A New Start for Two Sites
Just this past week, I launched a new book-oriented blog, which leaves me to wonder a bit about what to do with the old book-oriented blog—
—this one.
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BookNom.net is different – first up is focus: BookNom is just for reviews. Books are the only topic and I’m doing my best to make it look both inviting and professional. While the basic framework is a blog [in fact, it uses the same CMS as RocketBomber] the concept & eventual execution are much more ‘site’ than ‘blog’ – if that distinction means anything to you. RocketBomber is a platform for me to post drunken rants to the internet, while BookNom.net is… not.
I’ve already opened up the BookNom concept & platform to 3 other contributors – maybe 4 [Lissa is working hard on the art for me — IT'S FANTASTIC, TELL HER THAT — but we still haven’t talked about her writing anything for the site] so from the very beginning, BookNom is not just my project.
In fact: click, read, and consider – Submission Guidelines : Style Guide : Reviewer Resources : Call for Contributors
And BookNom is much more an idea than a website: way back in June the idea for BookNom grew organically out of… me posting drunken rants to the internet
In fact, hell, we could sign the whole thing up as an Amazon affiliate, let them worry about procurement & shipping & margin, and just take our cut from the internet sale. I don’t need a warehouse and fulfillment protocols for millions of titles if I can get Amazon to do that for me — I’ll take the booksellers, thanks, the ones who know and love the product, and we’ll do just fine.
There is nothing stopping you from just taking this idea (and the links to handy resources I’ve already posted) and starting your own book-reviews-for-tips website. I Strongly Encourage You To Do So. Hell, if your version is better than mine, I’ll write for you and you can register the domain names and pay for hosting & web design & art and work part time as editor (I haven’t been an editor since college newspaper days, ah nostalgia, 17 years ago) and I’ll just take the points I get as an Amazon [and soon to be IndieBound!] affiliate and drink my beer and write my little missives to an uncaring internet.
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I’m a Lazy Bastard.
No, it’s true. I spent 7 years (7½ – almost 8) at one of our nation’s finest educational institutions, treating a major research university like my own intellectual buffet. I changed my major almost annually; I studied physics, architecture, engineering; I took math classes as electives; I asked for (and got) permission to take graduate level courses as an undergrad. I squeezed Uni like a ripe fruit, and drank deep from the juice.
—and then spent five years in bars [as a consultant – getting paid, even; I’ve been spending decades in bars at this point] followed by my current employment as a bookseller. I like the bookstore, and working there gets me an employee discount.
Of Course I’m over qualified. That’s why they kept promoting me, year after year. But that wasn’t a bad thing: I’ve worked almost every job under the roof, and done every task you can think of: receiving, shelving, stock maintenance, and returns; stints in every specialty department – including music, DVDs, newstand, gift, bargain books, and most recently digital; the whole spectrum of retail management from hiring, training, evaluation, scheduling, Bookseller mentoring and development;
Not only have I spent the last ten years learning a bookstore up-down-and-sideways, I’ve spent my days off researching online book sales and publishing trends and drinking deep from the well, listening to Mimir’s murmurs and Delphic whispers.
Given my background, and education, I could be doing ‘important’ work. My thought at one point was to pursue a career in architectural acoustics, designing concert halls and other performance spaces. Instead, I ended up as a bookseller. My passions and inclinations weren’t amputated, however: As a bookseller, I’ve been analyzing the Big Box just as avidly as I tackled any academic subject while at university.
I’m a lazy bastard – I could have been an architect, or engineer, or physicist, or inventor. But that was work: I didn’t find my true calling until I was out of school for 4 years and took a part-time job as a bookseller.
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BookNom.net is it’s own thing, and I hope that from humble origins it will grow into a modest site — I don’t need the payday from a sell-out, and the bigger deal it becomes the more work it will be. But a book-recommendation site that some thousands visit, enough to make the affiliate links pay out at least enough for beer money for the reviewers, a website that makes a top 1000 or top 100 list? That would be grand.
BookNom is the site I would have launched in 2004 (back in Jan. 2004 when I wrote my first blog post) if I had understood the internet at that point, or more to the point had understood what it was I could contribute.
RocketBomber is the site that I, as a 37-year-old blogger with the odd hobbies and a bookselling job and too much beer and a 7 year blogging history — well, this is site I ended up with. RocketBomber may take a decided turn to the personal – relieved of the burden of being my ‘professional’ blog, I can share more insights without caring who the audience is, or what the reception to my posts will be.
Yes, I’ll still post online rankings and analysis of industry numbers. I’ll still post columns like rethinking the box. I’ll still post the free-form thought pieces. (& I do not doubt some columns will grow organically from the book-review-mission-statement of BookNom.net as well)
But I think I’ll post more often to RocketBomber, now that the onus of posting for the ‘permanent record’ is off. No doubt, some of you will consider this to be an improvement; the rest will remove the link, unfollow the RSS feed, and set up a filter to automatically delete me.
From this point forward: I will post.
