Daily Thoughts 12/20/2009

Exterior view of the Jones & Co bookselling premises in Finsbury Square, London, which were known as "The Temple of the Muses", Published Nov. 15, 1828, Jones & Co. Temple of the Muses, Finsbury Square, London

Daily Thoughts 12/20/2009

I happen to enjoy reading some of Cory Doctorow's books. My favorites are the ones on copyright. He is very good at creating polemics which makes his speaking entertaining. The title really says it all How To Destroy the Book by Cory Doctorow. http://thevarsity.ca/articles/23855

I have been looking at my Google Webmaster Tools to see who is following me. Pop Goes the Library followed the mention of their book into my laundromat readings. I was at the laundromat today. I am there every Sunday. This is the second or third time I have been followed to the laundromat by blogs in my readings. http://www.popgoesthelibrary.com/popbook/?p=164#respond

I also found another interesting blog which is following me, Tales of a Literary Nobody, http://literarynobody.com/

Finally, I am still being picked up by the Book Carnival blog. I really should submit some more of my reviews to them. Their readership has grown considerably. http://bookcarnival.wordpress.com/

Makers by Cory Doctorow

Makers by Cory Doctorow

This is the kind of book which will keep you up reading until you are done. It is a story of technology, creativity, and intrigue. The story is focused on digital fabricators and three dimensional printers. It describes many things which are coming very soon.

You could call this near future science fiction, but it includes a lot of things which are normally left out of science fiction stories. There are homless people, street scenes, strong sex scenes, and descriptions of every day life. This makes the story easy to relate to.

The social commentary in this story is biting. We learn what happens to fat Americans and what the future might look like if goth culture becomes mainstream. It also feeds into a diverse setting which spreads from New York to Florida to Russia.

We get a very complete picture of how a future technology revolution might occur. It is not just the story of the inventors, there are also business characters, and reporters to flesh out the story and make it more believable. Cory Doctorow is very much a participant in current issues in technological change.

Makers feels like it took from Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom an earlier book by Cory Doctorow. Disney World plays a prominent role in this book, both as something glorified and vilified. Disney adds to the wildly inventive behavior as well as the themes of exploitation and conflict.

This is a book worth reading. It is a long book, 416 pages long. It is also the kind of book where you might want to block out a couple of days to sit down and read it one sitting. This matches the fast pace of the writing.

Daily Thoughts 11/26/2009

"A Thanksgiving Tour". 1907 editorial cartoon for Thanksgiving holiday from the Daily Picayune newspaper of New Orleans. A turkey is depicted driving an automobile through a fence labeled "Financial Flurry"; a road sign says "To Prosperity". Reference is to the Panic of 1907, with hopes that prosperity is ahead.

Daily Thoughts 11/26/2009

I finished reading Makers by Cory Doctorow. It is the kind of book which you don't want to put down. I'll probably review it tomorrow. Today is Thanksgiving.

I'm having some problems with malware, so I can't spend too much time on the computer. I spent some time this morning speaking to my internet service provider.

I started reading The Elements of Expression by Arthur Plotnik. I am also watching some more of Cowboy Bebop. It is a quiet day.

Daily Thoughts 11/25/2009

Vincent Van Gogh, The Night Cafe, 1888

Daily Thoughts 11/25/2009

I am almost done reading Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars. Right now, I am reading about the history of technology and copyright. It starts with movies, then moves to videos starting with betamax, then dvds, and finally I am reading about the internet and movies. This of course touches on the subject of DRM (Digital Rights Management) and the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act). It is quite interesting and very relevant. It speaks directly to the issue of innovation and copyright.

I just finished the book. The last chapter is on innovation in relation to copyright. William Patry makes an argument that copyright often prevents innovation and limits the adoption of new technologies. I found his observations about how Japan and South Korea have become the world leaders in broadband adaptation to be enlightening. This is a very good book.

I received another suggestion for conferences that crossover between librarianship and publishing. The International Conference of the Book is another one: http://2009.booksandpublishing.com/

Daily Thoughts 11/24/2009

Book talks, 12:15 to 12:45 : noon hour, every Thursday Nov. thru Apr.
Work Projects Administration Poster Collection (Library of Congress).

