I’m going somewhere special on July 10.
Page 63 of 123
Know all those photos, music files, documents and videos on your PC? Are they backed up regularly?
I’m a bit lazy when it comes to protecting my stuff. It’s like I’m in my teenage, invincible years. I haven’t been bitten yet by losing stuff.
One of my Boxcar Marketing clients, PutPlace is running a photo contest for a chance to win 100 GB of free storage and a $200 Amazon gift certificate.
You “Pull a Face” for PutPlace. I had some fun creating my own short photo story. And now I’m downloading PutPlace …
Wow, it’s July. What happened to June?
June 7: Scott’s Birthday
30 years old. Still a kid.
Out with the Lads
Racing Cars, Paint Ball and Batman
Babies and birthdays
Visiting Bob & Joan
Lots of Green in Winnipeg
June 10-14: Book Expo Canada in Toronto
Kissing Hands and Shaking Babies
Books are like babies. See the “holding pattern”.
Dot: Rep of the Year
Cocktail Party After Cocktail Party
Robert J Wiersema and Sandy Cooper: Two Publishing Folks with Whom I’m Always Happy to Share a Drink
Looking for Greenery in Toronto
June 21, 2008: Chad & Gillian Got Married
Turner-Riggs Babyspace made it out.
June 23: Calgary
Visiting a client and another little dude
June 23: Where the Hell Is Matt? Video Released
I was there. Here’s Matt Harding and I on film day, September 5, 2007.
June 27: Milkshakes at Modern Burger
June 28: Making My First Perfume
June 29: Strawberries
You Pick. You Pay. ($45 chiropractor visit + strawberries by volume picked)
Much more sensible. (1 flat, $27)
Who doesn’t like that.
Plus there were strawberry milkshakes.
Welcome to July …
James, Chris Clarke and I are in the Vancouver section of the new Where the Hell Is Matt? video. More photos to come …
Wow, way too much travel and too little time to review the stack beside the bed. Here’s a quick look at what I’ve been cruising through reading wise.
The Amazon ranking for your title gives you an idea of how popular your book is in the past hour. A rank of 1 = the best, hottest selling book. The challenge with tracking your rank is that it changes over the day and doesn’t really tell you overall how you’re doing, just how you’re doing that hour.
Admittedly you can make assumptions about how well your book is doing by looking at different ranges, 1-1000 being damn good.
You can track your Amazon ranking by RSS or Twitter:
Booklert from MCQN.
Soles United is taking used Crocs (those holey shoes) and recycling them into new shoes, then donating them to people in need around the world. To date, Soles United has donated over a million shoes to people in need in places like Armenia, Cambodia, Chad, Darfur, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Malawi, Mali, Moldova, Philippines, Romania, Swaziland, Tanzania, Thailand, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. Quite the list.
Check out the Soles United website for a video on how it works and how to donate.
You may have seen it in the Globe and Mail or heard about it on the tv or radio, this week (June 9-14) was National Blood Donor week.
Canadian Blood Services, the national, not-for-profit charitable organization that manages the blood supply in Canada (except for Quebec), is running a campaign called “Because”. It’s purpose is to encourage people to donate blood, but also valuable platelets and plasma.
I like that the campaign ties the process of giving blood to the process of receiving it. Part of the campaign portrays blood recipients thanking the donors who have improved or even saved their lives.
Thankyourdonor.ca is a place where recipients can share their stories, photographs and videos about how receiving blood or blood products made a difference in their life.
Quote: From Canadian Blood Services:
Since blood donation is an anonymous gift, recipients normally have little opportunity to thank the people who may have saved their lives. “It is such a moving experience when recipients visit blood donor clinics to share their stories and thank donors for their generosity,” says Steve Harding, Executive Director of Marketing and Communications at Canadian Blood Services. “With this social media initiative, we are trying replicate that experience on a wider scale so that more donors can witness first-hand the power of their donation.”
Personal stories can have a powerful impact on people’s motivations to donate. It can come across as a cheesy, overt play on emotions, or it can be a true heartfelt story from donors and recipients.
I like this video. It’s informational and personal.
Do you have a story to tell?
ThankYourDonor.com or YouTube.com/thankyourdonor or post comments here.
Have you given blood before? Do you regularly donate?
Have you ever received blood? I don’t know if I know anyone who’s received blood. Have you received blood?
Quillpill is a micro-blogging site, which is currently in private beta. The service lets users write and read content on mobile devices. Yes, it’s another version of Twitter, but Techcrunch had an interesting article about how Quillpill takes a totally different approach by wanting to know what stories you would like to tell. The site is primarily aimed at aspiring authors and readers of fiction.
Quick post of links I want to share and remember for later…
Borders is finally free of Amazon and has launched its own ecommerce site.
US Bookstores are looking for ways to pull people into the store: tvs, music and other digital bits. The US publishing industry is worth $37-billion according to this LA Times article. Good info about online marketing activities of publishers and who’s doing what.
E-books still unnerving publishers. “Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, spent much of a packed session on Friday evangelizing about the Kindle, which he said already accounts for 6 percent of his company’s unit sales of books that are available in both paper and electronic formats.”
Carolyn K. Reidy, the chief executive of Simon & Schuster, said “electronic book sales last year totaled about $1 million, a sliver of its annual sales of roughly $1 billion.”
And here’s something ironic. Despite the fears of e-books, “Electronic readers have nevertheless gained many fans in the publishing industry. Random House and Penguin, among others, have equipped their entire sales force with electronic-book readers, allowing them to avoid having to lug around as many preview editions of books. Editors at many of the larger publishing houses also use the devices to read manuscripts submitted by agents and authors.”
The National Book Critics Circle’s Campaign to Save Book Reviews is meant to thwart the disappearance of book review sections in newspapers and magazines.
More stats and facts about the declining coverage for books in the Columbia Journal Review. Interesting reader comments follow.
Wall St Journal on how the scarcity of ad revenue endangers newspaper book review sections.
New York Times on “Are Book Reviewers Out of Print?”
Fascinating look at Pan MacMillan’s publishing manifesto. Also interesting reader comments.