By Janet Spavlik | Posted on June 15, 2010
Hello, my name is Janet. And I am addicted to Twitter contests.
I swear I haven't always been this way. Sure, I'd entered a contest here and there if the prize was particularly enticing (I really wanted that all-expenses-paid trip to the Super Bowl that one year), but I always was the stereotypical “I never win anything” type. I equated entry forms with lost causes, and therefore, generally avoided them. Why waste my time?
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By Janet Spavlik | Posted on April 30, 2010
Shortly after I became the proud owner of a Barnes & Noble Nook, rumors started intensifying that Apple was on the verge of releasing a tablet computer that quite possibly could make my e-reader (and all the others like it) seem as antiquated as the Brother word processor I used back in college. I was disheartened. I had invested a significant amount of time researching e-reading devices before deciding on the Nook. Now, I had barely opened the packaging on my new toy, and something even...
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By Janet Spavlik | Posted on March 26, 2010
It seems every week I receive a press release or read a news article about a new e-book exclusivity agreement an author has struck with Amazon. This week, it was best-selling science fiction author F. Paul Wilson.
According to the press release I received from Amazon, Wilson has made five of his books available in the Kindle Store exclusively for one year using Amazon's e-book self-publishing tool,
Digital Text Platform.
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By Janet Spavlik | Posted on March 12, 2010
I just returned from an incredible vacation to Colorado. It was the first time I traveled with my Nook, which, of course, is one of the great benefits of an e-reader—it’s portability. I tend to be a, shall we say, slightly heavy packer (OK, I’ll admit it, my suitcase was just shy of 50 lbs., but I still contend that every one of those pairs of shoes was essential), so it was a relief not to have to lug one or two cumbersome print books along, too. And from my admittedly limited, ...
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By Janet Spavlik | Posted on February 26, 2010
Quite honestly, as a consumer, I rarely see a marketing campaign for a book that excites me, or gets people talking. I understand that book publishers generally don't have the marketing budgets to support big, splashy campaigns for a single title, but as a book lover, it's difficult to see the launch of so many great books often met with a collective yawn from the general public.
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