All Posts by Don Lafferty

The loss of Harry Kalas is a tough one here in Philly. Me and Harry spent lots of amazing times together. I’ve lived most of my baseball life with him on the radio telling me what’s happening.  LOTS of good times. Thanks for everything, Harry, we’ll miss you every game.   – dl

Something unusual is brewing at the Doylestown Bookshop, and it involves games, a bunch of liars and one chill dog. The Philly Liar’s Club is hosting a party called “Liars Tell the Truth about the Doylestown Bookshop“,  at the store, located on 16 South Main Street in Doylestown, on Saturday, May 2nd from 2-4 p.m. […]

Creating a Social Media Footprint is a no-brainer for a writer establishing platform — fiction and non-fiction. Set aside three or four hours of your self-marketing time to knock out the following list of basics, and you’ll be well on your way to having your name and your work more search-able and share-able. 1. Blog […]

I’ve been meaning to drop a note to Beth Harte about her Online Media Boot Camp coming up this week, and as usual, one click led to another which landed me on her blog about Social Media Experts and the growing practice of describing one’s self as an expert. Also as usual, my comment got […]

I’m a big fan of writing letters. I’ll still fire off an email if I want to connect with a company or a person through their website or blog, but in my book, nothing beats an old fashioned piece of paper with a real signature for maximum impact. When Ed Rendell was running for Mayor […]

This morning Jocelyn Kelley followed me on Twitter. Twitter-logic gets me scratching my head and asking, “Who is this @jocelynkelley and why does she care what I have to say?” To find my answer I click the link on her Twitter mini-bio and find out that, ahhhh, she’s a literary publicist in the Boston area. […]

It’s funny how I’m constantly meeting tremendously accomplished people that I never heard of. I made the one hour drive up to Clinton Book Shop last night to meet up with shop manager Rob Dougherty and PATIENT ZERO author Jonathan Maberry. I didn’t realize until I looked at Rob’s Facebook invitation that THE SHADOW YEAR […]

I’m looking for the hands down, best-in-show, online resources for travelers, and I can’t think of a better way to start the category than with this guy. Christopher Elliott has been called one of the world’s leading travel experts. His focus isn’t on the destination, or even the journey, but on the tools you need […]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: From WNYC in New York, this is NPR’s On the Media. I’m Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I’m Bob Garfield. The new media are thriving. The old media are dying. That seems to be the theme of our program from week to week to week. But, of course, it’s much more complicated than that because increasingly the old and new are merging into one another.

This week, we’re devoting the program to the oldest of old media – books. Chances are you’ll be buying one or two this holiday season, but where and how you’ll buy them and in what form are open questions.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Nowadays, some 60 percent of all books are not bought in brick-and-mortar bookstores; they’re purchased at airports or checkout counters, Wal-Mart or Costco, Toys R’ Us or Williams-Sonoma, or online.

In case you were wondering, 11 percent are purchased from Amazon.com. The rest are bought at bookstores, but mostly the big chains. The membership of the American Booksellers Association, which serves independent bookstores, has dropped from more than 5,000 to roughly 1,700 in the last decade. Should we decry the state of publishing today?

Goodreads is a community just like every other online social network. What differentiates Goodreads is their focus on books. Even though MySpace and Facebook both have a few different widgets you can add to your account which enable you to display and review books in much the same way, Goodreads can also be added to […]