So, apparently Tor doesn’t read my reviews. Why? Because a day after I lamented over R.A. Salvatore’s latest lackluster effort (found HERE) I received an email from Tor asking if I’d be willing to show off this little widget. Now, not one for offering free advertising to huge publishing houses, I normally wouldn’t worry about it, but… the web designer in me just thought this was too damn cool too pass up.
The Widget there is chock full of cool information about The Ancient, including an audio/video interview, an excerpt from the novel, news and more. Despite my less than stellar review of his novel, I’m still a fan of Salvatore; and hey, who knows, I may not have liked The Ancient but maybe you will. If anything, this is a great example of how publishers can use the web to properly promote their authors.
I am web developer (not designer..as i do java, though i can do some of my own CSS..thanks firebug!)…anyway, as a web developer, I also think this is pretty cool. I kinda want to add it to my site to encourage book companies to do more of these.
And Aidan, you being a web designer explains how pleasing to the eye your site happens to be.
I got an email for this as well. From my experience, there doesn’t seem to be much contact going on between the actual publicists that are handling the author’s books, and those working with online promotion and I think that’s a problem that needs fixing…
As far as the widget, it is pretty cool, but is anyone else experiencing a slowdown when visiting this blog? Maybe it’s just me :)
Jeff,
Thanks! It’s true that my history as a web designer guides a lot of what I do with A Dribble of Ink, the design of it most importantly. I took a lot of time conceptualizing it before I began the blog, and I think it paid off in the long run.
Not to too my own horn, but I think one of the things that makes A Dribble of Ink stand out is the fact that I don’t use a preset template like so many other bloggers do.
Robert,
It’s definitely a problem that publishing companies, especially large ones like Tor and Del Rey, don’t really seem to mix their resources. It makes me appreciate smaller imprints like Orbit and Solaris that much more!
Also, if people are experiencing problems similar to Roberts, let me know and I’ll go about fixing it.
No slowdown for me. I visited the page in Firefox and checked windows task mgr and didn’t see Firefox using extra resources due to the widget.
I use IE so maybe that’s it…