Daily Thoughts 3/4/2009

Advertising poster by American illustrator Louis John Rhead (1857-1926). "William Caxton made his own ink, but you can have yours made by The Ault & Wiborg Co., Cincinnati." c1896

Daily Thoughts 3/4/2009

Know Thing, No Thing, Nothing

I know know thing

The thing I know

Is not something

Do u know something

That I don't no

That Some Thing u know

Must be something

Full of my knows

That No Thing matches

I read some more of Words In Your Face. There is an interview with Bob Holman the founder of the New York City Poetry Calendar which is a weekly listing of poetry readings. It used to include all of the readings in the city. I would pick it up at Shakespeare and Company books when they were still open. I used to read it to find out when the science fiction and fantasy book readings were happening.

Today has been a fairly busy day. I spent some time having a new librarian shadow me at the reference desk and showing her where the different things were in the reference room. I showed her a few things which are kind of interesting. We keep a big binder with flyers from all the different community service agencies, several different files for career material and an annual reports drawer.

I also spent some time with Westlaw. Apparently a lot of libraries are restructuring their law collections. Computer databases are replacing a lot of the law digests. Keyword searching in Lexis and Westlaw are much easier than in the legal encyclopedias. Westlaw is finding itself in a facing lots of library budget crunches. My understanding is that on average the cost of law books goes up 12% per year or more and law databases go up in price 3-5% per year. Westlaw is making the books less and less affordable. They told me that they were cutting prices everywhere.

Other than Westlaw, I have been looking at places that offer grants. I thought this was interesting. This place sends free art books to libraries. http://www.ducprogram.org/orderform.php

Random House is opening a free library for science fiction books. I rather like this. More for me to read, and a little competition with the Baen Free Library. http://www.suvudu.com/

Slideshow

Slideshow

I decided to test out the slideshow feature for Amazon affiliates. These are books in my collection of science fiction art books. A lot of books were no longer in print, or did not have pictures available of the covers. Thus, I could not post, Virgil Finlay's Strange Science, Frank Kelly Freas The Art of Science Fiction, or Wonderworks by Michael Whelan. I just wanted to make a short example of some science fiction art books.

I might also do the same thing with some science fiction or fantasy graphic novels which I enjoyed. I would like some feedback on whether or not you liked the style and format. I think it could be used successfully for a number of different things.

I tried a different format for doing a short graphic novel slideshow. I hope you appreciate it. It is the first time I am doing this.

Wandering Through Blog Land, Virnor Vinge Ebook

I've been wandering through blogland looking at lots of different blogs. I find most library blogs to be pretty boring. They usually have a big picture of the library building on the outside. It would be much more interesting if they took a picture of the inside with the staff next to the bookshelves.

Most of the blogs I've looked at have been pretty incoherent. One of my pet peeves so far is the icon which people use to show their blog. If they put a little symbol of what they are writing about, it would help a lot better than a picture of themselves, or in the case of many book sites, their cat. There are so many blogs out there, that if you don't immediately give an idea of what your site is about, you lose people. This is especially true when you are looking at blog directories. Often there is no caption, just a picture in places like blogcatalog and bumpzee.

Looking at book blog sites has been very interesting. Mostly the book sites provide reviews of books and thoughts on writing. There is very little else. It is interesting when people put in videos of authors talking, news about books, and bits on new technology. Even a little bit on their experience in a bookstore or library might break up the endless reviews.

Some of the sites also include movie reviews and television show reviews in addition to book reviews. This is actually a good thing. Most libraries are media centers. Where I work more people check out dvds of movies and television shows than books. We even have a section for the greatest films, and a section on African films.

Of course there is often the ubiquitous picture of the cat curled up on the book in book blogs. Cats must read a lot.

