Web & Tech

The Book Report Network has launched its seventh editorial site, 20SomethingReads.com. This site will spotlight books for readers in their twenties.

Here’s more from the release: “20SomethingReads.com is for readers, writers, booksellers, librarians and twentysomething bibliophiles who are looking for suggestions of what to read as well as the opportunity to share their impressions of the books they’re reading — and the books they would suggest others to read as well. The editorial features a mix of reviews of adult fiction, nonfiction, young adult and graphic novel titles, along with features, interviews, blogs and contests.”

The site will feature curated bookshelf collections, round-ups of both booksellers’ and librarians’ picks, a “bookstore tour” article series, and recommendations from authors. It also included “20 Days of The Hunger Games,” a 20 post blog series counting down until the film is released.

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

How many book clubs, writers group meetings, literary lunches and bar stool book conversations have been ruined by cell phones and other mobile devices? Too many.

To save your literary conversation from these distractions, the fashionable Kempt website has suggested a solution: the phone stack game. Before your next discussion starts, have everybody set their phones in a neat stack at the middle of the table.

Check it out: “As the meal goes on, you’ll hear various texts and emails arriving… and you’ll do absolutely nothing. You’ll face temptation—maybe even a few involuntary reaches toward the middle of the table—but you’ll be bound by the single, all-important rule of the phone stack. Whoever picks up their phone is footing the bill.” (Photo via Phil Roeder)

Scholastic has launched a special educational website called “Teaching with Brian Selznick.” The free site offers virtual field trips of New York City’s American Museum of Natural History, the inspiration for Brian Selznick‘s latest illustrated novel, Wonderstruck.

The website also contains classroom resources for both Wonderstruck and The Invention of Hugo Cabret. In the video embedded above, Selznick takes viewers a behind-the-scenes tour of the museum.

Here’s more from the release: “The virtual field trip, which is also available in closed caption, is hosted by Selznick and museum president Ellen V. Futter, and takes students on a tour through three exhibits in the museum: the Wolf Diorama, the Ahnighito Meteorite, and the Giant Anopheles Mosquito, all prominently featured in Wonderstruck. Students will also learn about the museum’s history, exhibits, and collections from a museum curator, an exhibitions manager, and a senior scientist.”

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Using QR codes or Microsoft tags, we can embed barcodes (like the Microsoft tag posted here) on print posters, magazines or books.  Using a special mobile phone reader, smartphone users can click on these real life links to read material online.

At the Publishing App Expo yesterday, Microsoft tag business development manager Adam Schneider said that publishers are driving tags–five billion tags have been printed since January 2009. Social media expert Jay Baer used Microsoft Tags in his new book, The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter & More Social. Follow this link to use the free tagging service.

We’ve embedded the mobile barcode from the book above–as you can see, Microsoft has developed some custom imagery for tags. In addition, Atria Books marketing manager Hillary Tisman shared advice for writers looking to use Microsoft Tags. We’ve collected the tips below…

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Readers looking for literary-centric web videos can turn to LiveWriters.com. The site showcases videos spotlighting on authors and books of every genre.

Browsers can find everything from book trailers to recorded interviews. The site’s most recent videos features Chuck Palahniuk reading from Knock, Knock, Paul Zak discussing the origins of morality and Jeffrey Eugenides talking about his latest title The Marriage Plot.

Here’s more from the site description: “LiveWriters is home to video and audio by and about writers of all types and kinds, as well as news, stories, original writing – in short anything that matters to writers, writing and the future of our shared culture. And we believe in a good healthy dose of fun too. Participate, play, share, enjoy.”

If you are like many National Novel Writing Month writers, your eyes hurt after weeks of night-writing on your computer screen. The free F.lux software will change the color of your Mac, PC or iOS device screen to adapt to light changes.

Here’s more about the tool: “Ever notice how people texting at night have that eerie blue glow? Or wake up ready to write down the Next Great Idea, and get blinded by your computer screen? During the day, computer screens look good—they’re designed to look like the sun. But, at 9PM, 10PM, or 3AM, you probably shouldn’t be looking at the sun. F.lux fixes this: it makes the color of your computer’s display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day.”

This is our seventeenth NaNoWriMo Tip of the Day. As writers around the country join the writing marathon this month, we will share one piece of advice or writing tool to help you cope with this daunting project.

Laughing Squid contributing editor EDW Lynch created a satirical tribute to novelist Cormac McCarthy called “Yelping with Cormac.” The blog answers the hypothetical question: “What if Cor­mac McCarthy was on Yelp?”

So far, the blog has posted reviews of business establishments based in the West Coast including Starbucks, Victoria’s Secret, two rounds on Taco Bell,  and The Apple Store.

Here’s more from McCarthy’s three-star review of McDonald’s: “He pulled another cold french fry from the greasestained Happy Meal box. He ate it slowly. The sun rising behind him over the limestone bluffs. The barren valley and the road winding through it still in morning’s blue shadow.” (Image, via TweetinCormac)

Do you know what your publishing blog, bookselling site or author page looks like on mobile devices? Millions of readers are reading content on mobile devices, and you could be unwittingly be transmitting terrible content.

Over the weekend, an alert reader told this GalleyCat editor that his personal site looked terrible in a mobile browser. Despite blogging for a living, we had no idea that our images and text got completely jumbled on a smartphone. After a few frantic hours of work, we fixed our blog so it can be read across a variety of mobile devices.

Below, we’ve collected five free ways you can make your author page more mobile-friendly…

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Nonfiction writer James H. Keeffe, III authored a guest piece for Inside Google Books titled “A 67-year reunion of wartime survivors, inspired by Google Books.” Keefe’s book, Two Gold Coins and a Prayer: The Epic Journey of a World War II Bomber Pilot and POW, recounts his father’s (James H. Keeffe, II) military service experiences.

At one point, Keefe’s father was compelled to hide with a Jewish family in the attic of a kindly Dutch doctor; the family consisted of a mom, dad and nine year-old little girl. After Keefe’s distributor listed the title on Google Books, Helen Cohen-Berman found it from searching on Google and then got in touch with Keefe; she revealed herself to be that daughter who shared the attic space with Keeffe’s father six decades ago.

Here’s more from the piece: “Six months after Helen’s email to me, after much planning, Helen flew to Seattle and was reunited with my father on September 13, 2011. Sixty-seven years had passed since last they saw each other. It was a very moving experience—all possible because of Google Books. I was greatly honored to have been able to bring my father and Helen together again. Helen said the reunion was a ‘closing of a circle’ and a healing time for her as she was finally able to talk about some of the events she had endured. For my father, the reunion was a joyful occasion.”

Goodreads has tapped its six million members to create a new book recommendation engine, analyzing reader opinions about 190 million books stored on their digital shelves.

CEO Otis Chandler explained in the release: “No one has been able to provide recommendations like this before.  This is the first time a community of readers of this size has collectively shared their literary likes and dislikes … It gives us data that no one else has.  For example, we have more than 174,000 ratings of the best-selling ‘The Help’ while Amazon only has around 4,400.”

To test the recommendations, simply visit this link–you must rate at least 20 books to get an accurate reading of your literary tastes. The new feature relies on a collection of secret algorithms to predict what kind of books a new reader will enjoy.