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hrjAbout a week ago, I started working on setting up Universal Book Links to use on my website and social media, using Books2Read.com. Previously,in a balance between philosophy and efficiency, I'd put two links on each book page: one to the publisher's site and one to the Big River. (That's for the newer stuff, the older stuff like all the Sword and Sorceress stories I just used a Big River link because they're out of print anyway.) But just as I've been trying to move away from defaulting to A*****n for the podcast book links, I wanted to put my urls where my mouth is on the website.
So a bit of poking around indicated that Books2Read seemed to be the popular choice. The theory is that (after you set up a free account) you paste in one known bookstore link to a book and B2R will identify a vast array of links to the same book appearing in other bookstores. Then it gives you the master Universal Book Link that you can use as you like. Clicking on that UBL will go to a page that lists all the identified sources for the book.
So that's the theory.
The practice is that B2R seems to be extremely irregular in its efficiency of finding links. Or it clearly has identified the book correctly (because it displays an image) but then tells you that it's having trouble identifying the book and did you make a mistake? I guess you'll have to enter all the bookstore links manually.
You know, if I wanted to enter a dozen bookstore links manually, I could just code the thing by hand on my own website and what do I need them for?
B2R is also much worse at identifying print links than ebook links. The focus on ebook links can be seen in the fact that your "starting master link" *must* be an ebook link. So you can't set up a UBL for a book that has only appeared in print.
So here's the second thing I find annoying (after the amount of manual data entry that I felt bait-and-switched into). Book UBLs are specific to the account of the person who set them up. I ran into this previously when shifting the podcast notes over to a non-Amazon-centric mode. There's no way to go to the B2R site and say "is there a UBL set up for book X?" If you find one on the author's website, you can use it, but there's no centralized way to look.
The other thing this means is that all of the promised interconnectedness promised on the B2R site only works *within* a particular account. If I want to set up a bookshelf with all my books on it? I have to set up a UBL within my account, even if someone else has already set one up. If you're visiting a UBL page for a book and you want to know what else that author has published? Clicking on the author link only gives you links for books created within the same account. So Queen of Swords has set up a UBL for The Language of Roses, but if you go to that UBL page and ask "what else has Heather Rose Jones written" you get nothing else. And if I want The Language of Roses to shop up in author links from the UBL pages that *I* set up, I have to create my own separate UBL for the book.
One of the things B2R promotes is the ability to set up "bookshelves" where you can group your favorite books, or books you're mentioning in social media, or whatever. But *you* have to create a UBL in *your* account for each book you want to put on a shelf. Not worth it.
Evidently the B2R functions integrate very smoothly with the ebook publishing side of the company, Draft2Digital, which is an option I've looked at for my plans to dip my toe into the self-publishing field. But now I'm inclined to give it a lot more scrutiny before committing, to see whether that function will be as full of infelicities as the B2R function.
# # #
Today's tea is another new one from the Chinese tea sampler: Yunnan Dian Hong Ancient Tree Black Tea; brewed as directed at 185F for 8 minutes. Using a basket to stop the brew, and measuring one heaping teaspoon of loose tea which is loosely equivalent to the 2.5 teaspoons they suggest, as long as they mean "level" teaspoons.
The loose tea smells strongly earthy and reminds me of a good alfalfa hay on a warm summer afternoon. In the cup, the aroma is more of a generic black tea smell. The color is a medium-dark brown, more into the gray range than the golden range. The flavor is mild, not particularly bitter, but with an elusive overtone that works around the back of my tongue that I'm not sure how to describe. It's mild enough that I don't feel drawn to sweeten it, though I might try that for the last cup out of the pot.
Since I used the strainer, I may try a second brew of the leaves tomorrow.
ETA: Didn't try the second brew until Monday 8/1. Brewed for 10 minutes. A little weaker but still good. That "elusive overtone" feels a bit more like bitterness this time around and after the first cup I decided to sweeten.
So a bit of poking around indicated that Books2Read seemed to be the popular choice. The theory is that (after you set up a free account) you paste in one known bookstore link to a book and B2R will identify a vast array of links to the same book appearing in other bookstores. Then it gives you the master Universal Book Link that you can use as you like. Clicking on that UBL will go to a page that lists all the identified sources for the book.
So that's the theory.
The practice is that B2R seems to be extremely irregular in its efficiency of finding links. Or it clearly has identified the book correctly (because it displays an image) but then tells you that it's having trouble identifying the book and did you make a mistake? I guess you'll have to enter all the bookstore links manually.
You know, if I wanted to enter a dozen bookstore links manually, I could just code the thing by hand on my own website and what do I need them for?
B2R is also much worse at identifying print links than ebook links. The focus on ebook links can be seen in the fact that your "starting master link" *must* be an ebook link. So you can't set up a UBL for a book that has only appeared in print.
So here's the second thing I find annoying (after the amount of manual data entry that I felt bait-and-switched into). Book UBLs are specific to the account of the person who set them up. I ran into this previously when shifting the podcast notes over to a non-Amazon-centric mode. There's no way to go to the B2R site and say "is there a UBL set up for book X?" If you find one on the author's website, you can use it, but there's no centralized way to look.
The other thing this means is that all of the promised interconnectedness promised on the B2R site only works *within* a particular account. If I want to set up a bookshelf with all my books on it? I have to set up a UBL within my account, even if someone else has already set one up. If you're visiting a UBL page for a book and you want to know what else that author has published? Clicking on the author link only gives you links for books created within the same account. So Queen of Swords has set up a UBL for The Language of Roses, but if you go to that UBL page and ask "what else has Heather Rose Jones written" you get nothing else. And if I want The Language of Roses to shop up in author links from the UBL pages that *I* set up, I have to create my own separate UBL for the book.
One of the things B2R promotes is the ability to set up "bookshelves" where you can group your favorite books, or books you're mentioning in social media, or whatever. But *you* have to create a UBL in *your* account for each book you want to put on a shelf. Not worth it.
Evidently the B2R functions integrate very smoothly with the ebook publishing side of the company, Draft2Digital, which is an option I've looked at for my plans to dip my toe into the self-publishing field. But now I'm inclined to give it a lot more scrutiny before committing, to see whether that function will be as full of infelicities as the B2R function.
# # #
Today's tea is another new one from the Chinese tea sampler: Yunnan Dian Hong Ancient Tree Black Tea; brewed as directed at 185F for 8 minutes. Using a basket to stop the brew, and measuring one heaping teaspoon of loose tea which is loosely equivalent to the 2.5 teaspoons they suggest, as long as they mean "level" teaspoons.
The loose tea smells strongly earthy and reminds me of a good alfalfa hay on a warm summer afternoon. In the cup, the aroma is more of a generic black tea smell. The color is a medium-dark brown, more into the gray range than the golden range. The flavor is mild, not particularly bitter, but with an elusive overtone that works around the back of my tongue that I'm not sure how to describe. It's mild enough that I don't feel drawn to sweeten it, though I might try that for the last cup out of the pot.
Since I used the strainer, I may try a second brew of the leaves tomorrow.
ETA: Didn't try the second brew until Monday 8/1. Brewed for 10 minutes. A little weaker but still good. That "elusive overtone" feels a bit more like bitterness this time around and after the first cup I decided to sweeten.
