Privacy And Controversy

Privacy or (The World Wide Web Is not Benevolent)

These are some reasons why I haven't plastered my name all over my blog.

I am very careful about privacy with blogs. Blogs from the beginning when they were first coming out were viewed as a recruiting tool by many companies. I know this because I was a sourcer for a short while seeking people out for recruiters. This is a rather controversial position to be in.

Librarians in human resources positions are rare, but very present. Recruitment research (sourcing) is a unique skill. I got to see many things about finding information on people on the web. Companies do look at what people write on the web. Letting it all hang out is a very bad idea in some cases. A blog is often structured very similarly to a resume.

In some ways, it is more complete because it describes the personality of the writer of the blog. It also often includes content like race, ethnicity, and religion which are not legally acceptable reasons for selecting people in the United States. People don't put this on their resume.

I am not an I disclose person. Darren Rowse who writes Problogger talks about this in his recent book. He acknowledges that he will not talk about his family or private life over the world wide web. This is a very good idea for many people.

It is not just protecting my family which I think is important, but also watching my own identity. Limiting personal information on the world wide web is important. Not putting out credit card information, home addresses, and similar things protects you from identity theft. It also limits recruiter contact if you don't want to be contacted by recruiting agencies. When the recruiter tells you their name is Elvis and won't tell you who they are calling for, it is a good sign to stop being polite.

Also anything which you put on a website is subject to scrutiny or copying. It is very easy to extract information from websites using fairly simple software like websuckers which search out emails, phone numbers, and names. Webmole Targeted Contact Finder 4.1 is an example of this.

There are more advanced tools for extracting information like site rippers which copy a whole site from the internet then break it into pieces where pictures, documents, and various filetypes can be broken down and mapped out. Black Widow Siteripper is a good example of this.

This is one of the reasons spam is so ubiquitous. It is very easy to collect emails by subject on the internet. There is also the constant presence of spyware which is mainly commercial. You may not think of yourself as a valuable commodity, but you are. Your information sells products. I don't like solicitors and I don't like spam. Putting a lot of personal information on blogs invites them in. I have very few spam comments here.

If you leave loose files on the internet, including resumes, excel files, pdfs, and similar things if a searcher knows how to look they will find it. It is important to be tight with some of your information.

The internet is a permanent record in some ways. There are tools like The Wayback Machine which can go fairly far back in the webs history to look at websites. http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

Being a librarian with sourcing experience is fairly controversial. It was interesting while I did it, but not something which I would care to repeat. I find searching for books and buying books more interesting than searching for people. It taught me some interesting if obscure skills that have to do with internet searching.

Also, being a librarian with minor bookstore experience is quite controversial as well. Visiting bookstores and studying the history of publishing is a hobby for me. For example in our library, no librarian where I am currently working is allowed to work with the booksale. There is a retired librarian who works with the friends on the booksale, but she is retired. It is viewed as a conflict of interest between the Friends of the Library and the actual library.

There is a strong underlying ideal of separation between bookstores and libraries that is taught. This is a blog post from Library Juice from a library student. The ideal is freshly imprinted.
http://libraryjuicepress.com/blog/?p=262 . My views about the relationship between bookstores, libraries, and publishing are sometimes controversial.

There are numerous librarians who have experience with bookstores. Many have started their own stores. But, they usually separate completely from the library before they attempt to start a store. Or, they work part-time in a bookstore after they are retired.

It is very easy to claim that someone is stealing from the library if they are selling books. I am not selling books right now. This is true in almost every library I have been in. Theft is a real problem in public libraries.

Oddly, one of the most coveted positions in the library, is the acquisitions position. It is the position which interacts the most with publishers and bookstores. It is a great thing to visit bookstores if you are a librarian; just not to work there.

Morning Thoughts

Interior view of the Jones & Co bookselling premises in Finsbury Square, London.

Morning Thoughts

I have started reading Groundswell Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. So far, it is quite interesting. The book is very concrete. It gives many real life examples of what can happen on the internet.

This morning I was looking at bookstores listed on Wikipedia. There is an interesting short description of the history of the Strand founded by Fred Bass in 1922 on Wikipedia.

Anyways, I am also thinking of my endless internal debate on whether or not to take the Bookselling Institute at the next Book Expo America in 2009 on how to open a retail bookstore. I know that I have no intention of opening a traditional retail bookstore. It is not a profession that rewards one well financially. Being a small bookstore or comic shop owner pays even less than being a librarian. It would probably be an enjoyable lifestyle if you did not get eaten by either the chain bookstores or the very large independent booksellers.

In some ways, I am frighteningly bad at business. I have an entrepreneurial streak. I rather liked working part time at a small bookstore and trading in comic books I found at flea markets and garage sales. I really enjoy this kind of thing. But, alas it is not a paying career. I also like investing in the stock market. A lot of the small bookstores have died in New York because of competition from the internet and the chain bookstores. Actually, this is not quite true, Strand Books ate many of the local chains and small bookstores.

