Yesterday, I talked about bloggers receiving free stuff or posting advertisements. I left out another discussion on this topic — when publishers send books, videos and other odds and ends for review without asking.

I received a book about adopting and caring for a cat. Have I ever talked about cats other than the time when everyone was putting cat heads on Dvorak and a comic for Geeks with Cats. Once in a while, I’ll review something that comes to me without notification, but most of the time I don’t because it’s not a topic I cover or it’s not closed-captioned. But I’ll review everything I ask for.

Publishers send things to everyone on their list in hopes that the recipients will review them because it’s already in their hands. Reviewers don’t have a lot of time to kill, so we need to select the things that would interest the audience. We don’t want to waste your time. Sure, we could post a review on Amazon and B&N, but I won’t read something that doesn’t interest me. Plenty of books sit on shelves waiting for my attention so I’d rather read those.

I’m lucky that I receive enough books to that I can’t touch the ones gathering dust on their bookshelves. But I also do abstracts for GetAbstract, not just book reviews. I’ve also gotten into game reviews since joining Big Fish Games — the only time I ever play electronic games. Gotta be careful not to take on too many games or else no work gets done. What I like about Big Fish is its offerings contain the kinds of stuff I like to play.

Here are the best books I’ve read in 2006 in no particular order. Beware that not all of these books published this year, but rather they’re books I read.

* Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things: I haven’t written this review yet as I just finished it. Reading Norman’s follow up to Design of Everyday Things makes me want to read the original, but got other books that have priority.

* Next to Me is a lovely autobiography about a British businessman who happens to have Parkinson’s.

* Book Yourself Solid is a solid book that prompted me to make changes to my marketing efforts.

* Metaphorically Selling shows how to take a fresh approach to giving presentations and selling.

* The Corporate Blogging Book contains everything anyone needs to know about business blogging including making the business case and case studies.

* Writing White Papers helped me feel more comfortable about doing white papers.

* Blogging for Business is an easy flowing read that also educates people about business blogging.

* The Intellectual Devotional: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Roam Confidently with the Cultured Class refreshed my memory on facts I vaguely recalled and provided details on things I didn’t know much about.

* The Street-Smart Writer provides me with security so I know where to go if I run into problems in the writing biz.

* Tie (Fiction) Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is one of few fiction books I read this year. The book enlightened me on the Chinese culture in an absorbing story. You Could Do Better is a chick-lit style story that makes a great beach read. What I liked about it was the author’s attention to detail on TV history and trivia.

Hearty congrats to Debbie Weil on today’s official release of her book, The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right (You can check out a free chapter here). I’m honored to have played a small part of her special project as I helped her with research.

Debbie provides her 5 key corporate blogging tips:

Tip #5: How to uncover your story for a corporate blog

Tip #4: Who should write your corporate blog?

Tip #3: How to address *time* – the top fear factor for corporate bloggers

Tip #2: ROI of blogging is measurable but not (usually) in dollars

Tip #1: Just do it

I owe y’all a review of the book. Though I helped with the book, I always provide an honest review. After all, anyone who reads the book can easily slam me if I’m not honest. But I can honestly say it’s a valuable resource: easy to understand, no dumbed down-speak, quick and fun read, and the perfect size.

Perfect size? What’s up with that? Some books just feel good when you hold them, and this one does. The paper, the feel of the cover, the size of the pages and cover, the binding… all of these features impact how a book feels — how easy do the pages stay open, how light it feels to hold it with one hand, and how legible the text appears to the eyes.

Thanks, Debbie, for trusting me with something so valuable.

Paul has been saying that it would be a bad move for J.K. Rowling to kill Harry Potter in the last book. While it could make for an exciting and depressing ending, the publisher would lose out on potential sales as future readers won’t want to bother reading a whole series knowing the main character dies.

