance. Usually I’m prepared to grit my teeth when someone unfamiliar with romance takes a few pokes at it, but this book clearly deserved a righteous skewering, and Alan Scherstuhl gets a drink from me for making it through the chausses, the Sexy Yoda, and the worst line ever. I do question…
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December 31, 2010 | Friday | 50 Comments
Rather than do a recap of 2010, which would probably break my brain because I’ve done a lot of high-impact computer work this week (no, really, not even kidding) and because I can’t remember what I was wearing yesterday, let alone remember what I was reading eight months ago, I wanted to look back on the authors I discovered this year that rocked my world. These aren’t debut authors, not all of them, anyway. I don’t actually think being a debut author causes any more of a ripple in my consciousness than any other author or book that catches my…
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December 27, 2010 | Monday | 47 Comments
I wanted to like this book. I like epistolary novels, and I really like epistolary novels involving technology. I liked Meg Cabot’s “The Boy Next Door,” which is largely told via email, even with the weird part where the villain is running down the stairs and the heroine is on her laptop in the stairwell typing that the villain is running down the stairs. OMG… pick your laptop up and run, girl! I also have a major soft spot for the section at the back of Dave Barry’s “Dave Barry in Cyberspace,” where he wrote what I presume is a…
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December 23, 2010 | Thursday | 5 Comments
How’d I miss this? Galaxy Express is hosting a fantabulous giveaway of books and the deadline to enter is Sunday 26 December. And it’s not just some books - it’s 50 books. NICE. Also, if you follow Angela James on twitter, you might notice she started an #ebooks4mxas campaign. Each day she’s giving away a copy of one of her favorite romances. Today’s book is the first Kate Daniels book by Ilona Andrews, and the giveaway continues through Christmas. I am reading the Daniels series now as a treat for my brain for extra hard work on the book-in-progress, and…
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December 23, 2010 | Thursday | 7 Comments
Who is ready for the Sizzling Book Club chat? Me me me me me! I have seen folks on Twitter and Facebook talking about re-reading Amanda Quick’s Scandal, and I cannot wait to chat with you about it, and about other older romances that stand up to longtime rereading. Jane from DearAuthor is going to join me for the book discussion, and AllRomance has come up with a great idea - there’s going to be digital giveaways galore up in here, up in here, so please join us! The chat will be Tuesday 28 December at 9:00 pm EST-10:30 pm…
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November 10, 2010 | Wednesday | 30 Comments
ETA: Note: Apparently, *I* have not learned the lesson that the plural of “lesson” is “lessons” - and there was an apostrophe up in that title. All fixed! Color me embarrassed - which if memory serves is a rather sickly shade of puce. Here’s a not-in-any-particular-order list of lessons learned from the Cook’s Source copyright idiot-a-thon of last week. 1. Do not piss off the internet, especially when now, unlike a few years ago, mainstream news media will have no problems with citing Live Journal as a source. 2. Don’t steal. I mean, is that really a hard one? It’s…
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