Saturday, February 2, 2008

Blog2Print, Morning Thoughts

Hello, I was looking at various sites last night. I decided I wanted to start posting and looking at sites that are part of the corporate world. Mostly, I have been focused on personal blogs. But, last night, I went ahead and decided I should probably start posting to and looking at "professional" blogs in the publishing and library world. I've always been nervous about this. I am not sure what effect this will have on my site.

I was at Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 Blog and found a couple of interesting things. http://www.jwikert.typepad.com/ . The first thing I noticed were two services that turned blogs into books. The first was http://www.blog2print.com/ a service that for a fixed commission you can turn your blog into a book which people can purchase. It is a very interesting idea. There was also something called http://www.blurb.com/home/1/ which turns your blog into a book for a fee. It sounds kind of interesting, so because I like to experiment, I put blog2print on my website.

I found Joe Wikert's Publishing Blog 2020 by looking at the Really Strategies Blog. Really Strategies was one of the firms which sponsored the Publishers Reception for the Information Industry Summit. http://blog.reallysi.com/ . I often like to hop from recommended site to recommended site. There is a very different feel between corporate sites and personal sites.

Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 Blog reminds me of Kimbooktu http://kimbooktu.wordpress.com/ . Both of the blogs are focused on book technology. Kimbooktu is more focused on physical book technology, but I still feel there are some real similarities between the two blogs.

I also am starting to look at some of the more prestigious blogs. I posted on http://www.blog.oup.com/ for a first time. For a while I was afraid, I might be thought of as ridiculous. But, it was an interesting experience.

One of the few things which professional blogs have an advantage over smaller personal blogs is that they can requst interviews with authors to be included in their sites. I can of course go get some interview from youtube to post on my site, but it is not the same as reading a transcript of an interview on a blog which is supposed to be authentic. It is not that easy for me to get a major author to committ to having an interview put on a small personal blog. There is usually an honorarium requested for this kind of thing. This is one of the few advantages I can see right now for publishing blogs.

This afternoon I returned Debt Is Slavery to my local library. There was nothing which I wanted to check out during this visit. There were a few titles which I had read earlier which might have been interesting, but, I would prefer to write a review from a fresh perspective.

The walk to my branch was pleasant. It was quiet. There were very few cars on the street. The weather was clear, crisp and cold. The only thing of interest was a spindly tree limb wich had fallen on the sidewalk.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi there, the OUPblog is thrilled to have your comments and we hope you will come back often and share your thoughts with us!

Book Calendar said...

Thank you for being so kind. I really do appreciate it.