From Digiday: Publishers like to talk about their commitment to user experience. But not all users are alike. Like any consumer business, publishers have their high-value customers. They’re the people who visit the site regularly, are registered users and receive email newsletters. They might even be paying subscribers or members. Their reward is a clean, user-friendly … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: It’s a good time to re-examine our relationship with Facebook Inc. In the past month, it has been revealed that Facebook hosted a Russian influence operation which may have reached between 3 million and 20 million people on the social network, and that Facebook could be used to micro-target users with hate speech. It took … Read more
From Buffer: Engagement on Facebook Pages has fallen by 70 percent since the start of 2017, according to BuzzSumo who analyzed over 880 million Facebook posts by brands and publishers. . . . . But we feel there are ways we can combat this organic reach decline on Facebook and we’d love to share some strategies … Read more
From Book Riot: I’ve noticed a trend that I’m not sure I like. Many friends are spending more time on Facebook and less elsewhere on the internet. If they jump out of Facebook it’s because someone shared a promising link. Bookworms have discussed books online since computers were networked in the 1970s. It began with … Read more
From Poynter: Last month, a group of local newsrooms began working with Facebook as part of a project by the social media platform to establish stronger ties to local news. Six newsrooms are part of the first six-month pilot program, with another six to follow. Those newsrooms, Berkleyside, Honolulu Civil Beat, Texas Tribune, QCityMetro, Philadelphia Public School Notebook … Read more
From Seeking Alpha: Amazon is now ramping up its efforts to build out its ad business, which could be one of the most significant threats to Facebook’s and Google’s ad revenue they’ve ever faced. At this time, Amazon doesn’t appear to be much of a competitor to online ad giants Google and Facebook, with Google … Read more
From Wired: Data mining is such a prosaic part of our online lives that it’s hard to sustain consumer interest in it, much less outrage. The modern condition means constantly clicking against our better judgement. We go to bed anxious about the surveillance apparatus lurking just beneath our social media feeds, then wake up to … Read more
From Advertising Age: Facebook hasn’t lost the war against Google for publishers’ content, but it looks like it’s losing one fight. The company said Thursday that it’s created a software extension that lets publishers easily transfer content formatted for its Instant Articles to the No. 1 competition for mobile readers in a hurry, Google AMP. … Read more
From author and TPV regular John Ellsworth: In reflecting further, it becomes clear to me that the possibility of having my book discovered (albeit maybe not purchased) is much higher in terms of permutations on the Facebook platform than on Amazon ads. With Amazon ads I might choose 2000 keywords to bring up my book. … Read more
From AdWeek: Does the end ever justify a means like clickbait? That’s debatable. But a new contender in the discussion is Dallas bookstore The Wild Detectives, which is using what it wryly calls “Litbait” … to trick people into reading classic, copyright-free novels. . . . . Facebook posts featured witty teases like “British guy … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Facebook Inc.’s chances of getting back into China appeared to take a rare turn for the better when an employee noticed an official posting online: Beijing authorities had granted it a license to open a representative office in two office-tower suites in the capital. Such permits typically give Western firms … Read more
From Buffer: There probably isn’t a single best time to share to social media. There’s a long tradition of studies that have attempted to uncover a ‘best time’ to post to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and almost every other social media marketing channel, with each study finding a wide range of results (we’ve even created our … Read more
From Copyright and Technology: It’s fairly well established by now — thanks to court decisions like Viacom v. YouTube and UMG v. Veoh — that online service operators have no legal duty to proactively police their services for potential copyright infringement. But that doesn’t mean that some services don’t do it anyway. The biggest example is Google’s Content ID … Read more
This is an enormously cool use of Facebook to promote The Hunger Games movie. It’s designed to bring fans back over and over. Note that they have over 45,000 likes. Who Will be the Tributes?
