Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Stacey Cochran & CLAWS

Today I'd like to introduce you to guest blogger Stacey Cochran. He's the moderator and organizer of Raleigh Write 2 Publish. Write 2 Publish, a monthly writing community, meets to learn about the craft and business of writing, publishing, and offer encouragement to its members. He has some exciting news about a just launched e-magazine.


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Mittany, thanks so much for having me at your place today as a guest blogger. As you know, I am in the midst of a 45-Day blog tour to promote the release of my novel CLAWS. This is the first time that I’ve ever done a blog tour, and it’s been a wild ride.

 

Today though, I’d like to talk about a new website that I’m launching, Online Book Review.

 

Online Book Review (or OBR for short) is the culmination of years of planning and development. It is essentially an online literary magazine, but I would like to utilize video and audio to liven the place up. We are looking primarily for people who will conduct interviews with authors in text or on video (via YouTube) or are willing to write reviews of books. Video book reviews are most especially welcome.

 

One of my goals with Online Book Review is to try and get the site to rank for search phrases like “Online Book Review” and “Online Book” and “Book Review” as these are some of the most popular phrases related to books. If the site ever makes it to page 1 of Google for these phrases, we’ll have a lot of traffic. But the title lends itself to the vision I have for publishing and to names like Kenyon Review or the Georgia Review… only ours is the Online Book Review.

 

For those who are familiar with my website How To Publish A Book you’ve probably seen the explosion in web traffic this past year or two. Online Book Review is my vision for the next phase of growth, and I’ll be able to publish stuff there by contributors in a way that I haven’t been able to at How To Publish A Book (due to the narrow focus of that site’s purpose).

 

So I’m really excited. It’s been an incredible summer so far, and I’ve managed to hit several bestseller lists with CLAWS. I’ve had in the back of my mind for years that once I achieved that level of success that I would launch a small press. The day has arrived.

 

I’m already considering ideas like a poetry contest, yearly anthologies of Best of OBR to distribute to bookstores, and developing “on-air” talent with all the video stuff.

 

It’s just been astonishing to me these past few years that no one has launched Book TV online in a more compelling and interesting way. My goal is to fix that!

 

So come check us out at Online Book Review.

 

Thanks so much, Mit! And thanks everyone for reading!         



6 comments:

Elisa said...

Terrific idea, Stacey!! Best of luck with the new site -- I just know it will be a success. You've had the magic touch as of late!!

Becka said...

Wow, Stacey, I just saw that "The Colorado Sequence" is sitting at #245 on the overall Kindle Charts. Keep this up and you'll break the top 100 or better. :-D

And good luch with your new site - it's a great idea. I'll keep an eye on it.

Becka said...

Luck even - the power of the typo is strong with me today.

Stacey Cochran said...

Thanks so much, guys.

Yeah, The Colorado Sequence reached as high as #111 overall last week.

It has definitely found a receptive audience in Kindle readers. It makes me want to bring out the third book in the Amber Page trilogy... Dr. Plant.

Anonymous said...

For that I would buy me a Kindle!

Becka said...

Hi again Stacey,

If you do publish the third Amber Page book will you consider making a mobipocket, smashwords or scribd version available for those of us outside the US? (I'm assuming of course that you go through createspace for the paper version again)

I really want to buy it.