I usually see a short biography as well. Quite often this is very cozy and sweet in nature. I haven't seen anything truly wicked yet. It would be nice to see something wicked. The Bookslut Blog is the one exception which is mildly risque. It is also kind of sexy. The site gets a lot of visitors and is very well done. http://www.bookslut.com/blog/

These are just some thoughts on visiting different blogs. I will write more as I think of more to write about. I am also seeing endless attempts to support a million different products everything from bookmarks to computers to advertising. If you are going to sell something, stay focused on selling what you are talking about.

People get turned off by advertising. Some people suggest that you should not have Adsense ads because people will leave your site if they see them. Almost every site has pictures of them. I am thinking of replacing one of my adsense ads with a cafepress button for a store. I know this sounds kind of silly. I just did, it contains a really basic logo and a few gift items. I found out about Cafe Press when I was looking at bookslut.

Every site I visit has social bookmarking tags. I am not even sure that these are particularly helpful. I think it is more important to go visit other peoples sites and make comments about what they are writing about. I've visited quite a few different peoples sites and done this. Everything from David Brin, Jeff Vandermeer, SpamPoetry, and others. I make it a point to visit your site if you post a comment on my site. I'll show you mine if you show me yours. This seems to be the best thing that works. Also posting in newsgroups discusing blogs seems to help as well.

Keywords, search engines, and little buttons which are spread across most of the sites which I visit don't seem to do a whole lot. Joining sites which discuss blogs like blog catalog, and fuelmyblog seems to help as well. Communities of people discussing different subjects tend to be interested in what you are writing about. My favorite site for discussing blogs and the site which seems to do the best job for blog promotion, blog searching, discussions, and exchanges is http://www.blogcatalog.com/ . My experience with them has been very good. I just put in a widget for blog catalog.

I've also spent a bit of time looking at various library blogs. It is not pretty, there is a lot of secret disgruntlement, or not so secret disgruntlement. People talk about things like unacceptable behavior in the library. Monitoring bathrooms and internet access in public buildings is an interesting experience...

An interesting topic which I see coming up repeatedly is the concept of Library 2.0 . Nobody really defines it, but every article I've seen seems to be talking about social networking tools and web gadgets in the library setting. Meebo is one of the gadgets I saw talked about. Also some librarians are talking about using http://www.librarything.com/ for certain very popular parts of their collections to improve circulation which is a very ineteresting idea. From my experience most librarians have no idea what to do with social data in the library setting.

The other topic that is coming up a lot is digitalization. The Google books project where they are scanning thousands of books every day into the internet is quite controversial among librarians. Also, there is a new project being spearheaded at MIT, the million books project for scanning huge amounts of free material into a giant library. It is called the Universal Digital Library. Supposedly when they are done with the initial batch there will be 1.5 million books in the library. This is a joint project of China, India, and the United States. Here is the link, http://www.ulib.org/ .

I think both social search and digitalization change the purpose of what a library is. Librarians are not keeping up with the changes. It shows in the slow decline of the number of librarians and the general unfocusedness throughout the profession.

___________________________________________________________________

I found another free science fiction ebook, Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End.
http://vrinimi.org/rainbowsend.html . I haven't started reading it yet. I think I'll review it for a change of pace.

___________________________________________________________________

The "blog" image at the top of the post is something which I did with paint because I couldn't find a public domain image on wikipedia for blog.

The Panic Hand by Jonathan Carroll, Short Stories

The Panic Hand by Jonathan Carroll is a collection of his short stories. All are set in a kind of magically realistic universe infused with an odd mysticism. Some of the stories in the collection I liked are Mr. Fiddlehead about an imaginary friend that grows up with its creator and changes her life. Another story is about a man who adopts an exceptional dog who causes some bizarre changes in the persons life, Friend's Best Man. The Jane Fonda Room is about a trip to hell where the person gets to watch all of Jane Fonda's movies for eternity. A Wheel In The Desert, The Moon On Some Swings is about a man trying to capture his last important images through photography as he goes blind. The writing in these short stories deals with issues like death, sorrow, mysticism, and the every day moments that seem to stretch into forever. There is a real sense of magic and wonder in the writing. Even with the magic and wonder it touches on ordinary every day life things and the present. This makes for some exceptional fantasy writing. His writing is both different than most other writers and touches close to the heart.

