A Small Business Success Story For Book Lovers

You can't hold down a good business idea--especially if it concerns a product as clever as In My Book bookmark greeting cards. Entrepreneur Robin Blum tells the full story of how they came about, why they've survived the ups and downs of the economy for the last ten years, and what's next in her company's future during this interview on WOR's Joan Hamburg Show.

Learn more about the product at www.InMyBook.com.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds a romantic thriller about blood diamonds in the Congo.

Every New Book Deserves A Website

The Dynamic Manager's Guide series now has its own place on the web. The new website went live this morning with a brief introduction, information about me and my business and writing career, and detail of the first book in the series, The Dynamic Manager's Guide To Advertising: How To Grow Your Business With Ads That Work.

The website, www.thedynamicmanager.com, features a sample of the book, an mp3 audio introduction, and complete details of the contents.

The book is making its way in the marketplace, too. E-book editions are available for the Amazon Kindle and other formats. The audio podcast edition has been slated for release at Podiobooks.com on September 17, and the Audible.com edition has been produced and is in the distribution pipeline.

The next book in the series, The Dynamic Manager's Guide To Marketing, is in final editing. Look for its release October 1 if all goes as planned.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds a romantic thriller about blood diamonds in the Congo.

Books By The Numbers

With the well-publicized problems of bookseller Borders, there are a lot of numbers circulating about books and reading that paint a pretty gloomy picture. But here's something I like to point out as a trustee of the Westchester (NY) Library System: in 2006 (latest year with data available), our 38 member libraries circulated nearly 14 books for every man, woman, and child in this county.

When I joined the board in 2003, we delivered about 1,000,000 books through our intra-library loan service along. Last year, we topped 1,200,000! For a society were nobody reads, we're awfully busy.

The 2007 survey by Ipsos Public Affairs for The Associated Press revealed that 27 percent of us haven't read a book of any kind in the last year. Fortunately for me, a writer, the same percentage — 27 percent — read 15 or more. And 8 percent of us read 51 books or more. When you exclude those people who didn't read a single book, the average number of books read in America last year was 20.

As Randall Stross said in the NY Times (1/27/2008—where some of this info was found), one can only wonder why 408 million books will be bought in the US in 2008 if no one reads anymore.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds