Marketing blogger CopyBlogger lists 10 Pathways to Inspired Writing. The first pathway is an interesting way to look at the way we consume books and blogs:
1. More books, fewer blogs
We all like blogs because they’re easy to digest, and we can come and go as we please and read from start to finish in a few minutes. We are also inherently reactive people, and blogs allow us to communicate and discuss with others immediately.
Books, however, contain scores of ideas not being dealt with in the blogosphere, and I guarantee if you take a weekend to read a book from start to finish, you’ll be chock full of writing material for weeks following. Take notes, “react” with yourself as you read, and pick up a book instead of only depending on Google Reader.
A few books Copyblogger has blogged recently:
11 Blogs, 13 Posts
Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion
by Gary Vaynerchuk
7 Blogs, 12 Posts
Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust
by Chris Brogan
4 Blogs, 4 Posts
The Social Media Marketing Book
by Zarrella Dan
1 Blog, 1 Post
The Ultimate Marketing Plan: Find Your Hook. Communicate Your Message. Make Your Mark.
by Dan S. Kennedy
Mick Liubinskas (of Pollenizer, web business incubator) talks about fitting reading into a busy day. And he’s not talking about lying in the sun reading, he’s talking about ‘powerful reading’ – thinking about the content, writing notes and taking action.
Instead of having my morning coffee over my inbox, I sit in the cafe and read. It’s one of the best parts of my day and I highly recommend it…
Committing to a book generally means immersing yourself and reading about the same thing over and over and over again. It’s only after those 300 pages or 5 listens of an audio book that it actually sinks in and make a difference. That’s why book summaries are crap. It’s not about a little gem of an idea that you can plug in, it’s the slow and steady addition and evolution of how you think.
Mick Liubinskas
From Seth Godin’s post on ‘Why write a book?’
…Out of context, a 140 character tweet cannot change someone’s life. A blog post might (I can think of a few that changed the way I think about business and even life). A movie can, but most big movies are inane entertainments designed to make a lot of money, not change people. But books?
The reason I wrote Linchpin: If you want to change people, you must create enough leverage to encourage the change to happen.
Books change lives every day. A book takes more than a few minutes to read. A book envelopes us, it is relentless in its voice and in its linearity. You start at the beginning and you either ride with the author to the end or you bail. And unlike just about any form of electronic media, you get to read the book at your own pace, absorbing it as you go…
Seth Godin’s books on ReadFeeder:
- How many books in common between the Top 10 from the New York Times Business Hardcover Bestsellers (NYT BHB) and the ReadFeeder Most Blogged business & economics books?
One (!)
We’re looking at the Business books because the New York Times Bestseller Lists appear to be made from the publisher/bookseller’s point of view (hardcover fiction, hardcover non-fiction, trade fiction, mass-market fiction, advice etc). Whereas the ReadFeeder Most-Blogged Lists are categorised from the reader and blog writers point of view – and so the categories only have Business in common right now.
We’ll be looking to compare with the Amazon Bestseller Lists in the future. As those lists are devised from the reader’s perspective there will be more categories to compare then. And from what we’ve seen briefly, wide variations between the lists!
- How many books from the NYT BHB listed on ReadFeeder?
80%
We’re not sure yet, but we look forward to finding out – over the next few months we’ll be comparing the lists here’ to see how they stack up against each other.
Here are the full lists:
December 2009 Business Hardcover Bestsellers
|
This
Month |
|
Last
Month |
RF Dec Rank |
RF First Mention |
| 1 |
SUPERFREAKONOMICS, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. |
2 |
90 |
18 Oct ‘09 |
| 2 |
OUTLIERS, by Malcolm Gladwell. |
1 |
16 |
06 Feb ‘09 |
| 3 |
TOO BIG TO FAIL, by Andrew Ross Sorkin. |
4 |
37 |
19 Nov ‘09 |
| 4 |
THE SELLOUT, by Charles Gasparino. |
|
79 |
16 Dec ‘09 |
| 5 |
JIM CRAMER’S GETTING BACK TO EVEN, by James J. Cramer with Cliff Mason. |
3 |
|
- |
| 6 |
START-UP NATION, by Dan Senor and Saul Singer |
|
54 |
16 Nov ‘09 |
| 7 |
CRUSH IT!, by Gary Vaynerchuk. |
5 |
2 |
15 Sep ‘09 |
| 8 |
THE TOTAL MONEY MAKEOVER, by Dave Ramsey |
7 |
|
|
| 9 |
GOOGLED, by Ken Auletta. |
|
30 |
01 Nov ‘09 |
| 10* |
THIS TIME IS DIFFERENT, by Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff. |
|
- |
We were telling someone about ReadFeeder and they asked, ‘How do you find a blog to read?’ ‘They’re all linked,’ we said. ‘One blogger will refer to the post of another and so on.’
‘But,’ he asked, ‘how do you find that first blog?’
And, I couldn’t remember, it was so long ago. After thinking for some time, the answer turned out to be pretty boring, I’m pretty sure I just googled something and someone’s blog post came up in the results, I had a read, then read some of the archive and the habit grew.
I’ve asked a few other avid blog readers, many were the same, a few started reading the blogs of friends and grew from there, others read about a blog in traditional media, checked it out and never stopped reading.
I’ve got this answer in my back pocket now, but I’ll have to work on a few more – we’ve definitely met some non-blog readers out there who dismiss blogging as just people writing about their cats… Where to start in answering that one?
Part 1 is here.
Online group reading for big books
Infinite Summer is kicking off again. The group previously read and documented the group read of David Foster Wallace’s big book ‘Infinite Jest.’ The next big book to be tackled is Roberto Bolaño’s ‘2666′ at the Las obras de Roberto Bolaño website. The group read comes complete with google group mailing list, a schedule, a weekly recap, some analysis from guides and its own Twitter hashtag.
Join before they start on 25th January 2010.
via Jacket Copy
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