Messages from the GLBT Bookshelf admins

[Christopher]

Hey there, this is Kit Moss, your friendly neighborhood helpdeak.

I set this group up a couple years ago and have done very little with it. I do want to start keeping the group active though. I will be taking the site/wiki over when Mel Keegan retires, and I want to take the next years grttng to know you all.

So I have a bunch of questions...

1. What do you see as the positives about the site, www.glbtbookshelf.com?

2. What would you like to see it contain?

3. What do you do with the site yourslef, as an author, publisher or readers?

4. Do you get the help you need when you need it?

5. What would you like to see added?

6. What would you like to see on this Goodreads group?

I am very open to all suggestions and explanations. The wiki can be a bit of a chore to work with, we know, but it is the best tool for creating and maintaining a completely community-based and all volunteer site.

It is not free, as Mel pays its expenses, and there are definitely expenses. Yu can help, but you don't have to. We will do this anyway, even if no one elver lends a hand or money. Just go to www.glbtbookshelf.com and look for the donation button, if you can find it.

And keep sending along your ideas and your improvements to Mel at glbtbookshelf@gmail.com or to me the helpdesk at christopherhmoss@gmail.com .

Thanks ever so much.

Kit Moss (Christopher Hawthorne Moss)
GLBT heldpesk
christopherhmoss@gmail.com

[Anne]

Hi Kit,

I joined this group myself a year or so ago but, as no one posts here actively, I admit, I pretty much ignored it. I stumbled across the wiki completely separately a few months ago and found that with a message that said it would be closing down so I didn't bother with it further to add myself or my books.

I'm happy to see that the wiki will live on but there are a couple of things I find curious about it. First off, pages load very slowly...extremely so sometimes. Is this being run off a private server rather than being handled through a larger provider like Wordpress itself, GoDaddy, Bluehost, Gator or any number of other low cost, high volume, high speed services? If not, have you considered switching?

I see that you're Amazon affiliated and I would hope that it brings you some income but, have you considered a model where you link to an author's Amazon books if they don't? I found several books just by clicking links that took me to pages on the site with description and wording to the effect that the book was available digitally on Amazon but with no buy link. If you took the time to sort through all of that and build affiliate links, you'd make more income and so would the author. It doesn't take anything out of their pocket by someone clicking and buying from an affiliate link if they don't have their own affiliate account (many don't).

I'm having a hard time getting my head wrapped around why the wiki allows ads - which seem to appear only on the home page and a couple of others but not on all pages - but they have to point internally for fear of running afoul of Google. Most commercial sites that sell ad space allow the users to point the ad wherever they want. For example, I'm currently running a book ad on Women and Words for $5 for 30 days that points right to the Amazon buy page, The only stipulation I had was that I could not use an affiliate link for this ad. Why can every other site offer advertising that points off site but you'll be somehow penalized if yours does? You'd make more from your advertising program if users could point ads where they want to rather than to an internal page. Better to get the customer right to the buy page than to run them somewhere else where they have to click again to go there. Isn't that, after all, a link that takes them off site? How is it different from a direct link from an ad?

As far as this Goodreads group, I'd like to see it be more active but the way that happens is to start discussions and keep them going. Once people start seeing an active group, they'll join back in and then others will join.

I wish you lots of luck. Over the next week or so, I'll start working with the wiki to get myself and my books listed there and I'll make a donation.

[Anne]

Went out to the site today Kit. It still says it will go dark at the end of May and there's no way to join it. Is that true?