Dec 9 2008
Essays Wanted and Other Dear Author Miscellany
For the remainder of 2008, I will be taking a little blogging vacation. I won’t be penning an opinion letter instead I’ll be focusing on my reading and reviewing, something I feel like I haven’t been doing as much of as I would like. Instead, next week we’ll be featuring the best of 2008 book lists from each of the reviewers and following that we’ll feature guest blog posts from Dr. Sarah Frantz, of Teach Me Tonight (aka Joan here at Dear Author), Jessica from RacyRomanceReviews, and Heather from The Galaxy Express.
Beginning in 2009, I would like to start running a weekly piece featuring the essays of readers, authors, and bloggings about why they read, why they write, and why they blog. For bloggers and authors, this can serve as an opportunity to highlight your place on the internet or your latest book on sale. For readers, it can serve as written affirmation of your joy in reading, no matter what the genre.
We’ll be continuing to do the controversial liveblogs of books for as long as Sarah and I have the time, energy or interest. (Note, if you have something to say about the liveblog, say it in this thread. I’ll delete it otherwise, positive or negative). Sarah and I are also bringing new things to our blogs in hopes to take advantage of emerging (or emerging to us) technologies and to keep ourselves interested. I think that you always have to try new things in order to bring a maintain a sense of freshness.
We have another promotion and giveaway that we’ll feature on Monday, in conjunction with the Smart Bitches, for a January contemporary book. The promotion will include free books, music, an iPod, and even a coupon.
In regards to the contests and giveaways, we only run those for books we really enjoy otherwise we’d have a giveaway every week and it would dilute the specialness of the contests. That said, I think that we will be doing more giveaways in conjunction with our “Save the Contemporary” goal and to support the books that we love, like, oh Kiss of the Demon King.
One other thing, if you haven’t read our comment moderation policy, please take the time to do so before the end of the year. I do hope that everyone can cut down on the “you suck” comments to other commenters that seem to proliferate the threads these days. I don’t think that discourse is valuable at all. Happy Holidays folks.
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Dec 09, 2008 @ 08:38:56
Jane, I’m very excited to join in the festivities! Looking forward to everyone’s posts.
Dec 09, 2008 @ 08:51:19
Cool! How does a reader submit an essay?
Dec 09, 2008 @ 08:53:00
@votermom: Just email it to me at jane @ dearauthor.com. I thought about setting up a public google calendar so that people could sign up and schedule themselves. Would that be a good idea?
Dec 09, 2008 @ 09:43:56
This sounds fun. Do you plan to continue the If You Like series? I would think a public google calendar would make your life easier, but it might make “gatekeeping” tougher – if that is something you want to pursue.
Dec 09, 2008 @ 11:43:29
I’m working on my guest review, Jane! ;-)
Dec 09, 2008 @ 12:20:21
Will every essay submitted be posted or will there be a screening process?
Dec 10, 2008 @ 09:29:14
Ooh that sounds like fun! Funny how essays about things you love are so much easier than when they’re assigned topics in school, huh? I love writing but don’t have time to make a regular commitment to reviews etc. I’ll definitely start thinking about what to write in my reader essay!
Happy holidays and have fun getting back to some reading!
Dec 10, 2008 @ 10:32:46
What about some sort of online calendar and then folks can email you with the date they want? First come first serve?