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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Authors believe that going on Oprah is the ultimate thing to do for a book. Being an Oprah Book Club selection, no doubt, leads to a best seller. But what about those authors who just appear on the show when it covers their subject? Dan Janal has posted an Oprah PR Leads Challenge.

He asks folks to send proof if they’ve sold more than $10,000 books after appearing on Oprah. The top five get a free subscription and glowing testimonials (in other words, he’ll eat his words). He announced the results and no one beat his challenge. But then again, how many people knew about his challenge?

Regardless, while appearing on Oprah is indeed a big PR coup for anyone who appears as a professional rather as someone who has been scorned, lived a rough life, or some other sob story — it’s no magic bullet. A good place to start is with the local media (newspapers, radio stations, and organizations). Build from there. Your chances are greater when you start small than trying to shoot for a national program.

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Internet leads to bookstores’ demise isn’t a surprise, but bookstores are still valuable. Most likely, the mom and pop stores are the biggest hit. A popular children’s book store in Plano closed recently after many years of service and entertaining kids. Tis a shame.

Meryl is sick, so she’s not posting much.

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It’s no surprise we’re hearing a lot about Fact-Checking thanks to the book making big news (I need not name it and its author). I hope those college textbook fact-checkers get paid well because those aren’t easy topics to verify.

For some publishers, it’s not financially feasible to hire fact checkers and these publishers have no plans to hire them after the flap. After all, most books don’t sell enough copies. Think about how many books are released each day from the hundreds of publishers and how many make the top lists.

How often has a scandal like this happened? Not much. While librarians do catch errors, many authors post erratas on their Web sites and that’s a plus for publishing a book today. You can instantly post a correction.

On the flip side, how does the book flap affect Oprah’s Book Club? One thing is for sure, authors are going continue clamoring to get on Oprah in spite of the situation.

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Painting the Digital River takes a view of art by comparing digital art and classic art. Author James Faure Walker makes many points as he gives value to both art forms, discarding neither as less legitimate than the other. Himself an artist, Walker knows that many artists are confused as to what it means to be an artist and expert at what they do. He says that artists must know about painting, its past and its present, and possess some knowledge of the digital form.

Walker discusses the classical way of learning to draw and paint, and then looks at the tools available for artists today. Just as canvas, brush and pigment all come in many qualities; the digital world offers a variety of hardware and software to enhance the finished product of the artist’s vision.

[ Read more ... ]

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