Archive for August, 2010

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

Publishers: Edit your book links and dates

We’ve introduced a few changes to LibraryThing for Publishers to help publishers get their books in, and the data right.

Each publisher/imprint now has a “Your titles” link, which takes you to a page where you can change the URL and publication date of books.

Small publishers may find this easier than the Simple LibraryThing Format, that encourages you to put ISBN and URL in the same uploading spreadsheet. I used this feature to help Small Beer Press, Chin Music Press, Myrmidon Books.

You can now also change your “Preferred source” for book data, to get titles, authors and publication dates from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca and others.

Labels: LibraryThing for Publishers

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

Author interview podcast: Dr. Larry Rosen

Dr. Larry Rosen’s new book Rewired: Understanding the iGeneration and the Way They Learn looks at how technologies available to children today (the iGeneration) are affecting the ways they best learn. He observes children texting during class, studies the technologies they’re using on their own time and applies his observations (and clinical research) to suggestions for educators and parents for how to engage students.

Go to the interview page to listen, as well as to get resource links and the transcript*.

Dr. Rosen is also answering questions via an author chat, until September 5th, if you’d like to ask questions or follow the conversation.

*I’m hoping to crowdsource the transcript, so if you have time to listen and transcribe a bit of the podcast, it will help those who aren’t able to listen.

Labels: podcasts

Monday, August 16th, 2010

Publishers: Another way to upload your books

Since last week, participating in LibraryThing for Publishers has exploded, with 800% more titles and 21 new publishers.

To help more publishers join we’ve added a handy second format for publishers to upload their titles to LibraryThing for Publishers, which skips over the need to have an ISBN-based URL to every book. We used this format to upload from RAND Corporation and Mercer University Press, who would not otherwise have been able to participate.

The format is CSV (Comma-Separated Values) which can be exported by most programs including Excel and Google Docs, and conforms to spreadsheets produced by title-management applications. So long as every row contains both an ISBN—ISBN10 or ISBN13, with separators or not—and a URL, we’ll spot it and make the link. Other columns can be present or absent, as wanted.

The option is available in the “Upload Catalog Titles” section of each publisher or imprint.

Labels: LibraryThing for Publishers, Uncategorized

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

Authors on the Cover of Time

Yesterday the New York Times reported that Jonathan Franzen was to become the first living writer to grace the cover of Time magazine since 2000, when Stephen King made it on. (Twain was on in 2008, but he was dead.)

So I wondered how often Time had featured authors in past. I came across Time’s handy index of covers, and made this graph, showing the 129 writers—dead and alive—Time has featured since 1923.

Here’s the chart, with a five-year moving average. As you might predict, it’s been a long, continuous fall.

Labels: stats

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

Publishers: How to take advantage of LibraryThing for Publishers

I’ve made a five-minute screencast explaining how publishers can join the newly-announced LibraryThing for Publishers.

Email tim@librarything.com with questions.

Labels: LibraryThing for Publishers, new feature, new features

Friday, August 6th, 2010

People who read series, read series

From the recommendations for The Devil’s Right Hand by Lilith Saintcrow (Orbit Books).

Series readers read series, and LibraryThing picks up on this. (And notice the series are all by different authors.) I suppose this is common knowledge, but I’m surprised at how strong the effect is. LibraryThing already has recommendations on series page—for example, the series here, Dante Valentine, but maybe we need a series-to-series recommender.

Labels: Uncategorized