My 12-year-old has lost interest in reading the series, but Paul is currently reading the seventh book to my 7-year-old who is into it and even tries to read it though it’s above his level. It wouldn’t surprise me if he decides to read them again when he is ready to read at that level — but his (my three-year-old, too, I hope) and future generations won’t want to bother reading the series knowing Harry dies at the end (like no one is going to find this out before picking up the series).

Paul believes that’s why the The Chronicles of Narnia series didn’t catch on as much as it could have. Few people read beyond The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe because of what happens at the end of the series plus a couple of the books weren’t as good. A Wrinkle in Time also had this problem — the books that followed weren’t as good.

Rowling has done an superb job with the flow and making each book an exciting read. Sure, some books aren’t as strong as others, but they’ve withstood the challenge of hanging on to the reader because she planned them as a series from the start just like The Lord of the Rings.

To ensure a series of books survives for years after they’re completed not when they’re released, authors must:

* Write an ending that won’t turn away future readers
* Make each book strong
* Look at the whole series before writing the first book

Consider Six Feet Under. The main character died in the last season (not the last episode, however). I had been watching the show on DVD and knowing this fact lowered my interest. I’m still watching the series — but I believe the show won’t have as many people renting / buying the series as it would have had the character lived.

We know Rowling is killing a couple of characters, but if her publisher wants the books to become a classic like The Lord of the Rings, then Harry must live.

Congratulations to my dear friend, Shirley Kaiser, on the release of her book, Deliver First Class Web Sites: 101 Essential Checklists. You can get a feel for the book by checking out The Ultimate Testing Checklist and The Ultimate SEO Checklist.

I’m eagerly waiting for my copy to arrive and I’ll, of course, let you know what I think of it. Knowing Shirley, her Web design knowledge, and her abilities — I’m confident this is going to be a valuable book especially since it contains many checklists. As someone who has worked in process management and values the RIGHT documentation to manage processes, the checklists should help save time and ensure the design team hasn’t missed any critical steps.

If you spend your book reading time on non-fiction like me, here’s an opportunity to read a short fiction that provides a nice summer read and an history lesson. I probably spent about two to three hours reading the book.

See’s story explores the culture and lives of the people living in 19th-century rural China. The book provides a history lesson in the form of a fictional story that centers around two girls from childhood through womanhood.

The richly told tale begins with the tradition of footbinding to keep girl’s feet small therefore ensuring they’re “marriageable.” I knew about the small feet, but not about the horrifying and vividly described process.

After reading the book, I researched the topics covered in the story and discovered the author accurately captured 19th-century China. Readers learn about arranged marriages, different classes (poor, rich, farmer, butcher), friendships, married life, education, the secret writing of Nu Shu and the infighting in the country.

At times, the characters come across as unemotional or mean and it’s true. Sometimes you like and sometimes you don’t like the central characters, but it’s a reflection of those times. Besides, if the main characters were always happy go-lucky and 100% likeable, wouldn’t that be predictable and dull?

The book starts a little slow, but picks up speed after the footbinding. Once it grabbed me, I was eager to finish it. I don’t have many opportunities to read fiction and with this short book, I had the opportunity to quickly enjoy a fictional story while learning more about the Chinese culture.

Title: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Author: Lisa See
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812968069
Date: June 2005 (Reprint: February 2006)
Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
Cover Price: USD: $13.97 Amazon: $5.58

Turning 30 wasn’t as I had hoped. Being the youngest of three by a gap, I was used to feeling young and always younger than everyone else. As I entered my thirties, I felt depressed whenever the ages of a football star, actor, or big shot manager appeared in an article. They were such big successes and not even 30. There I was, in my thirties believing I had accomplished little outside of raising a family. After all, anyone can become a parent and not anyone can become a CEO or best-selling author.

Reading each story, my reactions ranged from “I’ve been there!” and “I remember that!” to “Never been through that, thankfully, but I understand.” And “OK, maybe being 30 had good points.”

