I’ve been dreading this post, but not for the reason that you think. Somewhere, probably back in November, I had gotten the bright idea that I would do this post and find a social media site to replace Twitter for my promotion and news needs. (As a former journalist, I found Twitter very useful. I […]
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2022: The year that advertising stopped working. That’s not true, but it feels true. Conversations at the 20Booksto50K conference were all about the broken ad revenues, and the inability to goose algorithms. BookBub ads don’t seem as effective. Newsletter campaigns aren’t working. And what happened to all the book bloggers? Nothing seemed to get a […]
Continue ReadingI sat down to add something to this list, and realized I hadn’t started it. I had just set my books aside. Whoops. I thought I’d been keeping up all month. Such a surprise. What I sat down to add was a bit about The Best American Essays 2022. I love these volumes, as you […]
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I used to be quite dismissive of the usefulness of the 20Booksto50K conference. Pre-pandemic, 20Books was all about Amazon, Kindle, Kindle Select, and making money on page reads. Great money, for a few folks who learned to manipulate Amazon’s algorithms. Good money, for some who went exclusive to Amazon and manipulated the algorithms. Okay money, […]
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I started this year’s Year in Review blogs with traditional publishing partly because that Department of Justice anti-trust case produced such juicy tidbits that I couldn’t ignore them, and partly because I have always started with traditional publishing. Back in the day, I saw all of us (writers, readers, and publishers) as creatures that emerged […]
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In my Pocket Reader app, I stored a September article from BBC News as much for the article’s title as its content. That title? “When Is A Bestseller Not Necessarily A Bestseller?” I think that’s been the burning question in publishing for the past ten years. Bestsellers haven’t entirely lost their meaning, but they’re not […]
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I started the Holiday Recommended Reading List when I realized that I point out all the great holiday stories in January, after the season has passed. I am always a month behind in reporting what I read. So I wanted you to find the great stories that I’ve enjoyed over the years. I love holiday […]
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This year has been ridiculous. I have no idea why I expected it to be otherwise. I guess there’s a part of me that expected the world to return to normal, even though I’m one of the people who has said since March of 2020 that there would be no normal, at least not what […]
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I spent most of the morning trying to start this post. It’s not like me to have trouble writing, particularly a nonfiction post, but I simply couldn’t do what I had planned. What I had planned was simple: Because of all of the news recently and the timing, I had planned to start the Year […]
Continue ReadingEven more Spanish academic article reading this month, some of which were fascinating, particularly one on proposed changes in the methodology of anthropology. But never fear, I’m not going to recommend any of it. I also (for my sins) had to read The Cherry Orchard by Chekhov for the 100th time. God, I loathe that […]
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