Hardcover vs. paperback

Hardcover vs. paperback

Usually the hardcover is released first, then a year later-ish the paperback of the same book is released. The paperback is a way to promote the book series because the author is about to have another book release. Right? That's how it works.

Well, I'm not here to say if that one of the greatest promotion method ever or not. This post is mainly to discuss my book cover preference.

If I have to choose between hardcover or paperback, I would go with paperback.

Paperback is awesome, people.

I know that hardcovers look better and last longer.

But paperback weight less and are cheaper. Also, they usually have extra material such playlists, sneak peak of upcoming book, etc.

Now that's something.

Sometimes I wish all books were paperback.

But, Hardcovers add value to the overall book appearance and it looks wonderful.

So tell me which do you prefer? Hardcover or paperback.

List of Donts-"Writing Tips"

Heyhihello

So I've been thinking for a while if I should or should not write this post. But I will write it down and if it looks good, I will post it. (well, I guess I posted it)

One of the things that has pushed me to write this post is that I once wrote a novel (92 thousand words) and it was never published. But writing a book had taught me so many lessons. Well, here is the list of things I think you should "not-do" if you are planning to publish a book.

Don’t brag: I don’t think I bragged about my book because I don’t think its that good and none of my friends cared because they hate reading. But looking back at, I think I spent so much time talking about my novel, my novel and my novel. I had a feeling that people were annoyed with my talk about the novel but I didn’t care because I wanted to talk about it. So my advice would be: don’t mention the fact that you are writing a book to everyone. Only mention it in front of people who would actually encourage and support you.

Dont reveal don’t go around and say that you are writing a book when you are only figuring out the plot. No. Just don’t. Keeping it secret project will increase from the value of the novel. I mean what if people jinx it. Jinx the fact that you are spending that much of time writing. Yea, it happens.

Don’t ask from everyone to edit it: seriously who wants to edit? I asked my friends to edit it but they didn’t want to so they obviously didn’t edit it. And sometimes people would send me their own spin and change everything. Basically, what I am trying to say is figure out who will help you before you reveal your secret.

Don’t send it to everyone: people who seem excited the minute they know you wrote a book and they will ask you to send it. You send it to them and expect a full review after a week, a month, a year. But hey, I am still waiting. Not happening soon!

Finally, all I want to say is before you decide whether or not you should write a book, you need to read a lot and write a lot too. Write anything, random stuff. And as mentioned before I use the blog to keep writing and writing. And of course to help me explore new books.  

Tata for now

My Blogging History

HeyhiHello

When did I start blogging?

In 2006 when we first had internet in Egypt, I started my own private blog. It was all about Harry Potter. Just harry potter. Then I stopped after a year or so because I was bored with it. Then in 2008, I started a new blog on LiveJournal to be able to enter contests. I used this blog to review books. Then in 2009 I thought of "why not move from LiveJournal(which is pretty dull and boring) to blogger. At first I copied and pasted the reviews I had on LiveJournal. Then I fell in love with blogger and from that day I have been blogging on blogger till now.

Now why do I blog in the first place. I will state it in a clear and a simple way.

To get better at writing.

If you know me in person, you would know how much my English is not good at all but I love writing and I want to be good at it. I want, in the future, to be able to write novels. I do have a novel but as you might have guessed, it is full of grammar and spelling mistakes. It needs lots of editing. So blogging is just an excuse to write more and to get better at it.

Before I started blogging, I never knew anything about ARCs. I didn’t know book bloggers—even blogs-existed. I don’t know how or when did I find about the story siren blog. I thought I was doing something unique and original when I started blogging. Not even close. 

USP of my blog

My blog is not all about this book was great or this book sucked. It is all about reading "In Between the Lines". Meaning, that I would write down what I learned from a particular book. What had it made me realize. Sometimes I review it like a normal blogger and sometimes I don’t. Because its not my job to decide for you its bad or good. But I think of reviewing books as a way to tell you the lessons I learned from it. I don’t know but that how I see it.

Finally, I just want to say that blogging is a way to have fun and share your reviews with people worldwide and there is no right or wrong in doing that.

Tata for now

Epic Earth Hour 2011

Heyhihello

Earth hour is this Saturday. I wont tell you how excited I am for 2011 Earth Hour. I will just copy and paste some of my tweets; maybe that will reflect how exciting I am.

#EarthHour is our way of saying "Thank you" to earth because there is no planet B

No lights in the streets=more stars in the sky #EarthHour

#EarthHour is a 1 hour dedicated to Earth

#Earthhour is an opportunity to all businesses to market their brand. 

But this blog post is not about my tweets.

I am just here to tell you how you can use this hour to do some interesting activities. Be aware these activities should take place when the lights are off.    

The following is a list of very interesting things you can do during Earth Hour:

Narrate a story: sit in a group and narrate a story. It could be from your imagination or from a  story you read from before.

Complete a story: let someone begin the first part of a story, you continue it, other finish it. Get it? So it will be a story narrated by so many people in 1 hour.

Read a book on smart phones/computers: it must be unplugged

Stare at the sky: more stars will be revealed

Count the lights: from your window, count how many people are having their lights off or on and compare. Then tweet about it or share it on facebook

Read on candles: romantic, eh?

Ok so I wrote this list without searching or anything. It just came from my heart because there is so much to do during Earth Hour and it’s for a great cause. Lets do this.

For more info please visit here

P.S. If you want to share a picture from your Earth Hour experience, send it to me on twitter and I will retweet it.

Tata for now 

Male Readers vs. Female Readers

Heyhihello

Please take a moment and think of the answer of this question"who reads more? Female or male?"