A step-by-step tutorial on how to add Tabs and Pages (There is more to life than Home) to your Facebook fan page. Belinda Kroll
From Anne R. Allen’s Blog… with Ruth Harris: We hardly ever write personal stuff here on the blog. I avoid politics and religion in my fiction as well as social media, and I figure nobody needs to hear about my little emotional ups and downs. But a couple of weeks ago, something unpleasant happened I … Read more
From The Economist: Did you know that the wildfires which ravaged Hawaii last summer were started by a secret “weather weapon” being tested by America’s armed forces, and that American ngos were spreading dengue fever in Africa? That Olena Zelenska, Ukraine’s first lady, went on a $1.1m shopping spree on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue? Or that … Read more
From Commonweal: About ten years ago, Sarah Ogilvie, a former editor at the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), had some time on her hands. She was awaiting a visa that would bring her to the United States for a new job. With little else to do, she visited her favorite hangouts in the town of Oxford, soaking up … Read more
From The Guardian: Staff at technology company Meta discussed buying publishing house Simon & Schuster last year in order to procure books to train the company’s artificial intelligence tools, it has been reported. According to recordings of internal meetings shared with the New York Times, managers, lawyers and engineers at Meta met on a near-daily basis between March … Read more
From Women Writers, Women’s Books: I often get asked why I decided to self-publish my books. It all started in the summer of 2019 when I attended the Winchester Writers’ Festival, submitting the first three chapters and a synopsis of my debut novel Leave Well Alone to four literary agents beforehand. It was a busy … Read more
From The Economist: When people ask Michael Moritz, a former journalist and prominent tech investor, what book they should read to understand Silicon Valley, he always recommends two. “They are not about Silicon Valley, but they have everything to do with Silicon Valley,” he says. One is “The Studio” (1969) by John Gregory Dunne, an American … Read more
From Writer Unboxed: A few weeks ago, my publisher put up a post on the company’s private Facebook page. The small press had received a manuscript submission that seemed unusual compared to the hundreds of others they sort through each week. Although the manuscript was remarkably tidy in terms of compliance with grammar and style, … Read more
From Intuit Mailchimp: What are AI writing tools? AI writing software includes various tools that can create content for you. AI writing tools make content based on user input. You can use these tools to create articles, product descriptions, landing pages, blog posts, and more. However, AI software is not meant to take over the … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: The Supreme Court sounded dubious Monday of state laws requiring online platforms such as Facebook and YouTube to publish nearly all user content, although several justices suggested that the ability to remove noxious social-media posts should not mean tech companies are free to block personal communications such as Gmail or … Read more
From The Guardian: Five years ago, there was just one. Now bookshops exclusively stocking romance novels are everywhere – aiming to ‘undo generations of shame’ When Jonlyn Scrogham decided to open a romance novel bookstore last year in Louisville, Kentucky, the 37-year-old had modest expectations. The space she rented was tiny; her annual sales projections … Read more
From The Verge: The European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) has officially gone into effect. Starting on August 25th, 2023, tech giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and more must comply with sweeping legislation that holds online platforms legally accountable for the content posted to them. We’re bringing our European values into the digital world. With … Read more
From Writers in the Storm: Most writers have a love-hate relationship with social media. It’s consistently the best way to promote your author brand and books as well as build an engaged community of readers who love you and your work for little to no cash outlay. For many of us, though, the ever-changing platforms, … Read more
From The Economist: Facebook may be turning 20 on February 4th, but it is just as much of a magnet for controversy and cash today as when it was a brash, break-everything teenager. On January 31st Mark Zuckerberg, the social network’s founder, was harangued by American senators over the spread of harmful material. The next … Read more
From Publishers Weekly: Two leaders of Worldcon Intellectual Property (WIP), the nonprofit that holds the service marks of the World Science Fiction Society, have reportedly stepped down from their posts following accusations of censorship in the voting process for the 2023 Hugo Awards. In a January 30 statement, WIP officials announced that director Dave McCarty … Read more
From Jane Friedman: Let’s say you’re running some Facebook ads and you’re getting lots of clicks, but no sales. This tells Amazon your book isn’t relevant to the search, and that will impact your search rank on Amazon. Really? Yes, really. Amazon’s goal is to serve up things its consumers want to buy; the site … Read more
From Writer Beware: I write a lot about impersonation scams on this blog–for good reason: they are extremely common, and becoming more so all the time. Literary agents, publishers, production companies, film directors: all are targets. The purpose: money, of course. By posing as real, reputable companies and individuals, the scammers aim to make it more likely writers … Read more
Anne R. Allen’s Blog… with Ruth Harris: Talk about self-publishing has diminished in the last few years. Most of the “Kindle Millionaires” that surged onto the scene a decade or so ago have evaporated from indie writing communities. Some of them are, of course, busy writing their next bestseller. But a lot either got traditional … Read more
