Recently I have been helping a couple of friends set up their first blogs. As well as learning the technical steps to setting up a blog, and creating blog posts using the WordPress interface, we have also talked about how to approach writing an actual blog post.
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Is Blogging Dead? No, not really! Yesterday I tweeted the following, “Have @facebook pages had their day? Feels worn out to me now. I don’t have as much enthusiasm for my page any more.” I didn’t expect a response, because to be honest, many of my tweets are like farting into the wind, quickly gone and as quickly forgotten. However, friend and fellow artist Shayla Maddox responded, and we had, what was for Twitter anyway, a longer than usual conversation about social networking and blogging. It was my assertion, that whilst I was as active as ever on my own personal profile, given that’s where my friends and family are all gathered together, I was losing enthusiasm for my Facebook page, despite having over 2,700 followers. In truth, I got more comments, likes and activity on there two years or so ago when I had about 1000 followers. Now, in part I think this is down to the mercurial drive of Facebook to squeeze every last dollar out of it’s members, and making it harder and harder for pages to be a useful business tool, unless they pay up, and in fact…businesses are waking up to this. I also think that people are just plain bored with them.
Read MoreBut should not an ‘ebook’ cost considerably less than the printed version? Really? No? Well, I ask this because around Christmas I toyed with getting a Kindle. However, Luke pointed out that it was an unnecessary expensive when I could have the Kindle app on my iPad. So, I bowed to pressure (always pays to take the line of least resistance where my husband is concerned) and I did indeed install the Kindle app on my iPad. I was very excited to discover that many of my favourite classics are free. I downloaded many. I also decided to buy some of the ones available in the Kindle sale. I was rapidly getting carried away with it all, when my excitement and enthusiasm was brought to an abrupt halt! Now, I love history, really love history and have many, many history books. So many in fact, that I am now prohibited from buying any more due to lack of space. I am not interested in historical ‘novels’, though these are cheap as chips. I read factual history books based upon a solid body of research and evidence. I decided therefore to go and check out some of my favourite historians to see what their bestselling works were going for. My first port of call was Barry Cunliffe, well known historian whose specialist field is the Celts. Imagine my consternation when I discover that his best selling work ‘The Celts’ published in 1997 is £10.99, and the paperback version (wait for it), £10.99. Another of his, ‘The Ancient Celts’, also published in 1997, Kindle version£11.63, paperback edition £12.92. I did some research and discovered pretty much the same situation for most of the history books that interested me. I am at a loss to understand how the publishers can justify this pricing policy when there are no printing costs or other related overheads? I appreciate that there is the royalty payment to the writer…but still!!! How is this mark-up justified? So, my Kindle experience thus far? Disappointing. ETA: Having said that, reading the books I have downloaded thus far is an enjoyable experience.
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Not much been going on lately artwise other than a lot of reading of art books and publications. Sort of tired after the frenetic ‘holiday’ (and I use that term loosely) period. Had a bit of a break from work, drawing, painting etc, though am formulating lots of new ideas. So anyway, a recent doodle and a bit of poetry of sorts thrown in.
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