Morning Brief — May 8, 2008
Mashable reports that FORA.tv (sort of C-SPAN online) has managed to secure a few mil in funding. What this means for us is that FORA is likely to stick around — and cover our authors — for a while yet (at least until they burn through this latest pile of cash).
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Since we’re all now staking our claim online — whether individually or corporately — it probably behooves us to give a little thought to what we post online and how it appears. ReadWriteWeb talks about how we read online. Apparently, research shows that online reading habits are similar to how I used to “read” (in other words, skim) in college. So that means if I write a really long blog post, you won’t read it. Or something.
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A lot of marketing departments reach out to book groups. Booklist’s Book Group Buzz blog lists some sites that feature online reading guides.
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Ever booked an author on “Connie Martinson Talks Books”? Methinks pretty much yes if you’ve ever sent an author to L.A. LA Observed reports that she has donated her interviews to Claremont University.
The Book Publicity Blog 
The problem with Nielsen’s “study” is that it doesn’t factor in the percentage of people who read a long-form piece at the lower WPM rate, or those who might be particularly interested in long-form sites. Nor does any of this take into account a Flesch-Kincaid readability index of the content, which would seem an important attribute to take in. Nielsen’s “conclusions” here are as useless as his obvious conclusion that “users tend to spend more times on pages with more information.” Without accounting for these details, this is junk science, if indeed any serious mind can accept this as “science.” I also liked Nielsen’s casually elitist assertion that “[o]ne downside of the study is that the users had above-average intelligence.” Intelligence by what standards? How much one agrees with Nielsen?