I don't often read short stories. Most of the time when I read short stories, it is to find new writers which I hven't read. I will pick up a recent anthology of science fiction or fantasy writers and look for short stories by people I haven't read before. After I read a few of the stories, I will look in the back of the anthology to read the brief biography of the writer that is usually included. If both the short story and the biography are interesting, I will often go look for books by the author so I can read them.

Anthologies also help when I have to find out about a style of literature which I have never read before like Brazilian Literature, or Scandinavian literature. These often give me a jumping off point to find other authors. Also because the stories are short, I can skip over the ones I don't like and be selective about which ones I am going to read.

Short stories are a very good point for looking for new authors. The general publishing pattern for many writers is to write several short stories to establish an audience before they attempt to write novels. Many publishing houses will not as readily accept manuscripts from novelists who have not written short stories first.

___________________________________________________________________

After looking through Bloggers, Blogs of Note; I found three major science fiction and fantasy authors, David Brin, Robert J. Sawyer, and Neil Gaiman who used blogger as their blog platform. It is one of the little things which happens when you look through lists obsessively.

___________________________________________________________________

I found another directory of blog literature sites this time with over 700 blogs listed. I am applying for membership to this list. It is really, really big.

http://metaxucafe.com/cafe/find_members/index/

___________________________________________________________________

I also pinged my site today using http://www.pingoat.com/ to announce that I had updated my site. This is supposed to increase traffic to this site by letting search engines and directories know that you are keeping your site up to to date.

A Book And Its Cover, A Trip to A Bookstore

A lot of people think "You cannot judge a book by its cover." This can be a very misleading statement. Many people collect books just for their covers. Most science fiction and pulp art comes from book and magazine covers. Many people collect hardcover and paperback books just for their cover art. Kelly Freas, J. Allen St. John, Donato Giancola, and Michael Whelan are a few of the artists who people buy just for the cover art. Also some people buy old pulp magazines just for the cover art as well, things like The Spider Master of Men, Famous Detective, the Shadow, Astounding and other magazines are often purcheased just to have the cover art.

A books cover is the most valuable part of a book for a collector. This is because it is the most ephemeral part of the book and the hardest part to preserve. Most very old books have long since lost their covers. It follows that people wrap the covers in plastic to protect them. There is an odd corollary. It seems that bookstores and collectible shops can charge a premium for things wrapped in plastic. This is true for both comic books, magazines, and even paperbacks.

If you find a book that is not wrapped in plastic, it is usually much cheaper.

The cover of a book is also the first thing which a person sees when they are going to buy a book. Usually, they have to select the book from a large variety of other books. This makes it very important for the cover to stand out from a bunch of other books. This means if you are attempting to sell a book take a minute and see how your book stands out from five or ten other books at five feet, at ten feet, and at twenty feet. You really want your titles to be visible in the bookstore and display window. If you can see a books cover in the window of a bookstore while you are driving by in a busy city, then you know your cover is visible.

Up close you should be able to read the title clearly and the author clearly of the book. There should be some blank space to put a label on the spine for libraries, also there should be a place where you can put a sale sticker on the cover without disrupting the cover art. The spine should have the title of the book and the author easily readable from the side. If the spine title is not very readable people will have trouble finding it in libraries and bookstores.

Something that bothers collectors and booksellers is false aging marks or pictures that include wrinkles and stains on the cover to make the book look old. Collectors want their books to look absolutely clean. Dealers want their books to appear new so they can sell them as new.

Some thoughts on displays. It is good to mix up the size of different books from regular to size to quarto. Putting larger books in the back makes sense. Also laying down some larger books to break up the pattern of the display is a good idea. Colored cloth or felt which is the opposite color of the books being displayed provides an excellent background. Also mixing media, adding in videos and audiobooks can make a dispaly more interesting.

