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Saturday, May 26, 2012

A Pretty Sinister Coterie

John Chandler's amazing mess of a store - Bookman's Corner
One of my favorite places in Chicago
A while back I mentioned that I expected to attain a grand total of 50 followers in my first year.  I fell short by about 15. But today I logged in to discover I now have attained my meager goal.  51 Followers!  If I were to die in a freak accident tomorrow I'd be happy: one follower for each year of life on this planet.

All this achieved in 16 months. Not bad for a blog that is devoted to writing about out of print and hard to find books and dead writers. Some people never get a single follower or any comments at all. I'm lucky.

Thanks to all of you who read the blog whether you have "officially" chosen to follow by clicking on that Blogger/Google button or whether you drop by every now and then.  I nearly pulled the plug on this two months ago due to a sharp decline in hits and diminishing comments.  I thought I had become boring and I didn't know what to write about anymore.  I realized all that had happened was a lack of inspiration.

So thanks to followers numbers 50 and 51 for giving me that little nudge to keep on writing about obscure books and writers consigned to Limbo.

6 comments:

  1. I'm sure I'm not the only person who doesn't officially "follow" (I'm not even sure what "follow" means precisely) your blog, but checks in at least a couple of times a week. Keep up the good work--more people are reading than you realize. The only problem with your blog is it makes me want to read so many books that are so hard to find!

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    1. Thanks, Deb. Here's your Blogger tutorial: A follower is someone who usually also has a blog and has clicked on the button that adds someone else's blog to a list sends updates on posts to a portion of the Blogger account. I only have seven blogs I officially follow. They tend to be those of people who post more than three times in a single day. Everyone else's I've added to my blog roll over at the right hand side.

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  2. Thanks for the explanation, John.

    I forgot to say that if it seems you're getting fewer comments than usual, it might be because of Blogger's horrible word verification process. Even with my glasses on, I often have a hard time making out the characters it wants me to type and sometimes after several failed attempts, I just give up (not just on your blog, but on other Blogger-hosted blogs too)--thereby depriving the world of what would obviously have been the most scintillating comment ever!

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  3. Dear John, as someone with a Worpress account, I hope you can consider me an 'unofficial' member of your retinue - and it really is getting harder and harder to comment without having a Google account. I have now created one just for the purposes of commenting, but obviously it links to a non-existent blog! Having said that, your is much better to access compared with some, which I guess is a question of relative security settings.

    Either, blogger schblogger, love the site mate.

    All the the best,

    Sergio

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  4. John, please know that even though I seem to have about 2% of the time I used to have to keep up with commenting (even for those of you who are wonderful and have signed up for my challenges)--I love your blog and your insightful posts. Proud to be a follower from early on!

    (And, yes, the Blogger Word Verification thing stinks....I've tried to turn it off over at My Reader's Block...would you let me know if I've been successful the next time you venture over?)

    Keep up the good work!

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  5. I nearly pulled the plug on this two months ago due to a sharp decline in hits and diminishing comments.

    Please tell me you are joking John. Yours is one of the most fascinating blogs and as Bev has written I am proud to be its follower. (If I remember correctly I am follower no. 14).

    Like others have commented I hate the word verification thing. And some bloggers have a comment moderation too after the verification!

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