BookTour Blog

Same Box, Better Results

You may have noticed that we've recently changed our search algorithm. We hope it's faster and, of course, a lot more accurate. We also added new sorting options so that you don't have to do too much digging.

The goal is to keep the road clear between you and what you're looking for, so if you get any wacky results or can't find something you know is there, send us an e-mail and we'll try to straighten things out.

Feature Update 7/5/08

The past few days have brought the following improvements:
• There have been substantial speedups to author and venue pages.
• A bug that caused some users to see an error page when they clicked the "More" link in the lower-right of the front page has been fixed.
• A bug that prevented about 0.5% of event pages from loading correctly has been fixed.
• A bug that caused a few disambiguation pages to be formatted incorrectly has been fixed.
• A bug that caused new-style author widgets to have a small gap between the last event and the bottom of the widget (when loaded in certain browsers and when there was only a small number of events in the widget) has been fixed.

Feature Update 7/2/08

New today:
• You no longer have to know HTML color codes to customize author widgets. On any author widget page, select Custom from the pop-up menu, and then click a text box to change the corresponding color.
• A bug that caused some people's browsers to crash (!) when loading the event-adding page has been fixed.

Feature Update 7/1/08

The major feature news is a totally revised version of author widgets. Here are the improvements we've made:
• Author widgets now expand vertically to fit the number of events they're showing, so they're never too tall (wasting space) or too short (cutting off important events)
• You can customize the number of events your widget shows
• You can customize the width of author widgets so they fit properly on your webpage
• The unseemly white border and the lines between events are now gone on author widgets
• Your widget's color scheme is now totally customizable; you can choose from classic and modern styles, or change the colors entirely to make the widget blend in even better with your webpage (a much-requested feature)
• You can preview the appearance of your widget right on our new widget-design page, and see how tweaks you make affect the widget's appearance in real time
• Author widget data is now totally synchronized with author RSS feed data, so it doesn't matter which format you use to get your BookTour events on your own website
• Widgets load faster than ever

To take advantage of these new features, just visit the page for the authors whose widget you want and click "Follow this author on my website."

Old widgets will continue to work, but won't have any of these new features. Give the new widget a try today!

Feature Update 6/12/08

Major new in the past few days:
• You can now email any event on the site to a friend using the "Email to a friend" feature under the event on an author's page. The feature works whether you're logged in or not (although if you're logged in there's one less field to fill in).
• A preliminary version of predictive searching is now present in all search boxes. Type in a few letters of most authors' names, and you'll see a list of the authors that match.
• The Advanced Search and Custom RSS features have now been integrated into a single feature at http://booktour.com/events/custom_feed. In addition, after performing a search, it is possible to preserve the parameters of that search as an RSS feed by clicking the RSS icon in your browser's address bar on the search result page. Moreover, Advanced Search URLs are now copyable, so if there's a search you want to return to in the future you can simply bookmark it.
• Genre support now permeates virtually every section of the site. The final major revision to achieve this was making the More button for "Authors currently touring everywhere" link to more results for just that genre. Additionally, whenever you're in a section specific to a genre, the genre's name will appear under the BookTour logo (a feature previously restricted to sub-homepages like http://booktour.com/scifi).

And some minor updates:
• Featured authors now exist in all genres
• It is now possible to open "in your area" author links from the front page in new tabs. Previously the way rollovers were implemented prevented pages from opening in new tabs.
• A bug in the title of some RSS feeds has been fixed.
• A spacing bug on the More results page for "Currently in your area" events has been fixed.

Feature Update 6/9/08

New in the past few days:
• Clicking the More link for the "Currently in your area" section now links to an interactive map page with more events. The page automatically loads the genre you're currently exploring; for example, more nearby Mystery events can be found at http://booktour.com/readers/more_events/Mystery.
• In the "Currently in your area" section on genre pages (and the More Events pages described above), events are now split up by how soon in the future they're happening.
• The More link on genre pages described above now appears even for users who are not logged in.
• Links that were broken in some RSS feeds have now been fixed.
• The Home page now links to a fully functional RSS feed.
• A bug that caused clicking the Profile link in the body of the New Ways to Find Events page to redirect to an error page for non-logged-users has been fixed.
• The New Ways to Find Events page has been entirely redesigned.

Feature Update 6/5/08

New features:
• The "Featured author" now blends in more nicely to the main listing.
• The "Currently in your area" and "Authors touring everywhere" columns have been flipped (stay tuned).
• Mousing over one of the rows in the "Currently in your area" listing displays the next event in your area.
• After signing up, the site now redirects you back to the page you were at before you were asked to sign up. (This now works for both signing up and logging in, so there are no "lazy" redirects to the homepage anymore.)

Feature Update 6/4/08

Lots of new features recently:
• Google Earth View updates more frequently. See all upcoming BookTour events on the globe here!
• A bug that caused some dates to incorrectly show up as "tomorrow" has been fixed.
• New genre pages have been added for food, science, and science fiction.
• The "More" link on the front page for nearby events now lists even more events, and displays how many there are.
• Author page loading is now faster.
• The "currently in your area" section now displays cover images for books.
• On genre pages, the "currently in your area" section now only displays authors in that genre who are in your area.
• After logging in, the site now redirects you back to the last page you visited, rather than the homepage.