In reading books like these, a collection of true and intimate stories, you sense that you’re there listening to a best friend or being a fly on the wall hearing stuff that you would otherwise never hear. Great collections do just that and The May Queen succeeds. Any gal in her thirties will feel less solitary while reading the stories.

Flor Morales shared her experience of going back and forth between El Salvador and California where her family shamed her for cheating on her husband, an alcoholic. She proceeded to tell her tale of crossing the border for good to pursue a better life with another man.

In my twenties, I wanted to climb the corporate ladder as high as I could go. But my expectations started toppling after my second child arrived when I was 29 and not a manager. Slowly, I began to change wanting instead to climb the family ladder with an occasional nudge from a career success. It turned out, from reading these stories and others about us Gen-Xers, we struggled with the “having it all” in our twenties and as we matured, we came to appreciate life more as we understood successful careers were nice to have, but not something that made life completely meaningful.

In “My Missing Biological Clock,” Megham Daum pondered her lack of interest in becoming a mother in spite of society’s pressures of “having it all.” So every story isn’t about horrific or incredible things that happen to others and not us.

Ayun Halliday’s “A Random Sampling Age Thirty to Forty” resembled a list more than a story, but what an insightful list! Read a random sampling of things that happened between ages of thirty and forty and compare those to things that happened between ages of 10 and 20 and 20 and 30. This fast-read will instantly cheer up anyone struggling with having lived three decade of their lives.

With 27 stories of varying lengths in over 250 pages, busy women in their thirties can easily read a story in between feedings, during lunch break, traveling somewhere exotic or whenever they find a moment to simply take pleasure in a good story. As a mom of three with my own freelance business, it was effortless to take a break to read one story at a time and feel another ounce of appreciation for life in my thirties.

Title: The May Queen: Women on Life, Love, Work, and Pulling It All Together in Your Thirties
Author: Andrea N. Richesin
Publisher: Tarcher
ISBN: 1585424676
Date: March 2006
Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
Cover Price: USD: $14.95 Amazon: $9.72

Instead of standing in line to get an author to autograph your book, you can ask for an autograph without going anywhere. Author Margaret Atwood invented a tool for virtual autographs called LongPen. Some believe that it will end the personal contact between authors and readers. I don’t. MoneySense article on LongPen.

Many of us don’t go to signing events because it’s too crowded. But if we contact the author for an autograph for LongPen, we’d make contact that we would not otherwise have because we don’t attend the author events. Readers who live in small towns don’t want to make the long trek to see favorite authors. They, too, get to connect with the author.

Some authors don’t have the ability to travel and this gives them a chance to connect with readers.

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More authors offer a free ebook version of their book in hopes of generating buzz. Godin’s Unleashing the IdeaVirus had 400,000 downloads in 30 days thanks to buzz. Few authors have that kind of success, but this method helps get the book out there. For a short time, Scott Allen has posted an ebook version of The Virtual Handshake for free downloading.

I remember when Cory Doctorow distributed his book, Down and Out in Magic Kingdom. He also sold paperback copies of the book at sxsw in 2002. According to Wikipedia, “This (free downloads of ebook) has not seemed to adversely affect the book’s sales; it received mostly positive reviews and sold relatively well.” He also has a couple of other science fiction books available for free under the Creative Commons license.

The Cluetrain Manifesto had better luck with sales and publicity. So does providing a free copy work or not? Looks like it’s mixed. It’s another tool in the author’s toolbag along with sending review copies to bloggers and print media reviewers.

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Author Dan Poynter has written over 100 books. Think he knows something about publishing? Not only has he written three digits worth of books, but he also has a publishing company that publishes and distributes many quality articles, resources, and books about publishing.

Writing Nonfiction is an easy, educational, fast, and enjoyable read. Poynter goes through the authoring and publishing process from idea to marketing. The end of chapter one has a numbered list of the 18 steps to do this. [ Read more... ]

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