Daily Thoughts 11/24/2009

I am still reading Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars by William Patry. Currently, the book is focused on copyright as a form of property. It describes the issue of whether copyright is a natural right or is a created social phenomenon that is governed as a commodity. There is quite a bit on the congers or early book trade groups in England. This is an entry from Wikipedia. I am not saying that it is 100% correct, it is interesting though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conger_(syndicate)

I also watched some more of Cowboy Bebop, the anime series which is turning out to be quite entertaining. I like the data dog, a Welsh Corgi named Ein, it is my favorite character.

I took a short break from reading Moral Panics and The Copyright Wars and started reading Makers by Cory Doctorow. This is a science fiction novel about the near future. It hits the dot com and high tech world like a nail on the head. It is about a new technology revolution that is coming in the near future, fabbers, or three dimensional printers capable of working with metals, plastics, composites, and other materials combined with robotics and microchips in machine shop settings. The ability to custom make almost anything up to the size of a refrigerator in a small factory.

I found this on linked in. It is two more conferences focusing on the space between libraries and publishers. Timothy Dickey mentioned it in the ALA group. There is a very fine annual conference of librarians, publishers, and vendors in Charleston, SC (just completed for this year): http://katina.info/conference/

Also, OCLC has begun to host an annual symposium to explore metadata needs between librarians and publishers: http://www.oclc.org/publisher-symposium/

Daily Thoughts 9/17/2009

Rudyard Kipling "With The Daily Mail", 1905

Daily Thoughts 9/17/2009

Google is going to sell the public domain books which it has on google booksearch for $8 each. They are doing this in part with the Espresso Book Machine which is a print on demand device which can print a trade paperback in five minutes. I have seen this more than once at conferences. It can print in full color and the paperback is for the most part indistinguishable from a paperback you might buy in a bookstore. It is kind of fun watching the book being printed. The only waste is a few tiny scraps of paper. The machine at the convention I saw had a clear plastic case so you could look inside while the book was being printed. Google is going to give away the proceeds to charity. Still, they will make money on people using the search engine indirectly through advertising.
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090917/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_google_book_publishing

I don't know why this is. Sometimes when you feel the most dry, is when you seem to have the most to say. Cory Doctorow has another article on selling books online. It is a little bit of history of his writing and how he was one of the first people to release books as creative commons. Plus he is one of my favorite writers. I am in an odd mood. This is a link from Locus Magazine. I did something unusual today. I did not read any books at all. It is a first in a while. I also did not read any books yesterday. This is a long dry spell for me. I am a bit information obsessed. Anyways here is a link to the article.
http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2009/09/cory-doctorow-special-pleading.html

Daily Thoughts 9/12/2009

Adonias Filho , Jorge Amado, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, found on Wikimedia listed as public domain.

Daily Thoughts 9/12/2009

I am looking forward to the new Cory Doctorow science fiction novel called Makers coming out in October. Sometimes, I don't list everything which I am reading.

Today was a slow day. I did some more weeding. I also started reading Free, The Future of A Radical Price by Chris Andersen. Chris Andersen is the editor in chief of Wired magazine which I find enjoyable to read sometimes. http://www.wired.com/

Daily Thoughts 5/13/2009

Family Reading, Ehon, c1830

Daily Thoughts 5/13/2009

It is confirmed I am going to Book Expo America on May 29, 2009. I really look forward to it. Yes, really really. http://www.bookexpoamerica.com/

We discussed reference resources today. I also started shifting the 700s to create space. I had the young adult library aide help with the shifting of books. Today was another busy day.

I am reading Got Game How The Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever by John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade, Harvard Business School Press. This book is a reminder that people in their twenties and thirties grew up in a world where there were video games their whole lives. More people have video game consoles in their homes than computers. I like to think of social networks as a kind of business simulation game for adults. If you go to ALA Connect, the largest public group in their website is Gamers. I sometimes think teenagers are spending more time playing video games than reading.

Many video games in Japan are what are called "visual novels", a kind of choose your own adventure style game with text, anime style graphics, music, puzzles, and other content. This is an example from Hanako Games called Fatal Hearts . http://www.hanakogames.com/fatal.shtml

Web Bits

I enjoy reading Cory Doctorow's columns from Locus Magazine. http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2009/05/cory-doctorow-extreme-geek.html

O'Reilly Tools of Change For Publishing (Part 2)

I just found this image interesting and did not know what to make of it.

