The "Where" section of adding venues

The "Where" section has a radio button for online.

Does this mean that online-only book "stores" are supported? I tried searching for the obvious online bookstore and didn't find it so I assume none have been entered?

Is the plan to add Amazon.com et. al.?

If so, might be nice to change this to checkboxes to indicate which stores have both physical and online purchasing as well as one or the other.

--- David

The idea behind the "online" venue type is to have a sort of a home for events that are exclusively online -- online author chats, podcasts, interviews, virtual book festivals, and the like. Buying online from real-world stores is covered by the URL field, and of course you're welcome to go into further detail in their descriptions.

(to be clear: in the descriptions of those real-world stores. Honestly, I can't think of any reason short of severe OCD to want to list Amazon -- it's a heckuva lot quicker to find it by just, you know, going there, than to go to local and search for it there...)

The idea of LT Local is *not* to include on-line bookstores. The only exceptions to the online inclusions are to made for author events that are date and time limited and are *only* offered online.

But the On-line/Real-place selection isn't when you add an event, it's when you add a venue.

Seems like if you want to do an on-line event, you just set the Address in the event to "Elsewhere" and say it's online. Then put the URL in the URL field. Why do you need an online tag in the venue?

I agree that it would be kind of silly to put Amazon in (though I would for completeness), but there are many other online-only book vendors (like Bud Plant Art Books) that would benefit from the exposure. It's also relevant to the information about me because it's a source of my books.

Seems like we should have a way of including those.

--- David

This is how I've been entering them (although I do get an error message*, conceptDawg):

The "venue" is the URL. The "event" is the actual event listed with date and time. I've been listing them that way so that the events will actually show up on the dated local events list.

Here's an example of one to which I added an event today.

*Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /var/www/html/inc_caching.php on line 191

So, it looks like you just added a venue which is a website. How is it different adding a website where you can attend an event about books and adding a website where you can purchase books? There are physical locations where you can attend events and physical locations where you can purchase books. I don't see the difference.

As I edited in my post above (but should have put in a new post, so I'll re-iterate), it seems to me that the reasons we put physical bookstores in LibraryThing is the same reason we would want online bookstores. We get the word out to other people with similar interest, the venues get exposure and maybe more business, and it's one more bit of information that we can expose to the social network about ourselves.

--- David

To put it simply, Tim did not want it. He wanted physical bookstores only and was even hesitant about including online date/time-limited events such as those I included in the example above.

Is there a means on LT for authors to announce things like this, outside of LT Local?

http://www.librarything.com/venue/40496/Life-in-the-Past-Lane-blog

It's an unintended use of Local, but I am hard-pressed to think of an alternative on LT to suggest to the author.

I think a trend is starting up, so we really need to make a decision soon on whether to allow blogs and such, even if they do have "events":

http://www.librarything.com/venue/41540/Ascroft,-eh%3F

I'd just nuke 'em all, but I want to see what others think first.

There is already a space for author blog on the author page. I would say get rid of them; otherwise, every entry on the blog could be construed as an "event".

I'd get rid of them too.

Also, there is a group for Freebies, Book Giveaways, etc. where the authors or bloggers can announce upcoming book giveaways for their blogs. So, SkepticalSurveyor, that's what I would suggest to that author for those "events".

I've deleted them both; I'd like to note that before I deleted either of them, Ascroft had already created yet *another* entry for her blog. I've nuked that double as well.