My publicist recently turned me on to LibraryThing.com, so after having her email in my inbox for a few weeks, I decided to check it out. If you’re into books like I am you may get hooked by it as I did. It’s a slick web site where, once you create a free account, you can enter the books in your personal library. Believe me if that sounds tedious, it really isn’t, because due to the magic of the internet, once you enter a title, it searches either Amazon.com or the Library of Congress, both pretty large databases, and almost invariably up pops the book.
In other words, book entry is quick and easy.

And as you add a book, it tells you how many other members have a copy of it in their library. So, of course, one of the first books I entered was my own — Life On Purpose: Six Passages to an Inspired Life and was pleasantly surprised to find 3 other members own it. (Ok, so one of them turned out to be my VA, but that’s ok.)

Then I discovered on one of the other member’s page who has my book, The Author’s Cloud. Now Jaden has been doing her work, having entered 499 authors, so when I clicked over to her Author’s Cloud, there were all these photos of her authors. So, I figured, maybe I would be there, and I was! Surprise, surprise. And as I looked around my photo, I noticed just above me was a picture of Shakespeare, and right next to me was John Steinbeck, and just below me was Mark Twain and Las Tsu, and on that same row was Thoreau. Not half shabby company, huh?

And then a funny thing happened. I found myself moved, deeply moved by this moment in cyberspace. I had joined the ranks of these other authors who had dedicated countless hours of their own lives to sharing themselves through the written words. Oh, I don’t know that I’ll be remembered as long as any of these that I’ve shared with you, but then again, who knows. My career as an author is in many ways just beginning, and I don’t know what this road has to offer.

But I thank the people who created the LibraryThing and for whomever had the ingenious idea to create the Author’s Cloud feature.