New e-books and audiobooks on social media, a theory of everything and the art of memoir
How to turn the big social networks to your advantage, a Kindle Single that reads like a bad trip, and the changing nature of autobiography
by Emily Goldstein
We Can’t Be Beat (e-book)
Readers are spoilt for choice when it comes to books on how to harness the power of social media. The trick is to find what’s right for you. This volume, by Emily Goldstein, targets people a level up from the newbie, those who need to make the most of networks to help them market their brands. Thus chapters focus on only the biggies: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. Importantly, she advises, it’s preferable for people to build their presence on three to four networks rather than countless platforms, so post your content only where your audience hangs out. Readers will pick up tips such as the best time to post photos on Instagram and that it’s counterproductive to use too many hashtags per photo (five to seven being optimum). Twitter users might be interested to find out how they can boost their influence (by being featured on Twitter Counter and Twitaholic, for example). They can also schedule their tweets (use Hootsuite or similar) to ensure consistency. The advice may attract a passive income. At the least it will bring you into the 21st century.
by James McGirk
Amazon Digital Services (e-book)
Perhaps "strange chemicals", and large quantities of alcohol, have affected the way James McGirk thinks. For A Grand Theory of Everything is odd - deep but also shallow, and meaningless, unless you too have careened through life trying to make sense of stuff. That will include many, although few will have had his upbringing, living as a "princeling". As an Anglo-American teenager growing up in New Delhi with journalist parents, his was a third-culture existence, heightened by hard drugs, which he took to expand his mind and become a psychedelic astronaut. Then, everything was like an onion, wrapped around a core of nothingness. His theory of everything shifts when he encounters Colonel John Boyd, developer of the OODA loop, which stands for Observe, Orient, Decide and Act. The premise is that by acting faster than an opponent you will appear unpredictable to them and have the upper hand. Readers will wonder whether this Kindle Single was the result of a bad trip.