O'Reilly Tools of Change For Publishing (Part 2)

The second part of the conference I attended was a talk by Francois Gossieaux called Building Community Around Content The Tribalization of Business. The title of the conference session reminded me of Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe. Cory Doctorow was at the session sitting not far from me which was rather interesting and in a way perplexing.

This session was about getting people involved in content. It was essentially about creating community online. We were told to break up into different groups, five groups of publishers, one group of magazine publishers, and one group of other people. I guess I am an other person belonging to a unique tribe. The group I was with was very interesting, there was a writer from Galleycat, a person from Writer's Mama, an Australian writer, a newspaper person from the Boston Globe, someone from Moody's Analytics, R.R. Bowker, and a Technology Editor from School Library Journal.

The session was about monetizing communities, but I don't think I really learned much about making money from online communities. The focus was that you should focus on the social aspects of community and the money would follow.

Francois Gossieaux delivered a variety of maxims in his French accent. It had a pleasant ring to it. The more content you have the more users you will have. The more users you will have the more content you will have. The better you match content and members together, the more users you will get. If it is easy to do more transactions you will get more people. Get people seems to be the mantra of the day.

Of course because this was a business oriented session everything had to be broken down into numbers. You should have metrics to check how many people are using your site, how many people are viewing your site, and where they are coming from. I use Sitemeter on my blog to do this.

The numbers also showed people were not spending much money on blogs. 58% of companies spent less than $50,000 per year on their blogs. I spend nothing on building this site except my time. Still this was rather surprising.

For the majority of companies, they have 34% (a single parti-timer) or 17% 1 person working on a blog. This means 51% of companies only have one person working on their blog. Not too promising if you are seeking a job as a blogger. I am not.

There were wonderful promises about what would happen if you started a blog for your business. I did not find it that fascinating. I did find the idea that 50% of people want to be able to use their cell phone to find information interesting. I am not that fond of cell phones, however the Iphone looks intriguing because of Brightkite and the Stanza reader software. The prospect of tiny text is intriguing.

More than anything they reminded us that content is what matters, not technology. "Content Is King!" A beautiful site does not matter that much either. Having gripping content and interesting people is what people want when they visit a social networking site.

We spent some time discussing online communities in our group. I learned of a bunch of different social networking sites for literature, Authonomy, Arxiv, litminds, booksprouts and others. This was pretty interesting. I find literature social networking sites very interesting.

The most interesting reminder I got was from Cory Doctorow, social networks grow and die. There is a life cycle for social networks. Of course I am in denial and this blog will be immortal. If your site dies as a small independent site it is gone forever. However, if you are part of a giant site like blogspot, facebook, or blogcatalog, you can just start it over and try again.

The session was interesting and informative. I got to perplex one of my favorite writers so it must have been good. Cory Doctorow makes me think.

Good Morning, Good Afternoon

Poster for the "War of Wealth" by Charles Turner Dazey, a play that opened February 10, 1896. Reminds me a bit of what is happening now. We never learn.

Good Morning.

A link to the Obama read poster. I wish they had these posters available through the American Library Association. Posters of both McCain and Obama would be a nice boost.
http://newpagesblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/obama-reads.html

A. Lee Martinez has a new paperback of The Nameless Witch. I am looking forward to reading it. Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now is available for free as a web download here. You Can also purchase it in print if you want. It should be fun to read. http://www.archive.org/details/CoryDoctorowsFuturisticTalesOfTheHereAndNow

Good Afternoon

If you feel like wasting a bit of time on a game, Soldak is running an open beta for Kivi's world. It is a 40 megabyte download. If you like the game Diablo, you will probably like this.

http://www.soldak.com/Kivis-Underworld/Demo.html

I am sitting in the library right now, having looked at diet and exercise books. The thought scares me, but I have to do it. I walked up to the library today. I am finally getting over a week and a half of acute bronchitis. My doctor told me lose weight and start exercising or else I am in serious trouble. I don't know if I will get a pair of light weights and do high repetition exercises every day, or simply walk a lot more to start.