These are just a few thoughts on cover art. People really do judge a book by its cover. They then usually read the inside blurb on the cover flaps which summarizes the book. This is often done as part of the first stage of editing. Sometimes the books blurbs don't exactly match the contents, because they are written too early in the editing process. Also, the photo of the author is usually retouched to make the author look better. I usually take the recommendation sentences with a grain of salt, they are usually marketing statements.

It is not until they have looked at the cover and the inside flaps that they look at the inside of the book. Most people like to read the first chapter of a book before they decide to buy the book. However, some of the more old fashioned bookstores won't let them. You can look, but you can't read. This makes the cover even more important. Also, some people are too rushed, so first impressions count.

Anyways, I am enjoying the Bonehunters by Steven Erickson. I am still reading it. My favorite part so far is when Leoman of the Flails leads the Malazan army into a fire trap with burning oil, collapsing buildings, and berserk warriors. The fire trap turns into a firestorm and some of the heros of the novel have to escape underground through the warrens to get out. Lots of action.

I am going to go to a bookstore today and look at books. Exciting for me, maybe not so exciting for you, but still probably an interesting experience.

I thought about visiting Macy's because they are giving away Shrek dolls with every $35 dollar purchase. Maybe I'll get some underwear and socks... Ah, the appeal of mass media.

Anyways, today, I went to the mall, had a bite to eat, then went to the local Barnes and Noble, like many places we do not have a local independent bookstores. The chains and the giant web merchants have killed most of them. I bought one paperback, A Feast for Crows, book four of the Song of Ice and Fire Series. This series is #1 on the Internet Top 100 SF/Fantasy list. http://gurge.com/amd/top100. The first three books of the series are really excelent. I look forward to reading the fourth.

I also took some notes and placed holds at the library on Heavens Net is Wide by Lian Hearn, Odyssey by Jack McDevitt, the graphic novel, part of Stephen King's Gunslinger series, the Gunslinger Born. Most of the time I don't buy a lot of books when I visit bookstores.

Contentville.com, An Old Obsession and American Born Chinese

Last night I read American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang. It is a graphic novel or large format comic book. The book was a National Book Award Finalist and winner of the Michael Prinz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature. The book has very beautifully designed color panels throughout. The central theme is being true to yourself and who you are.



The story is broken into three interrelated stories that come together in a very solid finale. The first story is the story of the Monkey King and His Journey to the West. I've always really liked this story, when I was younger I read the story about the fight between the White Bone Demon and the Monkey King.  Monkey King is a classic trickster. The second story is about Jin Wang a second generation chinese kid who gets picked on a lot and just wants to be happy and fit in. He wants to not be bullied and do what the other kids do. The third story is about a visiting uncle called Chin-Kee who embodies all the American stereotypes of Chinese people and is visiting Danny, a Chinese American kid who tries too hard to fit in and has given up on his heritage.



The graphic novel is very much about growing up and accepting who you are. This is a very good graphic novel. It might be hard for some people because there are some messages about racism and some strong language. The ending is the best part. I enjoyed it very much.



Later today, I will get back to you on Contentville.


Article on Contentville: http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/nbreader.asp?ArticleID=17492
I've been fascinated by the idea of Contentville for years. I first saw it in 2000 when they were opening and even applied for a job there. I never heard back from them. Maybe, I was lucky. I was working at an ISP at the time as a sourcer finding people for the HR department which is a kind of strange job. They actually sometimes hire librarians to do this in the more focused recruiting businesses. I never got rid of my original email wehireu@yahoo.com  -- although, I am not using it for sourcing anymore. I am back to being a librarian with books. I like finding books much more than finding people. A lot of people did odd things during the dot com boom.


I still am very much interested in the idea of content and content super sites on the web. Contentville looked like a merger between a bookstore, a magazine store, and a document delivery service. I find this fascinating. One of the killing factors was lawsuits. Some of the writers objected to having their articles sold as individual pieces. The writers wanted more money to have their works published. Some of the writers of theses from college were very surprised to find their college papers for sale on a commercial website. This of course caused legal problems.


