If you are currently providing summary articles in your site or blog’s RSS feed, you may want to consider switching to full-text. As RSS applications become more sophisticated and average readers become more discerning and demanding, it may be time to reconsider how best to use this valuable tool. Below are the top reasons for using full-text articles, the objections that are typically raised against full-text, and also some exceptions.
Reasons to Use Full-text Articles
• Increasingly, busy surfers and readers are viewing your RSS articles on a mobile device. If they have to click on a link that takes them to a web site to read the rest of an article, their experience can be less than optimal: no mobile version of the site, small web pages, and slow load times.
• Content is still king on the internet, not just at your web site but in your RSS feed as well. Building a following and reader loyalty is often grounded in offering content that is useful and/or entertaining and not difficult to access.
• Full-text articles increase the likelihood that your message gets read–assuming that’s your point. If you’re trying to get click-throughs or gauge metrics, there’ll be more to say on that below.
• Readers have already demonstrated they have an interest in what you have to say by subscribing to your feed. By only providing a summary, you risk alienating them by requiring that extra click.
• Overwhelmingly, at polls and in comments across the blogosphere, RSS readers agree that they want to see the full text. In fact, some RSS readers will not subscribe to a feed if it only provides summaries.
• If your readers are following lots of RSS feeds, they may not take the time to visit your site. One of the primary advantages of RSS reader applications is that they aggregate feeds for the sake of convenience and efficiency.
• Users may be more likely to Digg, StumbleUpon, Tweet, link or otherwise share your article if it’s full-text.
• Some busy readers on the go like to cache their feeds and read offline. In the same vein, if your site is down, the feed is still out there.
Objections to Using Full-text Articles
• Many people who use summaries in an RSS feed are trying to ensure that readers also visit their site. If you’re trying to get users to the ads on your site, first consider the enormous amounts of traffic that it takes to monetize a site with contextual ads and, second, consider putting ads in the feed itself. On the other hand, if you have an affiliate site, then you really want an optimized landing page for people who want to buy what you’re selling, visitors that are typically generated through paid advertising and some organic search.
• You’ll get more comments on your articles if the reader has to click through to the full article. First, of course, you’ve got to get the reader to click through, which may not be that easy to do. However, even with a full-text article, experienced RSS readers will know that the comments can often contain as much useful information as the original article and may click through to see these–especially if the comments are referenced in a future article or post.
• If users don’t click through, then you can’t gather metrics. Then again, some of the most metric-driven sites on the internet–professional bloggers and internet marketers–almost universally use full-text articles.
Exceptions to the Rule – There’s Always a Few
• A summary RSS feed is a good way to skim news sources that manage to summarize their content in the title and tag. Readers can often get the gist of the news from a few short sentences.
• If you post several times a day, then it may be a kindness to your readers to use summary articles. However, consider writing unique content for the summary instead of just using an excerpt.
• Sometimes the decision comes down to the length of the post. Really long posts, or posts heavy on images, might best be left at the web site and a summary sent out that outlines the entire article.
There is no strict set of guidelines that publishers can use to decide whether or not they want to provide a summary or a full-text RSS feed. However, one rule of thumb that webmasters have used successfully for years has been trying to imagine what they themselves would want out of a site. By putting your readers experience at the forefront and offering content that is genuinely of value, you put your site on a much faster track to success.
Bonus Tips
• Whether you use summary or full-text articles in your RSS feed, subscribe to it yourself. You may be surprised by what you see. Not only can the formatting change, but be sure to check links back to your site, ads, and also social media share buttons.
• To change your RSS settings in WordPress, navigate to Settings > Reading, and then select “Full text” or “Summary”.
• To change your RSS settings in Blogger, navigate to Settings > Site Feed > Allow Blog Feeds, and then select “Full”, “Short”, or “None”.
• In LiveJournal, full text is the default. If you want to change it, you’ll have to use the Admin console.
