Website Updates
Goodbye old blog
Just in case you haven’t been following me the last couple of days I thought I should let you know that the address for my blog has now changed. This is the last post on this blog and I’ll close down the comments as well. All the posts and comments have been moved over to the new and previously unused blog over at:
Thank you for your loyalty, I hope you will join me on my new blog and help me build a community there.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 3 so far )The Boots Lady
In some circles I’m known as The Boots Lady, those who know me will be quite puzzled about this as I’m not known for my clothes sense, in fact I’m known far more for wanting to shave my hair off than for my clothes sense. I just don’t have much interest in the way clothes look, function is a different matter but fashion and me are not good bedfellows.
So, “How come you’re known as The Boots Lady I hear you ask”. What a good question and I’m so glad you asked that one.
I was in the middle of a business conference and we were doing a workshop on writing our FAQs. We had to take a piece of paper, write as few words as possible about our business and pass it on to the next person who then had to write three questions and pass it on to the next person who then had to write three more questions and so on until we were told to hand them back to the original person. We then had to look at our papers and were asked what we’d found out. My voice rang out “I need to do something about my writing”. That got a nice laugh and when I explained the poor lady who’d misread my writing was mortified. I’d written “I sell books online” and my writing was so bad it looked like boots so she’d asked me questions about selling boots.
There you go, most people know me as The Books Lady, but some people know me as The Boots Lady. I’m sure there’s a moral in that story but there’s a reason I learnt to type. In some places I’m known as The Badge Lady, but that’s another story entirely and will need photos.
Speaking of typing, I know I wasn’t really but I am now. I managed to secure myself a seat Tuesday this week in a fabulous training session run by the ever-lovely Darren Rowse. When he sent out the initial query asking if there was interest he was looking at a 20 person training session and ended up with upwards of 100 people. I now need to wear reading glasses when working on the computer or reading a book…or writing…so I took my laptop as it’s a real pain to look at the presentation with one pair of glasses then have to change to write something down and I generally only get a fraction of what I need. I was lucky enough to sit in the back row right near the powerpoint so I was able to type the whole day. I certainly typed…a lot, I’ve got a 26 page Word document which is fairly closely spaced. I sent these notes to Darren last night and we’ll see what happens.
I went to this session so I could learn how to make my blog work better, look better and give me more confidence about the whole process. I was already in the process of designing a new blog layout with a new url linked to my website and this session given me all the information I need to design the right blog. It won’t happen for a few weeks as I’m not really html savvy, I just know enough to be dangerous, but it will happen and I’ll announce it here first and give you all the url before I do the final switchover. Stay tuned to this Bat Channel for more information.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( Comments Off on The Boots Lady )Suz’s Space comes clean
Yes, I did have a shower this morning so it’s nothing to do with that. I’m just making a confession.
I’ve been doing some business courses over the last couple of years and they all tell me to do different things so I’ve been referring to myself in the plural and making it look as if I have staff. The reality is that it is just me. All the work on the website, all the books that are listed, all the tweets on Twitter, all the work on the Facebook Fan Page are all done by me. I do have the odd person helping me, sometimes the kids will help by choosing some books for me and I take their recommendation, sometimes I’ll have someone helping me with a website problem but the bulk of the work is just me. While I do have the odd guest blogger the rest of the articles are all my own idea and work, except of course for Squid Ink, my stick figures don’t look so good.
Anyway, I know some of you have been wondering what I look like and possibly what I sound like so I’m going to share this video I made for a business forum I’m in. Yes, there are glitches but I did it on my webcam at home and I have no technical skills in that area. I will have other videos to share with you but they’ve been shot by a friend who has some video skills and a better camera. I bribed her with chocolate brownies.
What I’m really saying is that I’m one person and when you email or ring you only get me. You’ll get personalised service because that’s what I do.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 3 so far )Website update
I’ve alluded to a few changes that have been happening to the Suz’s Space Website over the last few days. The changes aren’t over yet, but are almost there. If you’ve been looking for the website today you might have had trouble as we’ve been moving webhosts. When you move house there are always glitches and this move was no different. The biggest problem was with photo names, I didn’t do enough research when I set up the first website and didn’t realise spaces in file names were a big no-no so I had 2,000 photos with spaces in the file names. How wrong can you get? I was told of my error a few months ago and have been getting it right since then, but when the lovely and multitalented Tamara told me none of the photos were showing up with the move, I took the opportunity to fix everything up. I deleted all the photos so I could start with a clean slate and then re-attached them all with underscores in the place of spaces. With almost 900 listings it was not a small task but better done now than when I had 2,000 photos. There are a few photos I couldn’t find so until I find the books and retake the photos they are blank.
The biggest problem now is helping people find the right website. If you use your bookmark you’ll end up at the wrong IP address and any orders will go into cyberspace never to be found again. I’m sure there’s a book waiting to be written about all the things floating around cyberspace. I suggest you use this url http://suzs-space.com/ and for the tech savvy it should take you to this IP address 112.140.180.163.
Emails might use a different url such as http://www.sciencefictionandfantasybooks.com.au. Don’t be alarmed, it is still the same company and we still carry the same books. The number of science fiction and fantasy books we have waiting to be listed for your buying, and therefore reading, pleasure is hard to estimate but it’s certainly much, much more than any other genre so this new url makes sense. In due course you’ll be able to find us with either url, I just have to remember how to do the technical bits.
