I thought some of you all might have some advice for an old man here. In short, I've written a book. It'll come out next year via an academic press, but it's "academic trade" meaning they hope it can cross over and interest people who do not have entirely pointy heads. I definitely wrote it for non-physicists, so I'm hopeful. Short version of question: If I'm just wanting to have a home base for basic content, with updates on book reviews, where to buy it, and stuff like that, should I go Tumblr, Facebook, or Wordpress... or some mix? Long version of question: So, the press is not going to do much online for it. I've got some twitter ideas to get the word out, since I've got so many facts accumulated about the subject. But if you tweet, it seems best to have a home base to which you can direct interested people (if there are any). So, I keep getting the "oh do Tumblr!" advice. But I look at Tumblr, and my eyes cross, I throw up a little in my mouth, and I can't go any further. I just can't imagine having info about my book in that format. It's not like I'm going to blog about being an author every day or something. And most of the cool photos are archival and I only have rights to put them in the book -- not online. I think most people who will like this book might be older. It has a lot of history in it, in addition to physics, so it seems like my parents' generation might really respond to it for a lot of reasons. That makes me think just creating a site for the book on Facebook would be good. Assuming anyone reads it, I could just correspond with them there. I could post links to reviews, photos of people throwing produce at me during a reading, and all that sort of stuff. Finally, I could do a more traditional sort of site @ B-Bob.com via Wordpress. Meh. I've never used it before, but it seems easy enough. I'd probably even shell out the $99/yr to keep ads off the site and stuff. I definitely like this more than Tumblr, but I'm leaning to Facebook just because I use it a lot already and I think most of my audience will be older folx. Any input welcome. I'm kind of lost but I want to do *something* north of nothing here. I don't necessarily need an "author" site because I don't know if I'll ever write another book.
Tumblr is great if you're looking for visual, sharp, edgy content. like if your book were "Physics for Perverts" or something Zizek-like, it would kill on Tumblr so long as you put snarky picture quotes. You really have to be a Tumblr person to get Tumblr---it's a whole different realm of content than anything else. So I would not recommend you use that. You should have a Facebook page, you can pump Facebook ads targeted specifically to physics interested people, link up with Physics related pages---maybe score a huge hit with one of the mega-pages---like I ****ing Like Science or Word p*rn. you don't have to spend too much time on it, but it's a good homebase for shorter updates. Do a Wordpress for long blogs that will actually get you social lift and syndication. If you want to learn some handy tricks, and blog on the regular, I'd suggest you go Wordpress.org and host it yourself. Here's a checklist of stuff that works for longer blogs: http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/09/...ll-increase-your-traffic-by-tomorrow-morning/ And the data-driven framework for a perfect blog post: http://blog.bufferapp.com/perfect-blog-post-research-data If you want a master course on how to sell books online (may not be 100% relevant as there is a lot of material on Kindle Store---but take from it what you will.) http://okdork.com/2014/05/07/10-marketing-tactics-to-net-41000-downloads-on-amazon/
One of my childhood friends from Houston is an ovarian cancer survivor. The link below is her site. I must not be looking in the right place because i can't detect who hosts the site... http://www.ridebabyridebook.com/
That's a Wordpress.org set up: using an E-commerce plugin in for the shop functionality. It's hosted and upheld by http://www.tonedogmedia.com/domains/webhosting.php. (here I must note my disdain for PHP, even though I love Wordpress :'(). I've also within a second gotten access to all of her contact information, inadvertently. She may want to consider WHOIS domain protection.
I don't think she wants to hide anything. She is very active speaking publicly and raising money for research. This has been out for about three years, I think.
here's an author's tumblr you might look at: http://laurentarshis.com/i-survived Spoiler disclosure, the author is a friend of mine. but i think facebook is what you want. if it's good enough for sarah palin, it's good enough for b bob.
The beauty with any of those sites is that you can make more than one. Who said that your first try is the address you give out? Reserve 3 names and play with one of them. Copy paste onto the name you want to publish against.
That could work. Would be a great book for your guest restroom. B-bob, consider this as a follow-up to your current non-sexy book.
If http://physicsforperverts.wordpress.com is taken, try http://physicsfordorkyperverts.wordpress.com
My sister works for tumblr and said she can help you if you're interested. I personally find myself viewing tumblr more than Facebook for things like this. She's always got great ideas, so there's no harm in talking to her regardless.
Thanks, everyone! Really appreciate all the input, links and ideas. I had not even considered reddit, but I could definitely do an "ask me anything" for my guy's life and work. (It's a biography.) And while the story has no perversions, sadly, it does have Nazis. heypartner, CF would be option 1, of course, but I am still relishing my pseudo/barely anonymity, I guess. I've just enjoyed posting too many stupid things over the years. redefined, I will message you. That's really cool of your sister.
^ look forward to following any choice you make. You are one of the Top 5 funnest reads on the board...but more than that. And anything about physics that you can get in would be grand. "Grand" lols. That's a jab out your expected readership. And make sure you somehow get in the Lady Gaga song that your lab did. right? I'm remembering that correctly?
I led product development at Tumblr for a while. That said, given that you have a lot of static marketing content that's original and a few updates, I'd go with an out of the box design built over Wordpress. But Tumblr is waaaaay much easier to set up, like, it'll take you 10 minutes to register a domain, create a basic Tumblr, apply a theme/design and off you go. You can even create stand-alone pages that have static content like links to your books, quotes from reviews, etc. without any sort of coding.
Found it. My memory is still good. Arguable one of the best geek threads in the Hangout ever. Caught in a Bad Project! or "I Want Good Data!" That must be the title of your book! Too bad you didn't write the book right after this video. You could have gone to kickstarter with that. http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=199647&highlight=lady+gaga <iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Fl4L4M8m4d0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Thanks, cur.ve. Following basso's link, I see you can set up "normal" looking sites on Tumblr that don't even betray that they're tumblr, so I'm learning tons already. I'd thought you had to join tumblr to see any content posted there, so this is a major relief. And heypartner, thanks for the support. I will keep you posted.
I reserved a couple when I started writing, a couple of years ago, through namecheap. I guess I could start using them now.
(drumroll please) I know everyone was waiting anxiously for the final decision. After a long meeting yesterday with someone much more adept at these things than I... -- Site to be launched on Square Space. -- Twitter campaign with tidbits from the book. -- Probably a Facebook page as well, since that's so easy. I've been convinced that square space > wordpress. And I was convinced that, since I don't have a lot of images, Tumblr is kind of dead when you just have a lot of text. (Even though it is very cool in many other ways). Thanks again for all the input (and connections some of you made for me). Salud!