 I previously reviewed one of the first Vooks, back in November of last year. Even in the short amount of time that has transpired since then, there’ve been some nice improvements. I purchased The Master of Rampling Gate by Anne Rice from the iTunes store for $0.99 and installed it on my first generation iPod Touch, which has the latest OS.
What I Like About the New Vook
• Gone are the short dramatizations that repeated part of the text. Instead, there are mini-documentaries that relate to the chapter. I wasn’t against the dramatization, per se, but I had not liked the way it repeated the text, providing no new content. It makes sense to me that this version of the Vook didn’t have them.
• There is now a clearer separation between the story content and the ancillary video material. Once I figured that out, I took out my earphones while I was reading, which is more comfortable for me.
• There were still images included with the text of the book.
 Still Image from the Text Part of the Vook • The videos were high quality and added quite a bit to my enjoyment of the whole Vook experience. Including Gothic Historians for a Gothic piece was fitting as were the older silent-film type clips with voice overs. It was a nice balance between engaging visuals and talking heads.
 The beginning of the first video. • I like the new slider at the bottom to help me navigate at a faster clip through the text. Gone are the up and down arrows at the top that didn’t really do anything for me.
 I liked the slider on the bottom for navigation. The up and down arrows are replaced by the chapter number (3, in this case), and I can have white text on a black background. The blue link leads to a dictionary definition. • Unlike the previous Vook that I’d read, the navigation was consistent and worked fine.
• White text on a black background–hurray!
• The icon for the app was easy to see and it was relevant.
What I Didn’t Like About the Vook
• I wasn’t able to place bookmarks, which has been a standard part of the ebook experience and a feature that I tend to use.
• After stopping and restarting the app, the text of the book doesn’t pick up where I left off. Again, I think this is pretty much expected in any ebook. Likewise, when I went to the table of contents for the book, I couldn’t easily get back to where I had been reading.
• The app bombed twice during the videos. This was never an issue with the previous Vook, but the OS has changed, I’m sure I’ve installed and uninstalled lots of apps, and you just never know where conflicts can arise. It was annoying but I’m not sure I can really fault the Vook. Oh, wait–even as I write this, the iTunes store has offered an update for “typos” and “persistence”.
• I was initially confused by the non-fiction video content at the top or end of a fiction chapter. I think this confusion probably stems from my previous experience where the videos shown in the book were dramatizations of the text. After watching the first video and checking the others, I simply read the story, then watched all of the videos afterward.
 The thumbnail for the video shows Anne Rice in a coffin and I was confused since I thought it might be a dramatization of part of the text. • I’m not sure if the gravedigger in the video about the black plague was a character or not. I’ve decided that he is, although he was so unlike the silent film actors that I couldn’t quite tell.
• Most of the videos end a little abruptly, which is fine, but I was hoping for something a little less abrupt on the last one. I call it the “last” one, although you don’t have to watch them in order.
• A final niggling detail: the video titles in the table of contents didn’t match the title as shown in the video. Oh, this is picky, I know.
Nice Improvement
I enjoyed this Vook much more than the first one and not just because it’s by Anne Rice. Some of things that I had wanted are now here (white text, video that adds context instead of repeating the story). Some items on my wish list are still missing (can’t read text in landscape, can’t listen to my own music while reading). Overall though, I was encouraged by the changes that I found and I’ll probably start to actively look for more Vooks that I might enjoy.
In fiction, it is often said that the first line of the story is the most important. I have my favorites, as I’m sure you do. As a non-fiction writer, though, I began to wonder about first lines of non-fiction. So, without having to go far, I looked up the first lines in the following works of non-fiction and thought I’d spring them on you.
His arrival in Philadelphia is one of the most famous scenes in autobiographical literature: the bedraggled 17-year-old runaway, cheeky yet with a pretense of humility, straggling off the boat and buying three puffy rolls as he wanders up Market Street.
Walter Isaacson
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
John Wilkes Booth awoke Good Friday morning, April 14, 1865, hungover and depressed.
