More Books Sell When Cover is “Face Out”

Shelf Awareness Blog reports that retail stores and libraries realize that the more books are “face out” on the shelf, the more books circulate/sell.  With more books “face out” there will be less room for less sold/borrowed materials.  The original Wall Street Journal article (subscription needed)  says at a typical Borders superstore, the reduction of inventory will be between 4,675 and 9,350 titles out of about 93,500. Borders said customers at its new concept store had the impression that more books were available.

So it is not really about the total number of books you have, but how the books are displayed and having lots and lots of high demand items.  To read the article go here.

 

Give it to me in plain English

Ever heard of Common Craft? I hadn’t until yesterday. (Thanks, Deborah!)

Common Craft is a cool company that makes explanatory videos for the web. They’ve done a wonderful “plain English” series on a variety of web 2.0 topics, including social networking (the one you see embedded here), blogs, social bookmarking, RSS, wikis, and online photo sharing. Their videos are creative, humorous, and most of all, informative! Check them out at CommonCraft.com, find their videos on their You Tube Channel, and subscribe to their blog. You can also connect with them on Facebook and Flickr.

 

Do you have a website or a destination?

Scott Ginsberg has a great post today over on Hello My Name is Blog that tells you why you don’t need a website. Here’s an excerpt:

See, a “website” is not going to get people to come TO, hang out AT and tell their friends ABOUT anything. It needs to be MUCH more than just information.

It needs to be interactive.  It needs to be participative.  It needs to be updated regularly.

It needs to be THEE source, THEE go-to-place, the El Dorado, The Mecca … for a certain kind of people who want a certain kind of thing.That’s a destination.

 So…..do you want a website or a destination??  

 

Microsoft Word 2007–file format work-around

According to a post by Christopher Carfi on the blog Social Customer Manifesto, Word 2007 saves files in a .docx format, making it incompatible with previous versions of Word. I don’t have Office 2007 yet, so haven’t run into this problem, but as many of you upgrade, and you’re sharing files with colleagues who haven’t, you’ll probably experience this compatibility issue. Thankfully, the post offers a work around:

“Office” button =>
“Word Options” button (it’s hidden down at the bottom) =>
“Save” link =>
“Save Files in this Format” = Word 97-2003

According to one of the post’s comments, the same sequence works in PowerPoint and Excel 2007.

Thanks to Christopher for the heads-up and to his friend Korbett for providing the work-around!

 

Creating great websites

I don’t often blog twice in one day, but when something comes along this good, it’s worth it.

Seth Godin, author of best-selling marketing books like The Dip, and the most popular marketing blog in the US, has put together 10 principals for making a great web site.  Read them.  Memorize them.  Make your website redesign go more smoothly and be more effective.

Personal favorites:

3. Less. Fewer words, fewer pages, less fine print.

7. Insight is good, clever is bad. Many websites say, “look at me.” Your goal ought to be to say, “here’s what you were looking for.”