by Helen Gregg A growing social networking site focusing on books, movies, video games, television shows, and music launched its iPhone app yesterday, reported eBookNewser. The site, called GetGlue, allows users to ‘check-in’ (ala FourSquare) with what they’re currently watching, reading, playing, or listening to. And similarly to FourSquare, users receive stickers that reflect their interests, and are occasionally eligible …
Mister Splashypants Goes to Washington
By Erin L. Cox Okay, this story has nothing to do with Mister Splashypants directly, but it brings up a lot of questions that arose in an earlier post I wrote about Alexis Ohanian’s speech at TED about Greenpeace’s “Name the Whale” campaign and how, once you let things out online, it is near-impossible to try to control them…and sometimes that’s okay. …
Ten Tips to Be Awesome Online (and Other Lessons from O’Reilly’s Web 2.0)
By Hannah Johnson Last week, Internet gurus and techies gathered in San Francisco for the Web 2.0 Expo, co-produced by TechWeb and O’Reilly Conferences, to show off their social media savvy, present their new startups, and to learn about the latest thinking in Internet culture. Web 2.0 explores the nitty-gritty of owning and running a Web site, managing a social …
Win a Virtual Gold Medal for Learning English
By Siobhan O’Leary Foreign language dictionary publisher Langenscheidt is testing out the social media waters by offering a new free Facebook language course application. Those who sign up for the Englisch in 5 Minuten app will receive new lessons every two days which can be downloaded as PDFs and also include an audio component. The reward for finishing? A virtual …
Are Book Tours Worth the Money and Effort?
By Erin L. Cox Today, on The Los Angeles Times book publishing blog, “Jacket Copy,” they published a story called “Book Tour? More Like a Safari” about the joint book-tour of authors and couple, Bill Cotter and Annie La Ganga. While their respective publishers chose not to pay for a formal author tour, the two took to the road and traveled …
The Book That Almost Never Was: ‘100 Stories for Haiti’
By Greg McQueen AARTHUS, DENMARK: The book 100 Stories for Haiti — a forthcoming charity anthology with proceeds going for Haitian earthquake relief — wouldn’t have been possible five years ago. As it happened, I posted an appeal for stories on the morning of Tuesday, January, 19. Just one week after the earthquake that left over 200,000 dead. The final …
Facing Off with Facebook
Editorial by Debra Ollivier If you’re a published author or soon-to-be-published author, chances are you’ll get something like the 63-page document I got from my publisher before my recent book was launched. It’s called “Internet Advice for Authors: Getting Started, Getting Online, and Getting Noticed,” and starts with the almost quaint question: “What is Online Marketing?” Every author is expected …
German Buch News: Small Pubs on Facebook; Interactive Kid’s Books
By Siobhan O’Leary German publishers are setting up their own Facebook fan pages in increasing numbers, but size doesn’t seem to matter when it comes to attracting the most fans on the world’s largest social network. According to BuchMarkt, small independent publishers have the most success in attracting followers. The first through third ranks are held by Echtzeit Verlag, Residenz …
Social Media Gurus Advise “Listen First, Sell Second”
By Edward Nawotka NEW YORK: “When you search for something on Google, 95% of the time it returns the same results for everybody,” said Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business, due from Wiley in the United States in August. “Now, imagine what would happen if you searched for information among …