Some Knowledge

I got bored with sitting around the house this afternoon trying to think of something to write about.  I got my hat and coat on and took the truck out to Barnes and Nobles.  The store was not very crowded today, and I spent some time looking through the remainder racks before I headed back to the business and Internet section.

I was looking for a good book on blogging.  I have seen books on this subject before.  These books seemed kind of basic and useless compared to the information anyone can get online for free.  Still, I looked around.  Blogging books were squirreled away in several places.  I found one on the e-business rack, two more hidden in with small business, another couple in with web applications, and one or two in with personal computing.  I looked over all these books.  Apparently they were written for people who were completely clueless and did not know what a blog was.  I mean, I might not have a good idea what to write about in my blogs to attract attention, but I have been keeping a blog, or rather several of them, for years.

One of these books was $40 and included a lot of programming code for making your own blog application.  Why would I bother doing that if there are suitable apps available for free?  I’m not about to write a program to blog anything.  Another book was all about how to get different design elements into your blog.  Why bother?  I like my minimalist design.  I had to point and click twice to set that up.  One very slim book was about how to run a blog as a business.  Well, that was interesting, except three fourths of the book was explaining what a blog is, not how to use one to generate money.  There was one chapter that said basically sell advertising and affiliate products, when you make money incorporate.  I stood there and read all the info in that book in under a minute just flipping pages.

“The Everything Blogging Book” was very basic but it covered a lot of ground.  I liked the broad range of information.  The book is filled with words, not a lot of pictures and diagrams.  It cost $15.  I stood there reading the chapter headings in this book and then set it back on the shelf and went to look at writing books for a while.  There was also a book on how to use WordPress, but I thought to myself, “Isn’t all this in a help file somewhere?”

I wasted some time looking through books on how to write and about the writing business.  I almost yawned.  I’ve read so much about writing over the years that the whole concept bores me.  Writing is nothing more than typing up words that mean something.  Selling your writing involves finding a buyer.  I looked over all the books, then went back to the business section to see if I had missed anything.  I ended up buying the everything book.  It’s fairly basic, but there was a lot of different material in this book and the writing was interesting and to the point.

I think I will probably spend the rest of the afternoon reading.  I’m a bit worn out from writing too much in this blog.  I have 51 posts now or something ridiculous like that and have only been writing in this blog for a week and a half.  Maybe tomorrow I will find something interesting to say.  For now, I’m taking the afternoon off to do some research.  If I learn anything useful I may write about it.