Buy Me A Book

by Scott Marlowe (@scottmarlowe) 2/8/2010 5:01:00 PM

Buy me a book!

You're probably familiar with the "buy me a coffee" or "buy me a beer" campaigns some bloggers engage in. I'm starting my own and I'm calling it "Buy Me A Book".

What that means is if you read a story, blog post, or book review on this site, and feel so inclined, feel free to send me a small donation (I'm not a non-profit, so it really isn't a donation, but I'm sure you get the idea).

There's obviously no obligation. I'll keep doing what I'm doing regardless. But even small amounts add up and would help cover some of the initiatives I'm ramping up. One of those is supporting writers who have self-published in the Amazon Kindle store. In that case, your donations will be going to help support these new writers as I purchase their novels and review them.

Other initiatives are in the works, though it's important to note that I won't be using any of the money collected through the Buy Me A Book program to pad my wallet. All of it will go back into this site or to other writers via purchases of their books.

I do something similar with my Amazon Associates account: the associate fees I make are paid to me as an Amazon gift certificate, which I then promptly turn back over to Amazon via book purchases. So, again, the money goes right back into the community.

That being said, this is not a way for me to make money. Think of it more as a way for me to keep things moving along smoothly.

Thanks for your time.

My Favorites of 2009

by Scott Marlowe (@scottmarlowe) 1/1/2010 1:25:00 PM

Sometime during 2009 I suddenly stopped writing up posts that were merely collections of links, reporting the ongoing status of my writing, or telling you all about free giveaways, and started writing posts that were both content rich and (hopefully) useful to someone other than myself.

As I (again, hopefully) take that momentum into 2010, I thought I'd spare one post for taking a quick look at what I thought were my best posts of 2009. Sure, I did something similar last post (see The 2009 Year in Review), but that was pure statistics (most viewed, etc.). This list is purely subjective.

So, here are the posts I had the most fun writing in 2009:

  1. Microsoft Office Live Workspace
  2. How much does the Kindle 2 really cost?
  3. Sell Your E-books in the Amazon Kindle Store
  4. How much do you make selling through Amazon's Kindle store?
  5. Is this the last word on Kindlegate?
  6. Libraries Going Digital
  7. E-Book File Formats
  8. Amazon Kindle: Now, is the price right?
  9. Do we still need traditional publishers?
  10. The nook: More competition for Amazon's Kindle
  11. Selling Your E-Book Without a Publisher
  12. eReaders for Your Computer

[ Amazon Featured Short: Why I Write About Elves, by Terry Brooks ]

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The 2009 Year in Review

by Scott Marlowe (@scottmarlowe) 12/31/2009 5:46:00 PM

This time last year I took a look at my most popular posts of 2008. Carrying on that tradition, I'd like to do the same for 2009 with a few extras this time around.

As dictated by Google Analytics, here are my most popular posts for the year 2009:

  1. Tor Free E-books: The Complete List
  2. E-Book File Formats
  3. Microsoft Office Live Workspace
  4. Book Review: Horizon by Lois McMaster Bujold
  5. Sell Your E-books in the Amazon Kindle Store
  6. How much does the Kindle 2 really cost?
  7. The nook: More competition for Amazon's Kindle
  8. Selling Your E-Book Without a Publisher, Part 5: Smashwords
  9. Amazon's Kindle 2 to Launch February 24
  10. How much do you make selling through Amazon's Kindle store?

No surprise that the word "free" appears at the top of the list. I'm also not surprised to see my E-Book File Formats post in the list; that post has steadily been gaining views since I published it and I wouldn't be surprised at all to see it in the overall top 10 (see next list) sometime soon (it's #25 now).

Next, I want to take a look at the overall most popular posts as of EOY 2009:

  1. Tor Free E-books: The Complete List (8,282)
  2. Book Review: The Soldier Son Trilogy by Robin Hobb (5,602)
  3. Has the fantasy genre become stagnant? (4,790)
  4. Tor Free E-book: Old Man's War by John Scalzi (4,451)
  5. Weekend Links - 7/3/08 (4,034)
  6. How Much Time Should Professional Writers Spend Blogging? (3,976)
  7. Tor Free E-Book: Starfish by Peter Watts (3,787)
  8. Locus Online: 2007 Cover Art Gallery (3,646)
  9. Recommended Reference - The Synonym Finder (3,451)
  10. How Long Is Too Long? (3,161)

It'll be interesting to do a comparison next year to see if these posts remain in the top 10.

In closing, there's a few other things I would like to note to assuage my ego if nothing else:

That's all I've got.

Happy New Year and good luck with your own writing.