BookTour at BEA. In LA

The entire crew from Booktour will be setting down in Los Angeles this weekend for Book Expo America, the publishing business's annual whoop-de-do. Kevin will be on two panels as part of the educational programs on Thursday (11:30 AM and 4 PM). Chris'll be doing an onstage interview with Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon at 3 PM Friday. And of course all three of us will be knocking around the floor and soaking it all in.

All events take place at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

This also means, that, hey Southern California, we're around for a few days! So get in touch if you'd like to meet up.

Chatting with: Eylon Israely at Eco-Libris

Every so often here on the blog, we'll be chatting with like-minded folk who are doing interesting things at the intersection of books, publishing and technology.

Our first guest is Elyon Israely, the Business Ambassador of Eco-Libris.

Tell us about Eco-Libris and its vision?

Eco-Libris is a mission driven green business that helps facilitate the greening of the book business. Our vision is that reading books will not have an adverse impact on the environment. Right now, even with all the progress that is being made, millions of trees are still being cut down to make the paper used to print books. More than twenty million only for the books sold in the US annually. That's a lot of trees. Add to that the fact that only about 5% of paper used for books is recycled paper, and you can see there is a lot of work to be done.

We do this in two ways. First of all by raising awareness to these issues. And second, by working with bookstores, book lovers, authors and book publishers to plant trees for the paper used in their books.

How did the company begin and what is your role in it?

The original idea was Raz Godelnik's, our CEO. Being a green business journalist he is quite immersed in all the developments in the field, and he is also the son of a librarian. So with these two big influences the idea just presented itself and wouldn't let go. Then started a process of turning an idea into a real business, but one that is green. This meant a workable model, and planting partners that will be reliable, sustainable in their practices, suitable to balance out the paper usage in books, and also work in collaboration with local communities to plant the trees.

As to my roles, first and foremost I am working as a business ambassador, communicating with various parts of the book industry to find synergies that will help plant more trees for books that are out there or upcoming. Being a former journalist myself, and a voracious reader, I also write frequently for the Eco-Libris blog, and review new books that have an ecological or environmental aspect.

How did you select books and the publishing industry as the focus of a green business?

Simply put, because it was in such bad shape from a sustainable point of view. Unlike newspapers for example, which use a higher percentage of recycled material. This doesn't mean that newspapers are sustainable. Far from it. But it just highlights how bad is the situation in the world of books.

I'd like to point something out. There is a myth out there about the paper industry, saying more or less that the paper used to make books in the U.S. is made from trees that were planted in special tree farms in the U.S., and that since new trees are planted to replace those cut down then all is fine. This is simply not true. First, the paper used to make books sold in the states is coming from all over the world, including a significant percentage of paper sourced from ancient forests such as the Indonesian tropical forests and the Canadian Boreal Forest. Second, even when using trees from farms, this is far from sustainable. Many of these farms were originally planted on ancient forest lands, creating severe damage to biodiversity, fundamental changes and losses in natural systems, severe impact on species, etc.. How sustainable is that?

How can authors and publishers participate?

One way is for them to plant a tree with us for books they write or publish. They can incorporate our “One tree planted for this book” logo into their cover or sleeve design, and we will plant a tree for every copy printed using the logo.

Another option which is more suitable for books already in print is for the authors and publishers to use the Eco-Libris stickers. For every sticker they put on a book's cover or sleeve we will plant a tree. Publishers and authors who partner with us for this use the stickers when selling books directly from their website, having special promotions or when selling books in events, tours and launch parties.

How does Eco-Libris plan on getting to word out about itself? Especially considering most people's books, even those with stickers on the cover, will remain on the shelf where no one else can see then?

First of all our blog (http://ecolibris.blogspot.com). It is slowly but surely becoming an entity of its own. So right now authors, publishers and book publicists are actually coming to us with their new green books, and naturally they also become curious and want to learn more about how they can then work with us. So it turned out that by having fun and writing about the topics that are important to us, we actually positioned Eco-Libris at an important junction where the right people get to hear about us.

In addition to that we are working on collaborations with local and national booksellers' associations, and independent publishers' associations to spread the word to the book industry. We had a booth at the recent Bay Area Independent Publisher's Association conference, and plan to be more and more active in similar industry events.

Your business is based on the purchase of offsets. A customer buys a sticker to place on the cover of a book from ecolibris which means a tree will be planted to "offset" the environmental cost of the book's production. Since the actual value of carbon offsets, is still under examination, do you feel this is enough? If not, what will the evolution of Eco-Libris's business model be?

The analogy between our product and carbon offsets is apt, but it only goes so far. We actually stand outside the debate. What we offer is to plant trees to balance out the paper used to make books. One tree per book. Trees are being cut down for paper every day and contribute a significant portion of worldwide deforestation. Besides being a carbon sink, forests are a first and foremost a complete complex ecosystems, a habitat to living and endangered species, a source of living to local communities, and a living entity with an inherent value not limited to its value for human exploitation.

There is so much more to environmentalism and conservation than only the current important yet fashionable focus on carbon. Let's assume for a second the very unlikely scenario that the relation between trees, carbon and global warming will be completely and scientifically proven to be untrue. What then? Suddenly tearing down trees, destroying rain forests, and paving the world with concrete  will be ok and acceptable? Obviously not.

But this is not to say that Eco-Libris will not evolve with time, and we are already exploring ideas for new related products in our field. But right now we our focus is solely on one thing: helping the book industry and book lovers worldwide go green.