Links
[posted by Gavin Robinson, 8:31 am, 16 June 2012]
- Ross Mahoney is looking into creating an Air Force Records Society. If you’re interested, go and give him support and feedback. There’s more discussion at Airminded.
- Also at Airminded, horror writer Arthur Machen and the First World War.
- Skulking in Holes and Corners asks what was so special about battlefields in early-modern war.
- Language Log reports that inept reactionary pressure group the Queen’s English Society is going to close because most of its members can’t be bothered to do anything, and shows that they weren’t even very good at grammar (hat tip Andrew Hickey). This could also mean the end of the No She’s Not, She’s German Society.
- Historypunk is starting a series of posts on how humanities academics can build an online reputation. In my experience it wasn’t too hard to build up a reputation when I had nothing much to do, but keeping up my online presence has been much harder when it’s competing with paid work and writing for traditional publication. Writing a book has almost killed my blog but now I need to promote the book online. I might have to try Twitter soon…
- Ages ago I was asked to link to this editable collaborative online edition of the Devonshire Manuscript. So now I have, although I haven’t had time to try it out.
- Podcasts of IHR seminars are now freely available under a Creative Commons licence at History SPOT without having to log in, which is a big improvement.
Comment by Brett — 10:04 am, 16 June 2012 [permanent link to this comment]
Yes, you should try Twitter! It is the bee’s knees. But if you do, a word of warning: don’t just use it to promote your book. I follow a couple of people who only ever talk about their book and how you should buy it, and to be honest I’m not sure why I do. Don’t just jump in when the book is published either, join sooner rather than later and build up an audience. I’m not saying don’t promote it, but it won’t work unless you show some personality, engage with other people, retweet their stuff. In short, be yourself, not a PR bot. (Of course, I’m assuming you don’t already tweet in some other capacity and know all this already, in which case my apologies!)
Ta for the linkbacks, too.
Comment by Ross — 3:57 pm, 16 June 2012 [permanent link to this comment]
Thanks for the link Gavin.
Comment by Gavin Robinson — 7:32 pm, 16 June 2012 [permanent link to this comment]
Good advice, Brett. I definitely don’t want to do it just for the book. I want to promote myself in general and engage with other people just like I have with this blog. I was planning to get set up on Twitter well in advance, but the publishers keep moving the publication date sooner and I’m not ready yet (just finished a data entry job and need lots of rest away from computers, although tweeting takes less typing than blogging as long as I don’t find it too addictive).
Comment by Brett — 3:54 am, 17 June 2012 [permanent link to this comment]
Sounds like a rest is a good idea — and it’s just possible Twitter is addictive, I’m over 18000 tweets now! Coincidentally, Kevin Levin has just put up a post on using social media to promote book sales, saying much the same as I do above:
http://cwmemory.com/2012/06/16/turning-likes-and-followers-into-sales/
So I’m glad to see we’re all on the same page here!