Thursday, September 17, 2009

Tidbits

It’s coming, folks. The day we’ve all been waiting for is just around the corner. September 24, 2009, is just seven days away. So get out your oven mitt and your Strunk and White, and get ready to celebrate National Punctuation Day!

Yes. It’s for real. On September 24, the nation will celebrate the ubiquitous Period, the shapely Question Mark, the elusive Comma, and let’s not forget the exciting Exclamation Point! Wow!

But that’s not all! Joining the celebration will also be the Colon, Semicolon, Quotation Marks, and Apostrophe, with special appearances by the Brackets and Parentheses, the Dash and the Hyphen, and the Ellipsis. That’s right! All our favorite punctuation marks that we use and abuse will be honored on this illustrious day.

And the oven mitt?

That’s for the contest. That’s right. There’s a contest. Bake something in the shape of your favorite punctuation mark and win a prize. But you only have until Spetember 30, so get those photos in.

Boy, this is going to be exciting!





Book Buzzr

Not as exciting, but probably more useful, is something else I came across, which might prove a great marketing tool. Book Buzzr is simply a widget you put on your web page, blog site, Facebook or Twitter page. It allows you to upload an extract of your book for people to read and view.

The nice thing about it is that the book extract shows up in book form. You not only get to see the cover, but when you click the corner, it opens and the pages turn, and you get to see a bit of what's inside. There’s no scrolling involved. And it comes with a navigation bar that allows people to purchase your book, as well as learn more about you, or the book, or any other information you’re willing to put out there.

Book Buzzr is a free service of fReado.com. It doesn’t cost anything, but you do have to join fReado, also free. When you upload your extract, it also becomes available on fReado, which makes another place folks can find, and purchase, your book.

Book Buzzr comes with a lot of other features, too, mostly for Twitter users right now. They plan to expand to Facebook in the future. It seems this might be a neat little thing, especially for those who self-publish.

2 comments:

Mur said...

Thanks for letting us know about Punctuation Day! I'm so excited! I need a party hat!

On another note, BookBuzzr sounds neat. I may have to check it out and see if we can promote ASB books without having chapters downloaded and printed for free... If I was still a teacher, I know I'd try it. Budgets being what they are, teachers have to do what they can.

I'm Jet . . . said...

Wow!!!!!!!!