From The BBC: Niksen – a Dutch wellness trend that means “doing nothing” – has caught the attention of the world as a way to manage stress or recover from burnout. The Hague, where I live, has 11km of gorgeous coastline with rolling dunes and sandy beaches. In summer, I often see locals in Scheveningen … Read more
From The Bookseller: Last week I spoke at a local secondary school about bookselling and running a small business. One of the questions asked was “What’s the hardest part of owning a business?” “Fear of failure,” I said. What I didn’t say was that, at the moment, things are scary. We’ve led a fairly charmed … Read more
From The Book Designer: Contrary to the popular axiom, many in the book community do judge books by their covers. Book covers are the first, and often most lasting impression of a book. Beyond simply conveying the title and author, a well-designed book cover captures the essence of the story, establishes the book’s genre, and … Read more
From ScienceDirect: Abstract While users’ discontinuance of use has posed a challenge for social media in recent years, there is a paucity of knowledge on the relationships between different dimensions of overload and how overload adversely affects users’ social media discontinuance behaviors. To address this knowledge gap, this study employed the stressor–strain–outcome (SSO) framework to … Read more
From Chuck Wendig: So, how are the various social media platforms doing? Are they worth your time as a person, as a writer, as seven possums in a trenchcoat? Given that community and audience are both found and earned through these social networks, I figure it’s worth taking a gander at them again as I’ve … Read more
From The Bookseller: Publishers say most of their social engagement still comes through X, formerly known as Twitter, though they are now actively engaging with alternatives such as Threads, BlueSky and Mastodon. Since business magnate Elon Musk completed his buyout of the networking site in 2022, there have been a number of changes, notably to … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Over the past few years, the social movement known as effective altruism has divided employees and executives at artificial-intelligence companies across Silicon Valley, pitting believers against nonbelievers. The blowup at OpenAI showed its influence—and the triumphant return of chief executive Sam Altman revealed hard limits, capping a bruising year for … Read more
From The Bookseller: Publishers say most of their social engagement still comes through X, formerly known as Twitter, though they are now actively engaging with alternatives such as Threads, BlueSky and Mastodon. Since business magnate Elon Musk completed his buyout of the networking site in 2022, there have been a number of changes, notably … Read more
From Fast Company: You’ll soon see AI in most writing tools. Canva, Notion, Craft, Coda, and other popular writing services have been racing to add new AI features. Google Docs added a new AI-driven summarization feature. Read on for what AI can do for you, where the hype goes too far, and a few recommended … Read more
From Jane Friedman: All hail the newly published author. Or not. A few weeks ago my new book came out, a collection of literary humor essays. You would think given this is my seventh book (from six different publishers), I would be well prepared for this momentous occasion. And in some ways I was. In … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: G. Daniel Brown, a retired teacher in Saginaw, Mich., paid about $100 for a paperback not long ago. That is jaw-dropping considering that the volume, “The Official Preppy Handbook,” was published in 1980, retailed for $3.95 and is now out of print. “It is worth every cent to have this … Read more
From Book Riot: USA Today posted a data visualization of the state of banned books in the country for Banned Books Week. If you’ve been following censorship news, none of it will come as a surprise, but seeing just how much challenges increased from 2019 to 2021 is staggering. . . . . Booksellers in Texas are in … Read more
From Kristine Kathryn Rusch: At the beginning of August, Patreon had what some termed a payment meltdown. Some creators couldn’t access their payments. Banks notified some Patreon backers that their payments were being flagged as fraudulent. Patreon claimed that the problems weren’t one problem; they were two problems. For the creators, the problem was a … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: There comes a moment in every job interview when the applicant will be asked to name his or her greatest weakness. “Well, I’d have to say it’s my perfectionism” is the smart answer, a humblebrag that is pretty short on humility. These days—as Thomas Curran writes in “The Perfection Trap: Embracing the … Read more
From Kristine Kathryn Rusch: So, this week, I settled into the trusty writing chair, reviewed what I had on the Grayson novella…and found myself looking up restaurant menus in search of soup (teeth, remember?). I figured I was just distracted, so I went back…and found myself peering at the weather for the next month. I … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: A group of music publishers representing songwriters from Taylor Swift to Beyoncé is suing Twitter for alleged copyright infringement, arguing that the platform benefits from the use of songs it hasn’t paid for. Twitter users regularly post videos that include popular music, and artists want to be paid when their … Read more
From SCOTUSblog: The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled against the family of a 2017 ISIS attack victim who sought to hold tech companies liable for allowing ISIS to use their platforms in its terrorism efforts. The lawsuit seeking to hold Twitter, Facebook, and Google liable for aiding and abetting international terrorism cannot go forward, a … Read more
From What’s New in Publishing: At a time when publishers are moving past seeing social media platforms as traffic drivers, and even a major publication like BuzzFeed News shut down because of a sharp decrease in Facebook referral traffic, LinkedIn is giving publishers a reason to smile. According to AOP’s latest survey, Digital Publishing: Outlook … Read more