James L. Swanson
Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer
Vatican propaganda notwithstanding, Peter was never “bishop of Rome.”
Thomas Cahill
Pope John XXIII: A Life
“I promise you four papers,” the young patent examiner wrote his friend.
Walter Isaacson
Einstein: His Life and Universe
Popular myth has it that one of the most remarkable conversations in modern literary history took place on a cool and misty late autumn afternoon in 1896, in the small village of Crowthorne in the county of Berkshire.
Simon Winchester
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary
In the early nineties (it might have been 1992 but it’s hard to remember when you’re having a good time) I joined a rock-and-roll band composed mostly of writers.
Stephen King
On Writing
If the intended reader of this book should want to go beyond disagreement with its author and try to identify the sins and deformities that animated him to write it (and I have certainly noticed that those who publicly affirm charity and compassion and forgiveness are often inclined to take this course), then he or she will not just be quarreling with the unknowable and ineffable creator who–presumably–opted to make this way.
Christopher Hitchens
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
I am not all here, it’s true.
Terry Brooks
Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life
The title of this book differs by only two letters from that of a book first published in 1988.
Stephen Hawking with Leonard Mlodinow
A Briefer History of Time
In November 2008 the surviving members of the original Monty Python team, stunned by the extent of digital piracy of their videos, issued a very stern announcement on YouTube.
Chris Anderson
Free: The Future of a Radical Price
Flying into Australia, I realized with a sigh that I had forgotten again who their prime minister is.
Bill Bryson
In a Sunburned Country
What should we have for dinner?
Michael Pollan
The Omnivore’s Dilemna: A Natural History of Four Meals
Anybody else have non-fiction line they’d like to throw out?
Do any of these lines make you want to read the book? Or just the first paragraph?
Yet again I have retooled the web site–with more plans down the line. Today’s exercise was one in which I took the latest blog posts and put them in their own section, instead of having them located on the home page. It was incredibly easy using built-in WordPress settings and some of the theme options for Atahualpa. It makes the site feel more like a, well, a site, and less like just a blog. It took all of thirty minutes.
It also de-emphasizes the blog aspect of the site, since I do less of it. More and more, I apply the time that I have to the work-in-progress and other writing duties. I think it’s “putting the platform before the publishing” to spend too much time on blog entries and not enough on outlining, drafting, and revising. The same goes for social media.
Of course, now that I’ve relegated the blog to an interior page of the site, I blog. It must be that I feel the pressure less.
The fact is that writing something long (like the WIP) has accompanying longish periods where, were I to blog about it, I’d say the same thing from day to day, week to week, and even month to month.
Enough of that. Time to write.
 Wow, I had never realized how much I didn’t want a Kindle until a free one was offered to me. Yes, as the earth shudders in anticipation of the Apple iPad, Amazon has heard the buzz–and is responding.
I have blogged, commented, and tweeted about my great admiration for ebooks, and my great desire not to have to move boxes of books ever again. I have also been a purchaser of digital books. It would seem, however, that I am also “an unusually active book customer” and so deserving of a limited-time offer: buy a 6″ Kindle for $249 and, if I’m not happy with it, get a refund AND keep the Kindle. Say what?
Yes, you read that right. Essentially buy it in the next few days, use the Kindle with my Amazon account, send an email within 30 days that I’d like a full refund (including shipping), and get my money back. It’s a free Kindle.
Well, I’ve seen them in public and always kind of wanted to try one. But one of the reasons I’m an active ebook buyer is that I’m pretty darn satisfied with my current ebook reader–my first generation iPod Touch. It fits in a pocket or purse easily, it also has games, movies, music, news, RSS feeds, e-mail, and the web (if I’m near WiFi). I’ve had it for a couple of years now and it has yet to show its age. It’s got about thirty audiobooks on it now and about thirty ebooks as well.
Well, who knew that “free” could be so clarifying. I like gadgets, but I think I’ll pass on this one.