Yet the better question would be "Should there be any difference in the amount of reading done based on gender?"

I am not here to tell you my opinion. I am here to share some interesting stats about this topic.

Keep in mind that these stats are Canadian.

The stats…are you ready?

57% of Canadian readers are females

43% of Canadians readers are males

52% of the Canadian female readers are book buyers

For readers: Do these stats surprise you?

For publishers: Do these stats make you re-think your target market?

When I asked on twitter and facebook "who reads more?", 100% of the responses were for the female gender.

The question of the day is: if males and females are not reading then what else are they doing? I know there is lots of stuff that could be done other than reading but what is it specifically? Hit the comment section below to fill me in.

Tata for now 
Source: pmb.ca

Publishers Expand to the Middle East

HeyHiHello

We all have been following the uprising of revolutions in the Middle East. It first started in Tunisia. Then it moved on to Egypt. The story doesn’t end here because the Middle East is still struggling to become free. Libya and Bahrain are trying to do the same thing. Other countries who have been in the same conflict are trying to overthrow their dictator. We hope they succeed to get back their basic rights.

Let's shift our focus back to Egypt and Tunisia. These two countries are free.  They are starting from scratch. They are hopeful and optimistic about tomorrow.

The purpose of this post:

 Books could pull a nation upwards or downwards. If a nation don’t read, then they don’t dream, then they become ill and disable to act free. And this happened in Egypt and Tunisia.

A quarter of people in the Arab world hardly ever or never read books for personal enjoyment -andfaraway.net

Arabs only read 4 pages a year, compared with an average American who read 11 books a year-UN Survey.

I am not saying that there are no books in the Middle East. It's just that over time, reading, as a hobby, had faded away among the Middle Eastern societies. But if publishing companies are watching carefully, the Middle East will be a great market in the future. Could you imagine expending your publishing business to reach 352 million people. These people are thirsty for knowledge and wisdom. They want to read and if not now...it will happen soon. I even found this video where an Egyptian is urging people to start reading more.

I think publishing companies should consider expanding their business into the Middle East. I know that might sound bias but start from Egypt. There are over 80,000,000 people in Egypt. You can't go wrong with that number!

Proof that your publishing company will be successful in Egypt àTwilight by Stephenie Meyer became a bestseller. So can other books!

And I know you can't just read this post and decide the next day that you will expand into the Middle East. But till then, start donating books to test the waters. Donate YA books and see the reaction.

From a personal experience, people go to amazon.com, drool over covers of books but they can't afford to buy it because it's in dollars or because they don’t have a credit card or because there is no shipping to Egypt.

Publishing companies (I don’t want to mention names, because I don’t want to forget any) from now on should start considering the Middle East as a potential market just like Europe and South America are.

Please contact me for more info or leave a comment for further discussion 

Tata for now 

Discussion: Vampire Gender Roles (2)

HeyHiHello

Do you remember our vampire discussion?

Click here if you missed it

Today I will be getting further into the discussion by discussing the gender roles of vampires.

Twilight was a phenomenon because Edward was stronge and bella was weak.  Edward protected Bella when needed. But bella was stronger because Edward cant resist the smell of her blood (whatever that means). What I am trying to say is the following:

·         Female strength is in her weakness

·         Male weakness is in his strength

This is exactly what I love about twilight is that gender roles are defined indirectly. I like that way. Its how it should be. The same thing applies for 'The Vampire Diaries'

But when I read a book where a female character is a vampire and the male is a human. The female vampire is stronger than the male human. She protects him. She looks after him. I truly get disgusted. Because that’s not how it should be. I started reading a book like that and I couldn’t finish it for a year now. Trust me I tried twice to finish it.

But to be fair I read Infinite Days by Rebecca Maizel and it was a female vampire who falls in love with a male human. But when she fell in love with him, she was human too with a 500 years of experience in the vampire world. That sort of changed my mind towards female vampires. But I wonder what book 2 will hold for me.

Therefore, I don’t think I will read any more books where the main character is a female vampire because it doesn’t reflect my opinion with gender roles.

What do you think? Leave me a comment or a question and I will address it next time.   

Discussion: Vampire Books

Heyhihello

Today we shall open a discussion on Vampire Books. Hopefully there will be parts to that discussion.

So if you ask me what are some vampire books that I read?

Personally I didn’t read much. I read the Twilight saga, Thirst and Infinite Days. Just for now I am going to talk about Twilight.

Twilight was the book that made me fall in love with the YA genre. Bella was this weak character who couldn’t survive without Edward. I liked that. And if you don’t agree that twilight was a good book, you could at least agree that it was a huge phenomenon. It is still huge till now. Twilight forced many people into reading; opening new doors for many potential readers. When my friend told me about twilight back in 2008, I was disgusted. A blood-sucking vampire. EW. But when I saw the movie (this same friend forced me too) I fall in love.

But why? What happened? Why is twilight such a phenomena? What made it so popular across the globe?

My analysis: we get to see Bella; a girl below average. She doesn’t date much. She doesn’t spend much time in front of the mirror to look above average. She doesn’t dress to impress. Then all of sudden, the most gorgeous guy in the school falls in love with her. Basically, the twilight book was every girl's dream. A girl wants a guy who could look beyond their beauty. Someone who could go through hell to get to her. Someone who could resist the taste of sin to be with her. Readers got to experience that in Twilight. It gave hope to readers that, yes, a vampire…. I mean, Er, a prince charming will be waiting for them. This is why Twilight is a huge phenomenon.

So tell me what do you think? Why twilight is/was so huge? Why didnt other vampire 

books rode on the same wave of success?   

Next week I will be comparing twilight to the other vampire books that I had read. 

Tata for now