I picked up another superhero anthology of short stories, The Darker Mask Heros From The Shadows, Edited by Gary Phillips and Christopher Chambers. It has stories by Tannarive Due, Steven Barnes, Jerry Rodriguez, and others. Tannarive Due and and Steven Barnes are African Amerucan authors. It should be an interesting anthology to read.

Right now, I am reading E. E. Knight, Valentines's Exile A Novel of The Vampire Earth. It is your typical the good guys are the underdogs fighting off the evil extradimensional vampire hordes. At this point our hero, Valentine is fighting the evil Kurians on the border of the Texas Republic. It is an entertaining slightly ridiculous romp.

It remained an entertaining slightly ridiculous romp throughout the novel to the point where it became something unexceptional. It is the kind of book which is there if you want some very light reading. I did not find that it is a book worth reviewing. The concepts of vampires who treat humanity like cattle is not a new one. If you want a story along these lines you are better off reading the Vampire Hunt D novels by Hideyuki Kikuchi.

Good Afternoon, Good Evening

One of the best possible uses of a dollar bill. A dead president becomes an elephant.

Good Afternoon

This morning, I spent a little time working on my post on the concept of a turbine future. I just felt compelled to write something a little different.

I had my coffee this morning, so I am feeling pretty good. I spent an hour and a half weeding the social sciences books, then I spent another hour and a half going over social science titles to buy.

As usual, I found something interesting to order, The First Billion Is The Hardest, Reflections On A Life of Comebacks and America's Energy Future by T. Boone Pickens. This book is supposed to have a complete description of his energy plan and investments in alternative energy. If this is true, it would be an interesting opportunity for exploring some green investments.

I got a few minutes to look at the new books which came in. I put a few books on display, and put aside two items to read, Impact, How To Get Noticed, Motivate Millions, and Make a Difference in a Noisy World by Ken McArthur and Rebel Visions The Underground Comix Revolution 1963-1975 by Patrick Rosenkrantz. This book is published by Fantagraphics which is my favorite of the alternative comic book publishers. Fantagraphics publishes The Comics Journal. This book is definitely for adults. It has mature content. The book lists a lot of very interesting comics artists, Bill Griffith, R. Crumb, Vaughn Bode, Richard Corben, Kim Deitch, Denis Kitchen, Dan O'Neill, Art Spiegelman, Trina Robbins, and many others.

This morning, I also spent some more time reading Groundswell. It is describing how to put together message boards, blogs, and community sites for corporations. It even gives some guidelines on how to choose which type of social networking tool for a company. I think I will finish reading it on the train home tonight.

Now, that I am not clicking away at Entrecard, I got a chance to look at some book sites.

This is a rather interesting article from Library Journal. http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6592086.html?desc=topstory

It is absolutely true in my experience that we cannot provide enough computers with internet access at our library. From the moment we open to the moment we close there are people waiting to use computers to get internet access. We expand the internet access and more people come to use the computers. People get an hour to use the internet per day. At my local library, there is usually a waiting list for the computers as well. I usually have to wait for half an hour to a full hour to get the computers.

Like many of the people waiting for the computers at the library I work at, I am looking for some light reading while I wait. Many people read graphic novels (comic books), magazines, or the newspapers while they are waiting for their turn. I usually read graphic novels while I am waiting if I go to my local library.

I was looking at Locus magazine and saw an interesting book which I want to get for the library (as well as for my own reading) Cory Doctorow, Content: Selected Essays On Technology, Creativity, Copyright and the Future of the Future. Cory Doctorow is a fairly important figure in the history of intellectual freedom on the internet. This is a brief bio from his site.

http://craphound.com/bio.php

Thoughts for Today

Hello,
Good afternoon to you all. I am a bit lethargic today. I have been so for the last few days. I took a look through a variety of websites. There were a few interesting articles which I saw while looking around the web.