I have looked and pondered on the idea of opening an online bookstore. You actually get more money from a physical bookstore of the same size as an online bookstore. Online bookstores work with economies of scale. You can sell a lot more books online on a website than you can in a physical store, unless your store is gigantic like Powell's or The Strand.

I have thought about how you would combine social networking with books. There could be some very interesting combinations. There are already some like Shelfari and Librarything. I really don't have the connections for this kind of thing right now. I would have to come up with a very interesting and unique combination of services built around collaborative tools.

Right now, I am just amusing myself with these kind of ideas. I had mentioned that I would be interested in working with an attempt at a total media site like Contentville which didn't do too well. Maybe, someone will figure out how to do it right.

Anyways, I am meandering along. If I was truly over the top, I could change this into a social networking site for a small fee. Something like Ning would allow me to do this.
http://www.crunchbase.com/company/ning . I am sure there are already a variety of social networking sites on books. I could point and click my way to a social networking site in a few days if I really wanted. http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/24/9-ways-to-build-your-own-social-network/

Right now, I am just meandering along.

I am still having problems with Entrecard. I still cannot log into Entrecard from my home computer. I have talked to them for three weeks and gotten a completely unsatisfactory response. The technician who helped me kept on giving me suggestions I had already done. Then when I told him I already did it, he tried to tell me that I should try what I had already done in a different way. It definitely makes me want to try a different service.

I can log in elsewhere with no problem. I think what is happening is that when I log in, I get the message you need to go to the login page. So I have to be logged in to log in.

I removed my widget. It was taking up too much time anyways.

Ending Powells List

I have decided to end my Powell's Affiliate List. After four months nobody bought a single book from the affiliate list. I thought that people would choose from both the affiliate list and the embedded amazon images. It turns out that nobody bought anything from the Powell's list. People have bought a few books from the embedded Amazon images. I am going to keep the Powell's search box in case someone wants to buy anything from there.

It was an interesting experiment. I thought that if I put up a sidebar with an alphabetical list of titles, then wrote about each title with an embedded image it would draw sales from both places. I have learned a bit about how people put together blogs to sell various things.

The thing which seems to work best for me is advertising; adsense and project wonderful (I am up to 44 cents with Project Wonderful halfway to a can of soda.) Maybe if I found something more expensive to advertise I would be better off selling a few items. However, I don't think camera equipment and laptops would match with my blog. I'll think about it some more.

I have to ponder some more on what it means to have a blog site with advertising on it. It does not seem to be that effective of a medium for sales. I may try to sell some book and information related gadgets.

I am off today because I am working this Saturday. I was off yesterday because of Presidents Day. This is the benefit of a government job.

I changed my sitecounter to sitemeter from statcounter. Statcounter starts charging for statistics once your site reaches a certain amount of visitors. I am not into paying for things.

Thoughts On Selling Bookish Items Using Widgets...

Hello,
I have been following the dream of making money selling items using widgets. People make all sorts of wild claims. Make a $1000 a day online selling hair cream, make $10,000 a month with megabucks words. I checked my adsense for the first time, I was pleasantly surprised, I had earned 96 cents. I was expecting nothing. So, it is remotely possible after a year or two you could make a hundred dollars to two hundred a month with very high traffic from adsense. At least it is something.

At least adsense guarantees you make something when people look at your site. I have earned nothing from my widgets which attempt to sell things. However, I cannot give up hope. People have actually looked at the widgets. 17 people looked at my widget bucks site for comic books, and 17 people looked at my widgetbucks widget for bestsellers. Maybe, they even went back and supported their local bookstore. That is it. Please support your local bookstore.

They told the local bookstore worker, lets name him Bob.

Customer: "Hi Bob, I saw this wonderful graphic novel on this blog called V for Vendetta could you get it for me."

Bob, "Sure thing, we have it right here, that will be $17 dollars, cash, debit or credit."

Customer, "I have a twenty right here. One second." Customer fishes in his pocket and releases some lint, then pulls out a twenty dollar bill. "Oh and can I have that Harry Potter bookmark."

Bob, "Yes, that will be two dollars more for a total of $19. Here is your change." Bob hands the customer $1.

Customer, "Thankyou."

Bob, "No, thank you for coming by, have a wonderful day."

Customer leaves.


I think five people looked at my audiobooks widget. Also, a number of people looked at the Powells store site, but nobody bought anything. Maybe, they came back later to purchase it, or maybe they went to Amazon to purchase it. Once again, if you can go to Bob, your local hypothetical bookstore owner if you can. Support independent bookstores. They are part of your community and many of them are struggling to survive. I take the time to read the American Booksellers Association website. It is the site for independent booksellers.

I tried to add an ebooks widget today, Ebooks.com, maybe someone will buy an ebook. I am really not sure about this though. Ebooks are the hardest bookstore type item to sell.