No, I’m not having trouble with my pronouns. One day I’ll explain.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( Comments Off on Website update )Preview of stuff
Squid Ink Oz
I have a lot of little things in progress at the moment. This is something that’s been on my mind for a while and it’s time I showed the world what wonderful treasures I’ve been given. This is part of a series of cartoons provided to me by a talented young person. I have several of them waiting in the wings and intend to unveil one each week from now on.
I’m in the process of trying to provide ebooks to people as they sign up for my newsletter. The process is interesting and it’s not working. I know I could do it the cheat’s way and just do them myself rather than making them happen automatically, but I don’t fancy relying on my memory.
The Pre-loved Books @ Suz’s Space Fan Page on Facebook is gradually taking shape. There are now enough fans/likers to enable me to request a vanity url for it so you don’t have this massive great big link. In a few days it will be even easier for you to share it with your friends so they can come and join in the word fun.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( Comments Off on Preview of stuff )1st Birthday
When I first started writing this blog it was purely for myself because I had to write. I was under no illusions that anyone else would want to read my blog and made no efforts to tell lots of people about it. I did tell a couple of people but I still have many family and friends who don’t know I write and some who know I write but don’t know where to find me. I had no idea how long I’d be writing for and knew I wouldn’t be able to write every day. I was totally thrown aback to find I had readers two hours after publishing my first article. I have no idea if they’ve been back but I had two people visit my very first article within two hours and I was stoked.
At one stage I was attending some business classes and one of our lessons was all about what we should put in our newsletters and blogs. By the end of the lesson I had a few ideas written down and I went home, mentioned it to my eldest whose brain promptly went into overdrive. I started typing everything up and eventually gave up as I can’t type as fast as she can speak; I surrendered my computer to her and at the end had 12 pages of thoughts for newsletters and blogs. I have to admit to having used very few of them as I seem to have an endless stream of ideas thanks to people on Twitter and I fill in some of the gaps with my thoughts on books I’ve read.
Fast forward to now and the first anniversary of my first article is coming up next Thursday. It’s a very exciting time and I’ve been looking forward to having a sale on my website and I think the time has come to do exactly that. I’ll try and list a few more books first as I was hoping to get to 1,000+ books before having a sale but sometime before Thursday of next week i.e. 22nd April, I will launch the sale. I’ve never tried doing a sale on the website so the first person to prove it works will receive free postage across Australia for their order. If you happen to live outside of Australia then I’ll reduce the postage by $AUS10.
Thank you to my readers, thank you to those who’ve posted comments and also to those who have thought about what I’ve written. It’s going to be onwards and upwards for the forthcoming year!
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Random stuff
I’m just going to post some random stuff while I’m waiting for my nails to dry. I have a friend who sells beauty products and I gave her some books for her kids in return she looked at my nails and gave me stuff to help strengthen them so while I wait for the stuff to dry you’ll get random stuff.
I’m gradually moving through my To Be Read pile which is good but I’m always adding new books to it. I won Dracula The Un-Dead by Dacre Stoker late last year and while I’m desperate to read it I’m not going to be able to until I get through a book sent to me by a publisher for review. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m very excited to be on their mailing list but I have so many books to read that I’m seriously struggling.
I’m working on listing books on the website. Today I finally hit the 500 mark, it was very exciting. I’ve still got a long way to go as I have approximately 3,000 books onsite to list. I’m still culling while I list so some of them won’t make it to the website. I refuse to stock romance or chick lit any more. I don’t see why I should stock books I won’t read. It’s as simple as that.
My computer is so slow and it’s driving me batty. As an example, I’m a pretty fast touch typist but I’m generally not that fast that I can be waiting for the computer to catch up by half a dozen to a dozen words. So, here I am happily typing away and hoping the computer will catch up soon so I can check for typos and finally it does so, all in a rush. Rather disconcerting…reminds me of year 11 when I moved from the manual typewriters onto the electronic typewriter and it would wait until I’d finished typing a whole line before it printed anything.
I generally don’t like working in silence so the last two days I’ve been listening to 80s music. It’s been fabulous to hear Frankie Goes To Hollywood again. I used to listen to them when I did data-entry with the government, had that tape on autorepeat so it went round and round and round and I never got sick of them. They’re still as fresh as they were when I heard it for the first time.
More random stuff another day, I’m off to bed. I do aim to do a proper blog tomorrow, but it depends on these books and the housework.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( Comments Off on Random stuff )Website updates etc
This is probably the last blog you’ll get from me this year. I’m going to be taking a break to recharge my batteries. At the moment I’m finally putting all my patient customers from my old website into the new one. When I finish this I’ll then send out emails to everyone and also a final newsletter for the year. There are currently 301 books listed and I have plenty more to list but I need to take a break.
One thing I will be doing during the break is research. I’ve been planning a series of blogs on pulp magazines and have found a number of books on my shelves, as well as an encyclopedia from my sister, to help with the research, the only problem is finding the time to read, collate the information and write. I’ve done some reading and keeping thinking of more blogs to write but haven’t actually managed to finish my research and find time to start writing any of them. I do intend to do the bulk of the research and writing during this time off.
On that note I bid you all farewell for this year, thank you for reading and commenting, even if you’ve only commented in your own mind and haven’t written anything. I do hope you’ll be back with me early next year. I will be on Twitter for a couple more days and you can always email me if you need me. I hope the festive season was good for you or will be good for you depending on your religion.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( Comments Off on Website updates etc )
Suz's Space Blog 