The idea was to sell high quality content in multiple formats. I think as an idea this was great but impractical. I have spent quite a lot of time thinking about whether this would be possible and how to do it without losing your shirt. I haven't found a satisfactory answer.


Ebooks are still not mature enough to make a lot of money at. People still prefer the print version of a book. It is a physical thing which does not require extraneous devices, ink is still easier to read than the electronic medium, and some people learn better when they have a physical object in front of them. Also, books still are a lot cheaper. This also goes for comic books and magazines. If a person is purchasing a magazine article, they will still probably want to have it printed up in a physical format. Technology often proliferates older technologies.


I think the idea of having a contentville style marketplace will eventually be revived. I don't just follow book downloads, mostly looking at ebooks. I think there are too many formats of ebooks.


Ultimately, it won't be the format which causes ebooks to succeed but a change to a newer form of screen technology called electronic ink. Both the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader use electronic ink. Electronic ink is much easier to read than traditional lcd screen technology. However, because it is in its infancy, it will be too expensive initially for most people.
http://www.e-ink.com/


I find that ebooks are fine to read in the regular html format. I really don't have a problem with it. It is the screen that is most bothersome. I also think of content as content. People have to stop thinking of media as being separate. Pretty soon, ebooks will start merging with games and it will become hard to categorize the different types of materials. For example, Hanako Games calls this a visual adventure novel, which is an intriguing idea http://www.hanakogames.com/fatal.shtml . I really did enjoy the demo. It is a game which girls might like.


The most successful form of download is not books, it is downloadable audio. Audible appears to be king in this category. Libraries tend to have many more downloadable audio books than ebooks lately. MP3 files are including multiple audio formats, everything from poetry readings, podcasts, newscasts, radio, and music. This is the real success story of downloadable content.

People are also starting to download video as well now. I don't really get the point of downloading a video to a tiny little video reader. I find it bothersome, but other people like it so who am I to complain.


It is the literary part that interests me most. I know there are places like http://www.librarything.com/ where you can share your libraries. I also got invited to http://www.fantasyliterature.net/ by Katherine where they review fantasy books. It is a very nice site. What I like is the cover displays. It is a reviewing site.


What I am really interested in is something much more completely like a social network for books with a variety of features. There, the cat is out of the bag, I have been wondering how to do this. The closest thing which looks like it might be a place to start with a model is the African American Literature Book Club http://www.aalbc.com/ . Baen does a fantastic job with their site for selling books as well. http://www.baen.com/ .


I would like to see and participate in the building of a true quality content social networking site with book reviews, videos of author readings, writing instruction, bookselling, forums and other activities. This is a kind of dream that has stayed in the back of my mind for a while. This is what I thought Contentville would have become if it hadn't lost focus, been designed badly, and folded.

It is funny going back to this post after three years have passed.  There are now kindles, ipads, and new forms of book communities.  It looks like super content sites are becoming a reality now.

I had to go back and edit this page a little bit.  My writing has changed considerably for the better, I think.  Three years of blogging nearly every single day will change your ability to write.

Librarianship, Bookselling, and Publishing

The library of the Nautilus with a picture of Captain Nemo.

Creating The Customer Driven Library Building on the Bookstore Model by Jeannette Woodward is about how to improve libraries by understanding how retail bookstores work. The central tenet of this book is that the best way to improve libraries is through better customer service. The book claims that many of the customer service practices of bookstores can be adapted by libraries. Jeanette Woodward says that libraries need to look at their bottom lines and see how statistics and qualitative surveys on what library patrons want can be used to improve service in libraries. Serving the patron and the community become the central goal of the library.

