Media Soul Blog

Stacey Harp, the proprietess of the E-Involved website and Stacy's Soul blog has started a new blog called Media Soul and a new business called Mind & Media, which she talks about in this post.  She offers the following explanation and invitation:

Today I started my business Mind & Media with the purpose of promoting media within the blogging industry.

Mind & Media will be promoting films, books and services through advertising through bloggers.

If you are interested in being a Mind & Media partner, please email me at [email protected]

I am looking for bloggers who are interested in reviewing both films and books.

I already have 5 authors who I'm working with and the books vary on subject.

Some are political, Christian, Emerging Church and on Social issues.

You will be asked to receive a complimentary copy of the item and then review it on your website.  This is a great opportunity to get in now because we can make a difference!

Email me today and tell me what type of books or films you want to review and I'll set you up immediately.

As frequently happens here in Jollyville, I heard about this through Adrian Warnock.  Adrian has some concerns about how this will play out:

I wonder how media will take bloggers honesty- what if I am given a book to review on emerging church and totally diss it? Will I get another one? Will they realise that dissing something gives other bloggers a chance to leap to its defence and actually amplifies the level of attention, or will they move onto someone more amenable?

Not saying that he's worried, but if he is worried, I'm not as worried about it as he is.  Stacy will give you the chance to tell her what books and films you want to review so you can pick and choose.  My plan is to tell her up front what my biases are and let her be the judge of whether or not I would be a good reviewer for that particular book.  I'm like Adrian in that I am skeptical, to say the least, about the emerging church movement and I'll be happy to let her and the authors know that.  But I think I can give an honest, yet irenic critique.  If Stacy is working with authors and publishers I think we can just tell her up front what our biases are and let them decide if they want to put their books in the hands of a potentially critical reviewer.  We can always request to review books by folks we are favorably biased toward.

Bottom line - I think this sounds like a great idea and I'm glad she's doing it.  It really sounds like it has the potential to benefit both bloggers and authors and filmmakers.  I've already corresponded with Stacy about this a bit and she's very helpful, so if you like doing book and film reviews, drop her a line.

Comments

[Stacy L. Harp]

Thanks for the plug! BTW, my Stacy's soul blog is really not my main blog anymore, it's Media Soul. :)

[Bill Wallo]

Most publicists know that a reviewer's independence is valuable - in other words, the fact that you'll trash something if you don't like it means that readers tend to value your use of superlatives more. I have praised some books to the sky and damned others with faint praise (or none at all) and it hasn't changed people's willingness to send me things.

Of course, if I ask for a book I'm more likely to review it, and if I ask for it I'm more likely to be interested in the topic or the author all ready; it is a different story with stuff that gets sent to me out of the blue. Some of that doesn't get read, and there's no guarantee that it will; they're hoping for comment. So I'd say there's an interesting relationship in play and your job as a reviewer is (a) to try to review things to the best of your ability and be honest about it and (b) honor your commitments to your contacts.

For what it's worth. :)

[David Wayne]

Great advice Bill - I appreciate you taking the time to comment on this.