The most-read books of the last 100 years
This is an interesting project: Gabe Habash is reading the most popular books of every year, from 1913 to 2013. Here’s his reading list. Surprising how few of these books I’ve read, let alone heard of. What was popular in 1924 doesn’t mean that anyone will read it today (likewise, it’s hard to imagine in 80 years that anyone will have heard of 50 Shades of Grey–the most read book of 2012–let alone have read it). But it’s an intriguing way to access history and culture. Some things I noticed: I’ve read 8 of the 94 books (it’s not 100 Read more…
What next for “Free” books in KDP Select?
Last year, I had one of my biggest weeks of sales ever for The Marinara Murders by making it free. The book was enrolled in Amazon’s KDP Select, which meant that in exchange for 90 days of exclusivity with Amazon, I got some marketing benefits–the biggest of which, was the ability to make the book free for 5 days. I tested this with modest success, until last March when the website EReaderNewsToday.com listed my book as a free one. I went from a few hundred free downloads to 11,000. Sales of The Saints Go Dying boomed, and then in the Read more…
Tacoma Reads Together
I’ve been the chair of Tacoma Reads Together for 3 years. I think this year’s book is the best so far. Wonder is a Young Adult novel by R.J. Palacio. Her novel tells the story of a young man born with a severe facial deformity who, at the age of 10, leaves the safety of his parents’ homeschooling and begins the 5th grade. My name is August, by the way. I won’t describe what I look like. Whatever you’re thinking it’s probably worse. You can read the book very quickly, but I think it will stick with you for awhile. Read more…
A couple quick notes
I’ve added a “tag cloud” to the side of the blog. Previously it was hard to find any archives on the site without sorting by month, so this gives a quick way to go back and find old posts by category. It’s kind of ugly, but it works. I’ve also created a new “project” to track the presidential biographies I’ve read. In case you missed the smiling face of George Washington on my homepage, there you go.
Old Hickory
My Presidential reading list got waylaid for a little while last year with Andrew Jackson and American Lion. This book sat on my nightstand for too long, but I finally finished it over the weekend. President’s Day weekend no less! So. Andrew Jackson. Old Hickory. Generally, I enjoyed the read, but Jackson didn’t jump out at me as I would have thought. His story before becoming President is fascinating. Born from truly humble origins (no one is 100% sure which state he was actually born in, it was that humble), courageous as a boy during the Revolutionary War when he Read more…
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Mutlicare Health System commissioned this infographic from Side x Side to give helpful information about heart health. Easy to share on Pinterest or Facebook, infographics are great tools for communicating a lot of information at once. We were very excited about how this one turned out. Happy Valentine’s Day from Side x Side Creative!
Meet your next favorite book
Years ago I signed up for Goodreads.com. For some reason, I got out of the habit of posting there. I think that I thought I should go through my bookshelf and add every book I’d read. I also was temporarily lured away by Google Books, which had an incredible feature: you could search within books that you’d read. It turns out, though, that while that feature sounded awesome in theory, I rarely used it. And in the meantime, I stopped updating the books I’d read on Goodreads. When I started publishing my own books, I got back into Goodreads to Read more…
Reading “the Classics”
On my first day of freshman year of high school, my English teacher–Mr. Dudas–gave us a pop quiz. It was a take-home quiz, and it wasn’t a hard one. There was only one question: “What books did you read over the summer?” Being a bookworm, and eager to make a good first impression with my teacher, I went through my bookshelf and started listing them. I had read so many books that summer! Adult books even, like Michael Crichton novels. I had read so many books over the summer that I had to finish listing them on the back of Read more…
^