There are detailed sections on how to display materials, improve signage, and generate positive publicity. It challenges the traditional idea that the librarian knows best and claims that what the patron wants is more important. If the library patron doesn't get what they want, they go elsewhere, usually to the local bookstore. Things like how to run a cafe in a library setting, adjust hours so they meet patrons needs, and use staffing so that technology is used effectively are written about.

It claims that the library patron needs to feel safe, have fast service, feel good about their visit, and be informed about what happens in their library. This should be written into the mission of the library.

This is an excellent book that tackles many thorny issues in the public library. It is well worth reading for both librarians and booksellers.

This post is particularly about the relationship between libraries, bookstores, and publishing. One of the review links I have posted is to Bookweb, the newsletter of the American Bookselling Association. Bookweb has quite a few news articles as well as information on what the best books are for selling in the independent bookstore.

The ABA, American Booksellers Association, also sponsors, Bookexpo America, the trade show for American publishing. This show occurs every other year in New York City at the Jacob Javits center. It will be in New York in 2009. I try to go every year it is in New York city, http://www.bookexpoamerica.com/ . The price is incredibly cheap $75.00 in US dollars three days. Close to the same time as the Bookexpo, there is the Day of Dialog between librarians and publishers. You have to register several months in advance to get tickets for the Day of Dialog. http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6457224.html . I easily pay for the cost of the event in the amount of free sample books which I end up sending back to where I am working, about sixty pounds of free new books.

Quite a few librarians attend the event in addition to booksellers and publishers. Most of the librarians are either collection development or reference librarians. I usually meet several different people who I have worked with at one point or another when I go there. It takes about a day and half to just walk around all the booths in the Jacob Javits Center. There is every kind of book, comic book, ebook, and book related material there.

Last time I was at this thing in 2007, I got to here a panel by publishers on science fiction in the library setting, as well as pick up a few free books like Armageddon Reef by David Weber, and the graphic novel, Invincible for myself. During the Day of Dialog, George R.R. Martin, the science fiction writer, was one of the invited speakers.

In April 2008, I will be going to the New York Comic Con, http://www.nycomiccon.com/ which offers free admission to professionals, librarians are considered professionals so I get to go free. Last time I was there, there were professional discussion panels on anime, manga, and graphic novels in the library setting. What is different about the New York Comic Con from other comic conventions is that the main purpose of the convention is to meet and talk with all the different comic book publishers like Fantagraphics, DC, Marvel, Image, Dark Horse, and others.

I am a big fan of comics lit, that is things like Maus by Art Spiegelman, the comic book adaptation of the Ring of the Nibelung by P. Craig Russell, the Cartoon History of the Universe by Larry Gonick, a biography of Kafka by R. Crumb, and many other works. I don't read a whole lot of superhero comics.

I collect what are called "ground level" comics, things that are not quite underground comics, and not quite mainstream comics. People like Vaughn Bode, P. Craig Russell, and Richard Corben. My focus in collecting is mainly science fiction, fantasy, and horror comics.

Another convention I will attend is the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art Festival on June 7 and June 8 in the Puck Building in Manhattan. This convention once again is very affordable to attend. Once again, this convention is not like most other comic book conventions, it focuses almost entirely on independent comic book publishers. There are tables from people like Fantagraphics, Soft Skull Press, Last Gasp, Drawn and Quarterly and illustrators like Craig Thompson. Last time I was at the festival in 2005, I got to meet Sara Turner of Make Like a Tree Comics. She has a really excellent free science fiction web comic caled File 49 http://mlatcomics.com/file49_index.html . This really satisfies my fanboy urges.

I haven't had a chance to visit MOCCA-- Museum of Cartoon and Comic Art in New York, but I recently looked at their listing of comic books on the internet. http://www.librarything.com/profile/moccany . They also have a catalog. http://www.librarything.com/catalog/moccany . Maybe, on my next vacation I will get a chance to visit.

