Showing posts with label Awesome News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Awesome News. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Why We Need Bookish

Book-ish by Sky Sloderbeck
Last night, a service two years in the making launched. The web site, Bookish, is the brainchild of three publishing powerhouses: Hachette Book Group, Penguin Group, and Simon & Schuster. That seems like a lot of big fish with hands in one little fish pie, so to help me remember who is backing this exciting start-up, I'm going to call this powerhouse Simon the hachette-wielding penguin.

The initial buzz on Twitter was positive:




I ran over to Bookish and played with it for a while, and sure enough, Simon the hachette-wielding penguin may have hit on a very good thing here. It's barely a day old, and there's already a great selection of books available, as well as some exclusives like a joint interview with crime fiction author Michael Connelly and suspense author Michael Koryta, an essay from Eat, Pray, Love's author Elizabeth Gilbert, and my favorite, a handful of book reviews courtesy of The Onion.

But what makes Bookish different from Amazon? Or Goodreads? A lot, actually. Amazon may have the lion's share of the market on book sales, but people value convenience, and if readers head to Bookish to look for recommendations, they may buy through Bookish since they're already there. Plus, Amazon isn't exactly known for making it easy (or fun) to find new books to read. Sure there are lists and "Viewed by Others," but those aren't tailored to your current reading style.

At Bookish, you can enter up to four books and get back recommendations on new books you could try. As the web site grows and more books are added, this part of the service will surely get better and more accurate.

And while Bookish may have shelves like Goodreads, the simplicity of those shelves suggests that they are meant as a place to keep track of books you've read so that you don't inadvertently purchase them again. Maybe (I'm hoping) Bookish will eventually use that data to deliver even better recommendations, in the same vein as Netflix: the more you read and rate, the better the recommendations are. But let's give that particular feature time. They are only a day old, after all.

So why do we need Bookish? Instead of thinking of it as a replacement for or competition against Amazon and Goodreads, it might be better to think of Simon the hachette-wielding penguin's digital baby as a tool to use alongside them. With a clean, fast interface, content-rich author pages, and author exclusives, Bookish is a nirvana for readers - a stripped down and beautiful way to find and enjoy books.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Has It Really Been a Year?

Malayan Tiger Airbrush by Sky Sloderbeck
If you look at the post immediately preceding this one ("Correlation and Causation: Regarding Gender Discrimination Claims in Publishing"), you might notice that it's from March 13, 2012. With red-faced embarrassment,  I have to admit that I wasn't as diligent in backing up my blog as I should have been.

What followed was a FUBAR moment with GoDaddy, their demand that I pay an outrageous sum of money to have my data retrieved, and the loss of my two-year-old writing blog. Before my last major site update - which was in 2012 - I backed up my site and so was able to salvage those 20-odd blog posts, but my entire "Life of an Intern" Series (a blog series that shared my experiences as an intern at a publishing company), some writing, and a few craft posts were lost.

And that brings us to the present. I've decided on Blogger because it's a Google product and they have yet to let me down. Plus, for a single mom and full-time college student, the hosting being free is a nice perk.

So if you knew me from my old blog, Literary Crux, welcome back! If you are new, welcome! I hope you join in on the occasional writing exercises and find my posts entertaining and helpful. I look forward to meeting you in the comments!

Why not start now? Leave me a message saying hi and the kinds of writing- and reading-related posts you'd like to see here. I'd love inspiration from my readers!

Oh, and are you wondering about the tiger above? No, it doesn't have anything to do with this post, but I've decided that with a new blog should come a new "feature," if you will. I have been creating a bit of art recently and I'm going to use that art, in addition to my own photography, in my blog posts. It sure saves headaches on copyright issues. I hope you enjoy the new blog and the new art!

Friday, February 17, 2012

You Always Remember Your First Time

Bookish in Color by Sky Sloderbeck
Naughty heads!

You always remember your first time... presenting a piece of your fiction publicly, that is!

From the letter I just received:

"Dear Sky...
Congratulations! We are pleased to inform you that your fiction submission ["This Night"] has been accepted for presentation at the First Annual Oxford Writing Festival."

From the Festival web site:
The Oxford Writing Festival is an opportunity for Miami students, faculty, and members of the Oxford community to create, share, and celebrate writing. This year’s Festival will take place March 26th-29th in the Shriver Center and will include workshops, guest speakers, and selected submissions from the Miami-Oxford Community.

I don't have the specific date and time of my reading yet, as I've just submitted my availability to the organizers, but I will be sure to shout it to the rooftops once I know.

I'm bouncing-like-a-puppy-on-caffeine-excited about this... AND about to hork all over my keyboard from nerves.

The selected entry is actually available on this site, for the curious: "This Night" - a flash fiction piece inspired by the Black Lab song of the same name.