The Quills: Winners!

For those of you who do not care enough about books to know what the Quills were, shame on you! I'll explain anyway: the Quills are the People's Choice Awards of publishing. Librarians and book experts picked out examples of what they thought were the best, and John Q Public got to vote online. There's some worry about whether or not anyone really voted, but that's beside the point....

...because there are WINNERS! Oh, and after you read that link -- view ALL THE WINNERS, NEWSWORTHY OR NO! If you looked at what books John Q Public has been talking about lately by scanning the news, you'd probably see the names JK Rowling, Jon Stewart, Freakonomics, and Bob Dylan over and over again, from both advocates and detractors. So, it should be no surprise that they were the big winners -- but at least people are reading. Maybe they'll turn around and pick up a copy of the Debut Author category winner and take a shine to something that didn't make the regular news.

Ride the Blookmobile!

The New Publisher Journal is reporting that the Blookers are open for submissions.

What's a Blook, you ask? It's a book whose content was lifted (or inspired) from a blog. It's sponsored by LuLu, who just happens to be the ideal place for a blogger to convert their blog to book. LuLu, you see, is a free print-on-demand service that anyone with the free OpenOffice or StarOffice can create a PDF file and upload their book to the printer. The Blookers are asking for every possible example of this kind of book (LuLu-printed or not) to be sent to them, so they can choose the best.

Submissions are being accepted until next January, so you will have plenty of time to compile your blog into the world's only novel about the trials and tribulations of living with a gassy, belligerent housecat in Okoboji, IA. That is, until that other beliggerent-Okoboji-cat-blog finds out about the Blookers, too.

LibraryThing - Catalog Your Books

Usefulness? Only moderate. Catalog all your books online -- the first 200 entries are free, and only $10 for life if you've got more books than that. My guess is, if you're the kind of person that would sign up to have all your books cataloged online, you've got more than 200 tomes on your shelves. You're also the kind of person who's so proud of their books that you'll take the time to catalog them online - and more power to you. Deep down, yes, my body years to list every book I own online...but the time is tough to find. Maybe, someday....

Welcome

When you start a blog, you gotta do one of these, right? The first post is always the first one, and you can't really get around it.

Well, my blog is book-centric, since my life is rather book-centric. I'll be writing about the writing other people do, and you'll find that entertaining. End of story.

Textblock out!