Category: Uncategorized
Your Open Book Promotion Thread
I haven’t had one of these in a while so I figured it was about time for another one. Basically it goes like this: are you an author? If so, then you’re probably looking for new readers for your books. Well, it just so happens that a lot of readers here are looking for good new books. All you have to do is tell them about your book. What it’s all about, why they should read it, what genre, etc. You can have up to three buy links if you want as well but your comments may not be released until noon when I have a chance to check up on things.
There are only two rules:
1. Don’t disparage another author or their books.
2. Have fun!
So go on and promote away!
Look What Just Arrived! (#18)
On Sunday and up until about 8:00pm Monday I was in the city for a business trip. I had some time to myself so I was lucky enough to find both an Indigo store and a used book store so I didn’t entirely blow my budget. Since I didn’t have enough time to read some and I’m exhausted there will obviously be no review today. So let me distract you with pictures of the books I picked up!
- Autumn: Disintegration by David Moody
- Eternal by Cynthia Leitich Smith
- Wake by Lisa McMann
- Fade by Lisa McMann
- Vittorio the Vampire by Anne Rice
- Switched by Amanda Hocking
- Torn by Amanda Hocking
- Ascend by Amanda Hocking
- Heroes: Saviours, Traitors and Supermen by Lucy Hughes-Hallett
- Dust & Decay by Jonathon Maberry
I already read and reviewed the Trylle trilogy by Amanda Hocking but I had to borrow it from a friend. So when I saw the trilogy in the used bookstore I decided to pick it up. They’re sort of a guilty pleasure type of read like Vittorio the Vampire but for a couple of bucks they’re worth it.
Dust & Decay is the sequel to Rot & Ruin, a zombie story by Jonathon Maberry that I thoroughly enjoyed almost a year ago. I’m so glad that I finally found the sequel! In every single bookstore I’ve looked there has only ever been the first book so when I saw the second one I snapped it up.
Most of the others were huge impulse buys because the covers either looked interesting or I’d heard some good things about them in the blogosphere. I’m not an impulsive sort of person but it’s hard to pass up cheap books in a used bookstore when you get the chance. I’m going to be going on a reading binge, so you can probably look forward to some reviews of these books later this month!
Have you read any of these books? If so, how were they? If not, do you see anything that catches your eye?
The Best and Worst of May 2014
May was both a month of sorrow and a month of joy for me. My boss, mentor and role model passed away after his third battle with cancer this month. I’m still grieving for him but things are slowly getting back to normal as I’m trying to move on. Other than that, May was a pretty good month. The weather was so nice that today I finally got the garden in and I broke yet another monthly stats record.
This month I welcomed 51 new followers but also smashed April’s monthly views record, which was 11,905 views. In May I received 13,316 views, which includes 9,771 unique views. I’d say 3 months of breaking my monthly view records is a pretty good trend. But enough of my rambling. What were the most popular articles in May?
1. Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones—A Rebuttal
2. The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome
3. How to Read 100 Pages in an Hour
4. End of Days by Eric Walters
5. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
Meh, nothing new or unexpected here. The only really notable thing was that of my 13,316 views, 8,515 of them were on my Game of Thrones article (or about 64% of my total traffic). That’s up from the 58% of my total views last month! I guess as the season 4 finale draws nearer, more people are searching for Game of Thrones. It’s quite a lucrative thing to write about, statistics-wise.
So what were the worst articles this month?
1. Awful Egyptians by Terry Deary
2. City of Glass by Cassandra Clare
3. Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
4. The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
5. City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare
As with the five best articles of the month, there’s really nothing new or remarkable here. The books are either older books or books that really weren’t that popular to begin with. No, it seems like Game of Thrones reigns supreme online lately. That’s a good thing for people like me who go off on a tangent and defend the both the TV series and the books.
So how was your May? See anything here that surprised you about my statistics? Are you a fellow Game of Thrones fan too?
Discussion: Unadaptable Books
As Hollywood seems to run out of ideas what with all of the reboots and such, they’re turning more and more to books for new material. Some books are easy to imagine as movies, you know. The Return Man by V. M. Zito, for example. Zito’s writing is already quite cinematic and zombies have done pretty well on the big screen in recent years.
However, some books are just not meant to be movies or TV shows whether because the technology to do them justice is not there yet or because it’s too complicated for that medium. One book that comes to mind that would be utterly unadaptable is The Color of Rain by Cori McCarthy. It’s a book that explores some pretty heavy things like sex slavery so you just know that the prudish North American ratings boards would give it an R rating and pretty much doom it at the box office. It also relies heavily on the main character’s inner monologue because without that monologue, she would be an utterly horrible character with almost no redeeming qualities in some spots. Basically, it would just not do well either as a television show or especially a movie.
What books do you think are unadaptable? Are there some that you could easily see turned into movies? Why or why not?
Gotta Hate Summer Colds
Ugh, I’ve been sick for about a week at this point, mostly with a sore throat. (Tonsillitis, again.) But when I woke up this morning with a mild fever I knew my day was going to be fun. *sarcasm*
Needless to say between snoozing on the couch and getting up to check my temperature and blow my nose I didn’t get much done, work-wise or blog-wise. That’s why there was no review of The Sekhmet Bed today. I’m hoping to get both my late review of The Sekhmet Bed and the scheduled The Exiled Queen review up tomorrow, but we’ll see what the day brings. Either way, I should probably be posting tomorrow.