Posted on November 4, 2009 by lisemcclendon
Didn’t make it to a mystery convention this year? Wonder what’s up in crime fiction? Here, courtesy of HuffingtonPost and in the comfort of your own home, is a great roundup of opinions from some of America’s top crime fiction reviewers: Patrick Anderson, Oline Codgill, Jon Jordan, Kate Stine, and Sarah Weinman. Take your pic on opinions… but they don’t differ too much about who’s hot and who’s going to be hot.
And can I just say that Sarah Weinman is so eloquent in her observations, in-the-know about the publishing world, and just about everywhere these days. Her new gig, besides reviewing for the Los Angeles Times and Barnes & Noble and a score of other freelance review jobs, now is writing about the business of publishing on AOL’s new blog called Daily Finance. Her latest post is about new publishing contracts in the digital age. To think we knew her when — back in the days of rec.arts.mystery wasn’t it, Katy?
Even authors as well published as John Grisham are worried about the digital publishing age, it seems. He was on the TODAY Show yesterday to promote his new short story collection, Ford County. Amazon, Target, and Wal-mart have joined together to sell 10 titles at a deep discount this month, and Grisham’s book is one of them. Obviously he won’t be hurt by new lower prices, if Wal-mart sells his $24.99 books for $9, he gets the same royalty. But his point about the long term effects of digital e-books sold for $9.99 (an arbitrary price Amazon came up with for most of its Kindle offerings) is right on. We are looking at a sea change in how people buy books. What will happen to browsing your local bookstore, asking its owner — who knows your preferences — what’s new and good? What happens to your library when fewer hard copy books are available (and all of them are the latest boomseller by Dan Brown or James-clone Patterson?) Will we still have a diversity of opinion and a thirst for new ideas? Or will the digital age mean more ideas, those without a mainstream platform, get a chance to see the light of day?
Filed under: Books, Mystery World, Writing | Tagged: crime fiction, Huffington Post, John Grisham, mystery fiction, reviewing, Sarah Weinman | 7 Comments »
Posted on October 27, 2009 by lisemcclendon
Katy...
Just to prove I can be one of those bloggers who post (almost)
daily... here's a bunch of stats about social media and the
internet.
Yes, we knew most of this, but it's interesting to see. And
you know how I love lists! Maybe somebody can tell me how
Facebook can have 100 million users but the internet still
has four years to go to get 50 million users. They must be
counting households, not people.
My favorite: Facebook has overtaken porn!
* By 2010 Generation Y will outnumber Baby Boomers
* 96% of Gen Y is involved in Social Media
* Social Media has overtaken Porn as the #1 online activity
* 1 out of 8 couples married in the US met via Social Media
* Years to 50 Million Users
1) Radio – 38
2) TV – 13
3) Internet – 4
4) iPod – 3
5) Facebook – 100 million members in 9 months
* If Facebook were a country, it would be the 4th largest
* Online students outperform students who receive face to face
instruction
* 1 in 6 higher ed students are enrolled online
* 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as a primary tool for
finding employees
* The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55 to 65-years-old
* 80% of Twitter usage is on a mobile device
* Gen Y & Z consider email passé
* Youtube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world – more
than 100,000,000 videos
* Wikipedia has over 13 million articles and studies have shown
that it is more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica
* 200,000,000 blogs
* 54% of bloggers post content or Tweet daily
* 25% of search results for the world’s largest brands are
links to user generated content
* 34% of bloggers post opinions about products and services
* 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
* Only 14% trust ads
* Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
* 90% of people with TIVO skip ads
* 70% of 18 to 34-year-olds have watched TV on the web, while
on 33% have ever viewed a show on DVR/TIVO
* 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short
video on their phone
* 47% of books sales on Amazon are for Kindle
* 24 out of 25 of the largest newspapers are experiencing
declines in circulation
* 1.5 million pieces of content (links, news stories,
blog posts, photos,videos, etc.) are shared on Facebook daily
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: facebook, marketing, social media, statistics | 1 Comment »
