Fun links I just discovered –
I clicked on this link because it said something about perfect sentences. Finding Calvin and Hobbes was a surprise! My personal favorite was Playing Frankenstein With Words. Click through and see which one you like best!
THE INTERN has a post up about social media and whether doing stuff online actually translates to book sales. Now, she refers to a person who did TONS of social media stuff for a while and then quit cold and her book sales didn't change. Obviously what we really need is a time machine so that this exact same author could launch her book the other way around: no online presence for six months and then TONS of social media stuff. Alas, that's unlikely. Maybe THE INTERN will find a counter example which is at least roughly comparable to the other-way-round example.
THE INTERN also asked: how many book have you bought lately as a result of online social media? And this is hard to answer because what counts as social? Because if book review blogs do, then for me the answer would be LOTS. Or if book review blogs don't count, then VERY FEW. But my online social thing is limited to a few twitter posts a day and a little cruising through the book-related blogosphere.
I thought this post was a nice reminder of what NOT to focus on, speaking of online stuff and writing. "Unhitch Your Wagon From the Stars" — meaning, review stars! I need to remind myself of that. I'm good at dwelling on good reviews and not bad ones, but not so good at truly IGNORING bad ones. Yet, you know, you're never going to have EVERYBODY love your book, so probably not the best thing to pay attention to.
On a totally different note! Have you ever seen a cooler infographic than this? It has nothing to do with writing or fiction — it's a graphic showing about a billion "alternative medicine" treatments — vitamins, herbs, whatever — according to evidence that the thing helps the condition and also according to popularity. Naturally it won't surprise you to find out that popularity has little to do with evidence. Hover over a bubble to see what the herb is supposed to treat — click on a bubble to get the link to the evidence that it is beneficial (and if there's no evidence, there's no link).
The only thing I take is vitamin D, btw. Well, and dark chocolate. Naturally I only eat chocolate for medicinal reasons.