I have plenty of thoughts on the more low brow aspect of the librarians and booksellers. One of these things is the public library fundraising booksale which usually comes with cupcakes, cookies, and coffee which is done by the "Friends of the Library." At almost every such event, you will see pickers, or bookscouts who are trying to find special books to sell either on ebay, or to their local bookstore. Most are older gentlemen or ladies who have experience with this kind of thing. It is a hobby for them which brings in some extra money. For the most part they are curmudgeons with a slightly grumpy hands off my stuff attitude. They also attend church rummage sales, flea markets, used bookshops, second hand goods stores and other such venues.

Anyways, this is a piece of my post for the day.

_________________________________________________________________

Another link which I am posting is http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/ this is a news aggregator for the alternative energy industry. If you are interested in alternative energy, this gives very up to the minute news.

__________________________________________________________________

I really haven't thought of anything new to post about improving my site statistics. I'll come up with some more later today.

Alright, I posted a few comments by myself to myself in the comments section. Right now, I am not worried about comment spam and link dropping. Please comment-- remember no porn, no truly gratuitous violence, no super hateful spews, flaming and different opinions are welcome. I like a little debate. It makes the world go around. If you want to put in a link to your blog please do. I will gladly post a comment in return on your blog. Thanks. Talking to myself. Wow.

Anyways, there is so much that is so easy to miss. I just updated my complete profile. It is so easy to miss stuff on this site.

While I was looking at Google Groups help for blogs, I found several blog review style groups in Google, Blogger Review, Blogger Help Group, and Blogger General Discussion where you are supposed to post your URL and ask for comments. I then looked for some web sites that reviewed blogs, there is Bloggeries Blog, and The Weblog Review so far.

Cartoon History of the Universe And Link Dropping

Right now, I just finished looking at a book which I received as a present, The Cartoon History of the Universe III From The Rise of Arabia to the Renaissance by Larry Gonick. This is a long running "graphic novel" which is about history. What is nice about these cartoons is that they are very open ended and try be comprehensive on which people they cover. The section on Islam for example covers the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Eurasia like Turkey. The humor is slightly irreverent throughout the comic and draws you in well. The history seems to be accurate. The cartoon book has an extensive bibliography, a list of names from history, and an index. I remember reading the smaller comic books when I was a child of six years old. They were were my fathers comics.

Apparently, what I am doing is link dropping, which is the thruth. It has been a more effective strategy than using search engines. I got exactly two hits from Google Blog Search, one was for the book Un Lun Dun, the other was for the Wizard of the Crow. When I look at the free hit counter I am using from hitcounterguru, there is no activity from keywords, just forums and usenet groups. I would have to add my site to a spam style free search engine to get better results from keywords. I would rather be labelled a link dropper than a spammer. On that thought, I looked at the requirements for being listed in DMOZ, a nonprofit directory. One of the requirements is that you not have too many external links, so I think I'll pass with this one.





I was looking at the top ten keyword sets on searchenginewatch, it is quite funny. Almost everything is commercial, the word book or literature isn't even on the site list. Maybe if I talked about myspace.com, cnn, pizza hut, or yahoo 360, I would be on the list of interesting sites.





So I guess I must mention that I like CNN, it is the most read news site. I read it sometimes in the morning along with Yahoo News, something which isn't even mentioned. The only time I watch the news is when I am at the laundromat, I would much rather read it online just when it has come off the wire. If you wait even a single day, the news article gets objected to by some group or other and gets homogenized. It takes about a day from when something is released to the Associated Press to reach the print newspapers. This gives plenty of times for the editors to change the news so it doesn't offend anyone. We don't have a liberal media or a conservative media we have a homogenized media.





Now the second thing I should mention is myspace.com, it is a ubiquitous web site, one of the top ten in use in the United States. I was looking at the Philip Jose Farmer, http://www.pjfarmer.com/ website, one of the truly great science fiction writers, he has a http://www.myspace.com/pjfarmer link which has his personal information and links to him. Philip Jose Farmer is well worth reading. I was actually looking for what his signature looked like on the site.