[ Amazon Feature: SF/F Shorts by Amazon ]

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New Look

by Scott Marlowe (@scottmarlowe) 10/22/2009 8:14:00 PM

Every once in a while it's a good idea to freshen up the ol' web site/blog. Truth be told, that light blue background has been bothering me for some time now, but every time I tried to swap out the color I just couldn't find the right one. I was trying to go with a darker blue, and it kept coming out too… purple.

But last week I had sort of an epiphany. The layout, color scheme, and an overwhelming desire to simplify all hit me at once. Next thing I know, I've got a new look for the site.

The overall layout is more or less the same, except I cleaned some things up, took out the "About Me" section, and added a new "Bookshelf" section to highlight what I am currently reading.

Here are the old and new looks, for purposes of my own nostalgia if nothing else.

New look:

(Hopefully the menu bar color looks darkish red; it's actually CSS brown… doesn't look brown to me, but I like it)

New look

Old look:

old look

Much improved, I think.

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Blogging

Yes, I'm still here… and still writing

by Scott Marlowe (@scottmarlowe) 4/9/2009 8:24:31 PM

Rumors of my death are false. I'm still alive and kicking and trying to squeeze in some writing whenever and however I can. I'm relying more and more on Office Live Workspace for those days when I don't have my laptop with me. It's working out pretty well; I'd like to do another blog post on the topic as a follow-up. Stay tuned for that.

Now, however, I've slowed the blogging, including doing weekly writing updates because I've been finding it harder and harder of late to make any significant progress. I hate to just post that I didn't make any progress week in and week out—of course, here I am doing just that.

On writing… I did take a couple of weeks off. I needed the time to step away from my current project (the one I'd been posting weekly about). I like the characters. I like the story. But still, it was missing something. To that end, I've started over on the editing. Page 1. With a mind towards adding another layer to the story and, in particular, to one character. The end result is that I hopefully end up with a better story. Whether I accomplish that or not… we'll have to see.

So, it's back to writing for me. Blogging will likely be kept to a minimum while I concentrate on wrapping up this novel. But I'll be around and back on the blogging thing in time.

Most Popular Posts of 2008

by Scott Marlowe (@scottmarlowe) 1/1/2009 8:32:55 PM

A recent post from Darren Rowse at ProBlogger entitled Best of ProBlogger – 2008, where he lists out his most viewed posts of 2008, inspired me to take a look at my own "best of" as dictated by Google Analytics.

Here they are:

  1. Tor Free E-books: The Complete List
  2. Tor Free E-book: Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson
  3. Tor Free E-book: Old Man's War by John Scalzi
  4. Meyer's 'Midnight Sun' On Hold
  5. Book Review: The Soldier Son Trilogy by Robin Hobb
  6. When To Stop Reading, Part 3: Short Stories
  7. Tor Free E-book: Through Wolf's Eyes by Jane Lindskold
  8. When To Stop Listening, Part 4: Audiobooks
  9. Book Review: Sly Mongoose by Tobias Buckell
  10. Has the fantasy genre become stagnant?

Happy New Year

by Scott Marlowe (@scottmarlowe) 1/1/2009 8:22:00 PM

Happy New Year everyone!

With 2008 over, I decided to take quick stock of things with respect to my writing and blogging.

Writing

I spent all of this past year working on my current fantasy novel. I've been documenting the progress in a weekly series, so I won't go into that angle of it too much. The fact that I only worked on one "thing" is kind of disheartening. I've been thinking of trying my hand at short fiction, but most of my ideas tend towards a larger scope, so the novel format is really the best. But the idea of starting and finishing something in a reasonable amount of time is alluring.

I'm not one for New Year's resolutions. I'm already doing the things I want to do—writing, reading, cycling, programming. But were I to make a commitment of that kind it would be to finish my current novel. That, and to author more content-rich blog posts. I've been slacking a little lately only because I've been trying to focus on my writing. Blogging is great, but it's an aside and not the real purpose here.

Blogging

Of course, now I want to briefly look at my blogging progress. I started blogging in June of 2006. That first blog is still out there, and really just morphed into this one when I acquired the domain name that goes along with my real name. That happened in January 2008. Since then, I've penned 157 posts (this makes 158). Probably a third (or more) of those are from my weekend links and writing progress series. Also, I recently started a new blog, called itscodingtime.com, which focuses on technology and programming "stuff". It creates some more work for me, but I've increasingly needed a technical online presence and a place to organize my software engineering pursuits much like I organize my writing pursuits with this one.

 

So, a good year, I think. But there's more work to do. Good luck with your own pursuits and make 2009 a good one.