The first is an article by Cory Doctorow, Put Not Your Faith in Ebooks. I found it quite entertaining. He correctly says that we should not put too much faith in ebooks being any more than a niche. Even regular books are increasingly becoming a niche products with many Americans not reading as much. http://www.locusmag.com/Features/2008/03/cory-doctorow-put-not-your-faith-in.html

I also was reading Library Journal online. They have an article about downgrading librarians pay. I think many things which are being said in the article are correct. However, I think the profession needs to take a good hard look at how it is being managed lately. There are a lot of problems. http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6538702.html

I could not imagine being in their position. It would be quite hard.

I also took a bit of time to look at places to find books. I put Elizabeth Moon's new book on hold Victory Conditions. It is the fifth book in the series.

I have a bunch of new items to pick up. I will write about them later in the day.

Acacia Book One The War With the Mein by David Durham, Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out by Mo Yan, Blogging For Dummies, 2nd Edition by Susannah Gardner and Shane Birley, and Clear Blogging by Bob Walsh have come in for me to read. I am not sure which book I will start on.

There are not a whole lot of books available about blogging at the library. Blogging For Dummies seems to be the book which most libraries have. Some people hate the title of the For Dummies series and refuse to read the series. They don't like being called dummies or even better Complete Idiots, another series. Most people don't seem to mind the title, however.

I tried reading Blogging for Dummies on the train. I found it to be a little dry. It had all the things which you needed to know to start blogging, but it was not very entertaining. It was essentially a beginning technical manual for blogging. After a bit of time, I put it back in my bag. I am going to return it tomorrow. In contrast, after reading the first chapter of Clear Blogging, I found it very entertaining. It even had an interesting interview in the first chapter. I will continue reading it on my train ride in from work.

I did, however, learn a new term, evergreening. This is taking old articles that are generic like about your neighbors car, or your dog spot, or the history of pet rocks and putting them in your blog if you can't think of anything new to write. I promise that I won't do this. I am not particularly good at being generic; I don't have a dog spot, I don't like pet rocks or chia pets, and I try to write something new every day.

I imagine many of the big news agencies have filing cabinets full of these old articles kept in an abandoned missile silo in Kansas left over from the cold war. Whenever they need filler they call up a guy named Bob and he sends them an appropriately heartwarming article for the day.

How to: Be an uber blogger, by Cory

An interesting talk about how to promote your blog by Cory Doctorow, Editor of Boing Boing and Science Fiction writer.

Authors@Google: Cory Doctorow

Readings In General, A Free Life

I wanted to try putting an author reading into my blog. This is my first time doing this. Neil Gaiman is a fantastic author. You should enjoy this quite a bit. At least one person who has visited has expressed an interest in Neil Gaiman.

Neil Gaiman is a prolific author. He has written for Comics-- The Sandman and Swamp Thing, Movies: Beowulf and Stardust, the english language script for Princess Mononoke, numerous adult novels: American Gods, Neverwhere, Anansi Boys, and many others, young adult novels: Coraline, The Wolves in the Walls, as well as many short story collections.

I see a lot of people using youtube in their blogs. This is my first attempt at this.

Author readings are a really fantastic experience. I used to go to quite a lot of them. One of the things which I would do is go to the Strand bookstore and buy a few reviewer copies to get them signed. Or, I would try and find copies at a discount. A rule of thumb is that a book usually retains at least the value of its cover price if it is signed by an author or editor.

When you get a book signed, it is also a good idea to keep the ephemera that went with the book signing. Try and keep the flyer, or calendar that went with the signing. This shows that you saw the author and makes the signed book appear more authentic. Very few booksellers do this. If you are selling a book on one of the online services, scanning the flyer can make a lot of difference.

Hearing and seeing an author speak is very different from reading their book. You get a better feeling of how the characters are with their different voices. Plus, quite often the authors will surprise you by reading from a forthcoming piece not yet printed.

If you are a bookstore or library and doing regular signings, get an autograph book so you can have all the authors that visited sign the book as a permanent record of who visited. This can be both very valuable and very entertaining. It is fun to look at the different signatures. Sometimes authors will doodle in the book if it is large enough.

Quite often readings are not at bookstores, cultural centers often have readings. I used to go to Dixon Place in Manhattan where they had a regular science fiction series. Also, the 92nd Street Y hosts readings. I saw Octavia Butler speak there.