Myspace.com is probably a site traffic magnet. Somehow, I think I'll take a pass. Although, I am wondering if I posted myself as an African Bull Elephant it might attract attention to this site in a kind of Barnum and Bailey style.
http://www.myspace.com/bullelephant

Now that I have added a link to an important Myspace site, I will further my keyword research by adding a string of the most used keywords in the Label for this Post.

I went and found some more blog search engines to add my site to: myblog2u.com, blogsearch.com, icerocket.com, boingboing.net, Read A Blog, Blog Pulse, and Blog Rolling.com. Boing Boing. net is a truly wonderful site with lots of strange things on it like collapsible paper rocket ships and other oddities. Cory Doctorow, the science fiction writer, is the main editor and poster for the site.

I also took some time to go back through search engine watch and find some more places to apply for a URL entry. These were MSN Live, Search King, and Best of the Web Blogs. I am not really that much of a technical person. Some places gave me the option of pinging my site to other blog search engines. I must have done it from three different places.

It is really up to the editors to decide whether they like what I wrote. This is a really unpredictable thing in my opinion. A lot of writers and editors are really quirky and interesting people. Every editor is looking for slightly different things depending on the guidelines which are presented to them by their employers.

Something you may consider if you are planning a book talk is to have an editor talk instead. Authors are very interested in hearing what it takes to get published, or how people choose which books to publish. Sometimes, if you are very lucky, you can get an editor who also has written a number of books.

Science Fiction Art Books. Daily Musings.

One of the things which I do is collect science fiction art books. I really enjoy having them. I do not have a huge amount of books in my house. I try and limit myself to books which are either valuable and special, or immediately useful. It is always easy to find books or bring books home when you work in a library. In most cases it would be bringing my work home with me if I had a lot of popular easy to get books at home. Most of these books are large quarto books.

One book which I am recommending is The Frank Collection A Showcase of the World's Finest Fantastic Art, Jane and Howard Frank, Foreword by John C. Berkey, and Afterword by Don Maitz. What is interesting about this collection is that it is entirely located inside Jane and Howard Frank's house. The book is broken up into sections by location in the house, Horror Hall, Entryway and Grand Staircase, The Dining Room and Its Wall of Fame, The Sword and Sorcery Guestroom, and other places. This makes the book quite entertaining. Imagine having the cover painting for the Reality Dysfunction painted by Jim Burns in your kitchen. Or having a painting by Jim Powers of the cover of The Number of the Beast by Robert Heinlein in your Living Room. It is very fanciful. It covers most of the great science fiction artists. What is even more interesting is that it also includes puppets, sculpture, and science fiction furniture, not just cover art of science fiction books. There is enough art for a small museum in the house as it is portrayed.

Another science fiction art book is Infinite Worlds, The Fantastic Visions of Science Fiction Art by Vincent Di Fate, Foreword by Ray Bradbury. This is an alphabetically organized biographical guide to every major science fiction artist. It includes a brief biographical snapshot of each artist and a few of their pictures. The writer of the book, Vincent Di Fate is one of the premiere science fiction artists. It includes people like Chesley Bonestell, Frank R. Paul, Reynold Brown who did mainly lobby cards for films, Wayne Barlow and Virgil Finlay. This book is very nice to look at. There are pulp covers, book covers, and internal art from a variety of science fiction themes.

It is rather interesting. I could not find the Vincent Di Fate book on Powell's which usually has most things. It is hard to find this kind of material. Also when I put in the Frank Collection, Frank Cho, the cartoonist, was added to the list.

I went to a customer service seminar at work this morning. It was to put it mildly, a dud. On the way back from the meeting, my supervisor picked up a Calendar Book at Border's bookstore.

Sometimes life just gets you down and you need a little pick up. A little maudlin humor sometimes helps. When I need to see how ridiculous the world really is, I take the time to read the Daily Snopes from the Snopes sight. It is well worth a laugh. It is amazing what people are capable of: http://www.snopes.com/daily/index.asp