Anybody out there like their Kindle more than their iPod or iPhone?
 Embassy Vook Cover As a big proponent of the e-book and a fan of technology in general, I took a look at the Vook, the new e-book with embedded video. I bought Embassy by Richard Doetsch for $4.99, downloaded it to my laptop, and then put it on my iPod Touch.
What I Like About the Vook
It hijacked my workout. Typically I read RSS feeds, listen to podcasts, or watch videos on the elliptical. It’s no big deal to keep track of what the elliptical is doing while I read, listen, or watch. The Vook, however, made me lose track of whether I was supposed to be pedaling backward or forward.
I also thought the price was decent. True, Amazon is arbitrarily setting their e-book prices at $9.99 and lower and many authors are offering e-books for free or almost free in their bids to garner new readers. Even though Embassy is 128 pages long, I thought the additional video and the new technology made it worth a try.
I liked the ability to change the font size and I also liked the mini table of contents for just the video.
I liked the extra video of an interview with the author. Although there’s a connect icon at the bottom of the Vook that leads to links to web sites and such, this video is the best way to connect with the author.
What I Dislike About the Vook
Let’s start with the biggie: the video repeats the text. Because I was so engrossed in the story, once it got moving, I skipped one of the videos. I eventually went back to see what I had missed, but by that point in my reading/watching I had learned that the videos didn’t advance the plot or add new information. One of the reasons I read thrillers is because of the fast pace and the page turning. If I’m going to have to take time to watch a video then I either want to know that (1) it advances the plot and I won’t be reading the same information or (2) that I’ll have the option of jumping back into the story at a point after the video information is given again.
Continue reading How the Vook Hijacked My Workout
Hi, my name is Terisa. And I’m an Amazon-Sales-Rank-a-holic.
But I’ve found a new way to feed my addiction. It’s called TitleZ. Yes, you have to register with an e-mail address but I have yet to receive any spam from them. When that changes, you’ll know. Believe me, you’ll know. Here’s an example of their output, based on my two tattoo books.
 TitleZ Sales Rank Data You know you want to try it, so go ahead. Plus, you can look up any title or author, not just your own books.
But, if I wanted, I could stop any time.
 Peek-a-Booo! These pop-up books by my friend Marie Cimarusti are so incredibly fun! Fabulous to give as gifts to friends who are parents of toddlers, they make me look like I know what to buy for the little ones. Every single one that I’ve given has been raved about. It’s a total kick to watch the wee ones unknowingly mimic the peek-a-boo as their parents unfold the pop-up. Sometimes, they do the pop-up themselves because they simply cannot wait to see it. If you order now, you can still get it in time for Halloween!
And the law won.
And the law was gravity, writer friends. And when the law won, it was the biggest pain in the neck.
For about a month, I flouted the usual rules of an ergonomic work station and just worked, and worked, and worked. There was much happiness, since work is writing and writing is great. Then my vertebrae said that I would not be working as much. It puts a hitch in the giddy-up, that’s for sure.
So, of the 3.6 average people who see this blog, how have you solved the ergonomic quandary of the I-mostly-sit-for-a-living work life?
I believe that there is a law in the universe for backups: frequency is directly proportional to data loss, i.e., about the only time you really get serious about doing backups is when you’ve had a crash and lose your files. Or, to put the less negative spin on it, the more often you do a backup, the less data you lose. You know it. I know it. It is a law after all. We’ll call it the Universal Backup Law.
Flirting with Disaster
In July of 2005, a Harris Poll survey found that 35% (more than a third) of US adults with personal and professional digital information stored on a laptop or desktop, never backed up their files. Never. Not once. Zero.
Per the Universal Backup Law, in the event of a theft or a crash, they are guaranteed to lose data. In fact, per a corollary to the Universal Backup Law, the crash gods will take special pains to find them.
Are you one of these people? Continue reading Cheap Backups for Writers
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