Libraries quite often host readings as well. It takes a decent amount of preparation to do them. You generally have to call at least three months in advance. Then you have to prepare flyers and press releases for the local papers. Most authors require an honorarium and travel expenses to get to the library. Because, we are in New York, we don't usually have to pay for hotels. Generally, it is not that hard to do a reading event. You just need a microphone, a large well lighted space to read, plenty of seating, and some light refreshments. Most of the time the author requests a bottle or glass of water. Reading is thirsty work.

It is often quite interesting to host an editor and author talk combined. This allows one person to talk about the process of writing, while the other talks about the process of correcting, selecting, and providing the finished product in writing. Usually multi-author and editor talks happen at conventions. Baen Books had a talk about science fiction in libraries at the last Book Expo America in New York City. Toni Weisskopf, the chief editor of Baen, and David Weber a major science fiction writer were both on the panel which made it quite interesting.

____________________________________________________________________________________

The ending of A Free Life by Ha Jin is truly wonderful. The epilogue consists of several poems by Nan the main character, as well as a few poetry journal entries. I especially like the poems, The Drake, and Groundhog Hour. The book continues in an interesting manner. Nan runs his restaurant with his wife PingPing and his sun TaoTao until his wife collapses and they have to sell the restaurant. Oddly enough getting rid of the restaurant makes the families life much more fulfilling, going back to work at a motel allows Nan to focus on his poetry. It is a wonderful statement about how chasing the American Dream can submerge your personal dreams. During the novel, Nan spends time with his American Friend Dick focusing on poetry and art when he is not at the restaurant. There is a lot of insight about the meaning of art and writing in this book.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

I put in three videos from Youtube to see how they would work. One is of Neil Gaimn, the other two are of Cory Doctorow. Both of these people are excellent writers. People seem to appreciate the videos. I think it is interesting to watch writers read or talk about their material on the internet.

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.

A Few Free Ebooks And How The Site Began

I happen to like ebooks, especially free ebooks. I use them to find out what an authors writing is like, then I get the printed book. There is nothing quite like the feel of paper. However, reading a book on the screen will do just fine for me as well. I think most people have it wrong when they say that ebooks are too easy to pirate. I think they are an excellent way to promote an author. I am even going to list a few ebooks which you can get for free. I think Both Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow are very entertaining writers.

Charles Stross Accelerando
http://www.accelerando.org/book/

Charles Stross Missile Gap

http://subterraneanpress.com/index.php/magazine/spring2007/fiction-missile-gap-by-charles-stross/

Cory Doctorow Down and Out In The Magic Kingdom
http://craphound.com/down/download.php

Cory Doctorow's Statement on Ebooks
http://craphound.com/ebooksneitherenorbooks.txt

In addition to these free ebooks, there is of course, The Baen Free Library which opens with an excellent essay on ebooks, free books, and piracy on the internet. I happen to agree with it. Plus they have a really good list of free science fiction titles.

Baen Free Library
http://www.baen.com/library/

Here is a bit on how this blog started. I started on a thread under the moniker, "I'll Steal Your Toast" on the Spiderweb Software message boards in the General Section. I asked Jeff Vogel if I could extract the listings of what I had read from the message board and use them to make a blog. He said that if it was my own writing, and not directly related to their game, Avernum, I could do it. I really appreciate his kindness. I also appreciate his games, especially Geneforge.

This is the thread:
http://www.ironycentral.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=003673

I also have been working on getting people to read what I have been writing on this thread. Last night, I submitted this blog to a free submission engine, Addme.com, because it had a very limited amount of directories which it would add for free. I was following the advice which I read on searchenginewatch.com forums , which says, initially only add your site to a few directories, then selectively expand your presence. If you add a site to too many directories initially it will be marked as spam by Google and Yahoo and will not get listed there.

Last night, I also checked where people were coming to to this blog. There were two major sites which people were visiting from, RPGcodex, and Basilisk Games which is both interesting and appreciated. Also a few people visited from RPG watch.

There is an interesting mix of nationalities coming to the site. The majority of the visitors are from the United States, Germany, Sweden, Canada, and Austria. People from Australia, Romania, Slovenia, Poland, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Great Britain, and the Netherlands have visited as well.

I am going to start adding images in the public domain to my posts occassionally. This one is from Audrey Beardsley.