The next widget which I added was something called Cafe Press, a free store, which allows you to sell things with a logo you put on them. I put a logo on some items "Book Calender, A Blog About Books" in a hideous yellow on some mugs, a datebook, a few stickers, and other kitschy things.

I now have my widget bookstore, many items you would see in a bookstore in a little corner of a blog. I really don't expect you to buy anything. It is more an experiment than anything else at this point. I will be looking around and listening to the wonderful promises and glitter of monetizing your blog. Maybe, I will even reach the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and earn $20 in commissions by the end of next month. If I do, I'll buy myself a cup of coffee in celebration.

Small Scale Online Bookselling, Romantic Science Fiction

For a while when the science fiction bookstore which I helped at closed in Manhattan, I tried small scale bookselling online. I used the various books I had collected mostly signed and unusual science fiction to make some money on ebay and abe. Things like signed paperbacks by Isaac Asimov, or signed hardcovers by Greg Bear. I would first put the items for sale on ebay, then if they didn't sell, I would put them on ABE-- Advanced Book Exchange, http://www.abebooks.com/ . I never found Alibris another booksale exchange to be very appealing. It was a very interesting experience.

I could create both a backlist and front list of titles doing this. However, I found that finding new books was not that easy, unless I chose to put an ad in the paper and take all comers, or was willing to buy entire estate sales worth of books. At the time, I was in Brooklyn, so I didn't have a car. A lot of New Yorkers don't drive.

I learned that bookselling really is very much a labor of love. There is not a huge amount of money in it, unless you sell very high quality rare books, or can sell in very large volumes like the Strand bookstore in Manhattan, or Amazon online.

For me unless the book was very valuable, at least $25 for a book, and ideally abve $50 it seemed like a tremendous effort for very little return. With used books, you have to list every book separately, they don't tend to repeat themselves, unlike new books where you can set up one listing and sell them repeatedly. It requires meticulous care and the promise of quality customer service to very picky customers.

I spent quite a bit of time learning to pack and ship the books. This is really important, surprisingly, it is one of the few things that differentiates online used booksellers is their shipping.

Bookselling online is incredibly easy to get into, almost too easy. I think it is one of the factors that drove many of the used bookstores out of business. It was no longer necessary for the pickers, the people who went out to library booksales, church sales, thrift shops and other places to get old books to bring them in to the bookstore, they could just sell them themselves. This created an incredibly competitive environment. Most of the pickers I've met are older people looking to supplement their income with a hobby.

When you can go to something like the http://www.ioba.org/ -- The Independent Online Booksellers Associations and learn all the basics for free, or http://www.bibliomania.net/ it becomes much too easy to enter the field.

Also, it increases theft from bookstores and libraries. Suddenly, there is a very easy way for people to sell material that is stolen. They can take it and put it online. Please don't buy books with library markings online or from used bookstores, the item you are buying could be stolen. Ask about the stores policy about library books. If they are honest, they will tell you "We don't sell books with library markings." This is a really important policy.

It is amazing the variety and kind of library thieves there are. One of the most common refrains we here is, "I paid my taxes for these books, I should be able to take these books home and keep them."

The concept of returning or borrowing books is unacceptable to many people. We have to keep all the windows locked where we work, or they will go out the window. People mangle the books so they can take them home. Videos and dvds are even harder to keep from being stolen. The most common sign of a book thief is a combination of razor blades and string... No library is immune from this kind of behavior. There are stories of people going around to various libraries around the country and filling whole houses full of stolen books. I've read about this multiple times. This is a nice little article on map thievery, almost as common as book thievery.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2209582,00.html

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Romance books are one of the most read type of books on the market. They account for most of the paperbacks that get printed. Something that is important to know is that mostly women read novels.

A good source for information and reviews on romance books is http://www.romantictimes.com/

One of my favorite cross genre writers is Elizabeth Lowell http://www.elizabethlowell.com/ She writes romantic suspense, historical romances, romances, mysteries, science fiction, and even has a screenplay. She is a best selling author. She wrote one of my favorite books, a science fiction romance called Name of A Shadow which was nominated for the Hugo Award.

Another science fiction writer who wrote a classic romantic science fiction book is Tanith Lee,

The Silver Metal Lover. This was followed up by Metallic Love, a story of near perfect robots who are used as entertainers and escorts who escape their designers in the end.

I am adding Romantic Times to the list of places for book reviews.

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I added a bestselling book widget and a comic book widget from widget bucks. I have also been posting on bumpzee.com and fuelmyblog.com to generate some more interest. The bumpzee widget is very large and cumbersome, I think. If they had something smaller, I might add it to my site.

It is rather interesting who is searching for and looking at my web site. There were two sites which I found rather interesting. One was Plaxo, an online address book site, and another was Zuula, a new metasearch engine.

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I looked through the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2007 and chose two of them to put on hold. The first is Ha Jin A Free Life, the second is Pierre Bayard How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read -- a truly wonderful title. I do not read every book I reserve. I usually examine the first two chapters, the cover, and the blurb to see if I want to read the book. Not everything is worth reading.