Sunday, December 11, 2011

Shelf Actualization: One Month In


Well, it’s been exactly one month since we reached launch velocity here at ShelfActualization.com. And over the course of 37 posts, we’ve tried to make good on our bluster about becoming your home on the web for low-falutin literary delights and your gateway drug for literary fiction. As you can see above, we’ve already highlighted some amazing authors, and dozens of others have been mentioned along the way. And there’s a lot more to come.

But the one month mark seems like an appropriate time to take stock and see what you like about out little corner of the web, and maybe some of what you don’t (as if!).

But first, a reminder about what ShelfActualization is: It’s a place where three regular dudes unload their literary views on the world absolutely free of charge. What it isn’t, is a clearinghouse for three already-popular lit/book/publishing bloggers to combine their wits and established audiences in becoming a major force in the world of literature.

Still, things have gone better than we predicted. We’ve seen a few thousand more pageviews than we expected this early, and we’ve had readers pop up in some truly out-of-the-way places (Doha and Dominica? Lahaina and Ljubljana?) We certainly didn’t expect to garner eyeballs in all six permanently-inhabited continents (What’s wrong with you, Antarctica? Don’t you people ever surf the web between taking ice-core samples and astronomical observations?).

But the reception has been a warm one, and we want to thank all of you who have commented, emailed, participated in contests and just taken a few moments to check out the site.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about ShelfActualization so far. What, if anything, has resonated with you? What has been just “…meh?” We’ve done book reviews, original research, made reading suggestions, offered our own reading reactions, and everything in between.

Perhaps you’ve enjoyed some of our regular features like First Line Fridays, our Haiku-ption Contests or our holiday fiction offerings. If none of those float your boat, keep an eye out for some others we’ll be rolling out in the near future: Poet’s Corner, TraveLit and yes, even Literary Deathmatches.
So tell us what you think. What would you like to see more of? Less of? Etc.? Fire away.

4 comments:

  1. More commentary on Carlos Ruiz Zafon!!!!

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  2. Literary Deathmatches.

    Can't wait.

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  3. I don't know how you could possibly improve this blog, it is informative, entertaining and inspiring. I too am looking forward to the literary deathmatches. Maybe a feature called "What you missed when you read the Cliff Notes." ;)

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  4. Thanks for the kind words, Michelle.

    While "informative" and "entertaining" are within our declared bailywick, "inspiring" must have happened completely by accident.

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