News from Booklist Online Blogs

At the end of the work day yesterday. Keir Graff announced some big changes for all of the Booklist Online blogs.  Click here or see below.

I am excited to see what happens here because taken all together the five Booklist Online blogs have a lot of excellent information, but like Keir says below, it can be hard to navigate. 

I use Booklist, the print, the online, the webinars and blogs almost daily, so anything that makes it all easier to use, sounds like a good idea to me.

Read below and as Keir says, “Stay tuned!”

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Monday, August 25, 2014 4:23 pm
COMING SOON: THE BOOKLIST READER 
Posted by: Keir Graff

It’s going to be pretty quiet here at Likely Stories for the next couple of weeks—but that’s because big changes are in the works.

After 8 long years and nearly 2,200 posts (over half of them written by yours truly), the blog is about to undergo major surgery. Actually, ALL of the Booklistblogs—Likely Stories, Bookends, Book Group Buzz, Audiobooker, and Shelf Renewal—are going under the knife, and when they emerge, it’s going to be a sight to behold.

Instead of having five blogs at five URLs with some two dozen bloggers, we’re going to have one, beautiful, brand-spanking-new blog called The Booklist Reader. The existing blogs won’t go away but will function more as departments within a single larger publication. Posts will be sortable in many different ways, allowing you to browse by department (Bookends, for example), post author (Mary Burkey, let’s just say), big-picture categories (YA, videos, etc.), or a wide assortment of tags (James Franco, literary feuds, etc.) And, before long, we’ll be adding even more bloggers and departments, with posts we promise will inform and entertain, bewitch and bemuse, and, possible, baffle and befuddle.

Why are we doing this? Well, we believe it will be more conversational, for starters. Blogs give us a chance to share ideas, opinions, and stories that don’t necessarily fit into Booklist,Book Links, or any of our other fine publications, whether for reasons of tone or just simply space. The benefits of getting all our bloggers in the same virtual room, reading and responding to each other, seem clear. We also want to add tools that will make it easier for readers to read and respond, too, to all the great writing we have to offer.

And, as everyone knows, eight years without a makeover is about a century in internet years—and we’re as vain as anybody. We really want a blog that looks as good as we feel.

So, please bear with us as we get under way. By mid-September, we’ll be up and running and ready for you at The Booklist Reader. Stay tuned!