Books Make Great Gifts

I write book reviews of fairly obscure books – never those in the top 100 best sellers, probably not even the top 10,000! This week I decided to publicise them a bit with a Squidoo mini lensography called Books Make Great Gifts.

I’m using a Christmas theme for now but, in the New Year, I’ll change it.

I’ve made the point that books make great gifts for birthdays and Christmas as I don’t want it to be seasonal. I wrote about why they make good gifts and the importance of matching the type of book to the recipient. I’ve done separate modules for different genres: Mysteries and Thrillers, Historical Novels, Classics, used Featured Lens modules for my book review lens links, Amazon Spotlight and Amazon list modules for newly published books in the hope of making some sales. I also put in a couple of polls. I want to make the page more than just a list of my lenses, I want to make it interesting in its own right too.

Making this kind of mini-lensography gives me a new lens and it might draw in traffic to existing book reviews I’ve written. If I make a few sales from it, that will be a bonus.

When you really don’t know what to write about next, take a look at the lenses you’ve done so far. Hopefully, you will have written some on a similar subject so that you too can make a mini lensography. You can always add new lenses to it as you publish them.

Santa Squid from Squid Art Too by Tagsforkids

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all!

I’m finishing this year feeling I’ve accomplished some things that I really wanted to do. There have been some disappointments and sad times too – just like many years, in fact.

At the beginning of the year, I was making very few new lenses on Squidoo. I’d become a Giant in October 2008 by making 50+ lenses. After that I just lost inspiration for writing. I’d start a new lens, think about it, then delete it because I couldn’t think of more to write or I was bored by the subject. Worse still, I sometimes finished a lens, read it the next day, decided it was rubbish and so deleted it. Although I made a few lenses, they were a struggle.

Early 2009 two things pulled me out of this Slough of Despond. I joined Senior Squids and started to take part in their weekly lens Challenge. The second was I received an invitation from Michelle (a_willow) to join the Wiwon Team to become a Giant 100 Clubber. That was in April and the deadline to have 100+ lenses was June 30th 2009.

Joining in the Senior Squids weekly lens Challenge helped me start lens building again. Only having a week to make a lens concentrated my mind – I didn’t have time to dither and decide I didn’t like what I was doing. I made lenses on so many different subjects, it was this that started me off doing gardening lenses like I Love Lilies, Moonflower – Night Blooming Plants and Best of Garden Flowers on Twitter.

Salute to Giants from Squid Art Too by Tagsforkids

Not only did these count towards my 100+ lens target, they also started me writing again. I made the Giant 100 Club having met the required number of quality lenses by June 30th.

Then Michelle asked me to be a tutor on Wiwon for people wanting to make Giant or the 100 Club. She would decide she wanted a lens on some aspect of writing for Squidoo and that I was the one to write it. Sometimes I only had a couple of days before she wanted it. Funnily enough, it really helped me too.

Now I’m a Squid Angel and I love doing this. It gives me the opportunity to help new Squids particularly. Sometimes I see newcomers with great potential and all they need is a little guidance on the best way to use Squidoo. It’s also lovely when I get an email or message on my Angel’s lens telling me I’ve made somebody’s day by blessing their lens.

That’s the really great thing about Squidoo – for many of us, it’s all about community and giving back as well as taking.

Both pictures came from Squid Art Too by Tagsforkids.

The carpet in the hall needs shampooing, the net curtains could do with a quick rinse through, the inside of the windows at the back need cleaning – they’re not desperate, you can still see out of them! These are not hard jobs that will take ages, just boring.

I’m going away to my best friend’s tomorrow for New Year so I think they will all have to wait till I come home. Then I’ll go into a cleaning frenzy, soap suds and fresh smells everywhere.