News of the Week

I need to do this more often: just share my interesting blog-reading from the week. I love it when people do that on their blogs. Why shouldn't I share? So here I go--a few tidbits from my week of online reading.

Venta de Libros. Amazon vs. Macmillan has fomented a HUUUUGE amount of discussion in the blogosphere, provoked by Amazon's choice to remove the "buy" link from all of their Macmillan titles. Amazon explains their reasoning here, Roger Sutton offers another viewpoint on the matter over at Read Roger, and the vast, multi-story-Galactic-Senate-Building-on-Coruscant-like conglomeration of bloggers is off and running. Don't you just love us?? And thanks to Carmela Martino at Teaching Authors, I learned another side of the story from Author's Guild about Macmillan's e-royalties and a new Who Moved My Buy Button? website that enables authors to keep track of their Amazon pages. All veeery interesting.

Social Networking. I enjoyed reading Gregory K's take on Facebook Friends vs. Fans over at The Happy Accident--not to mention the comments from others weighing in on how they view their various online communities and how they deal with those periodic baffling "Do I know you?" friend requests that come out of nowhere. And, speaking of social media, those in journalism--and those who like to approach their blogs as a more professional endeavor--should take a gander at the Radio Television Digital News Association's Social Media and Blogging Guidelines. Professional journalists are supposed to adhere to a code of ethics, but when it comes to the online world, things can get a bit confusing. They've got some helpful do's, don'ts, and examples.

Tea Cozy Binge I went over to A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy to see if Liz B. had any posts up about the Amazon/Macmillan thing and instead got sidetracked by a bunch of unrelated but equally interesting stuff: reviews of Rosemary Clement-Moore's The Splendor Falls (which I just finished reading) and Varian Johnson's Saving Maddie, plus a great post on the annoying shoulds of being a blogger. (Those dang shoulds in my own head...those are the kicker, aren't they?)

On Getting Back to Work. I found a great site on the topic of getting your mind to focus on your creative work called 43 Folders (by the most auspiciously-named Merlin Mann). There, I found a link to the SFWA's list of 50 Strategies for Making Yourself Work as well as Merlin Mann's own post, Hack Your Way out of Writer's Block. Also, don't miss his 3-part series on devoting attention to creative work: it's called Making Time to Make and I think we all need to be reminded of this from time to time.