Last week we encouraged our readers to perform a Vanity Google Book search–making some odd and useful discoveries.
It all started with an innocent Google Books search that revealed this GalleyCat editor was quoted in a book by Ann Coulter. Reader Allia Zobel was also surprised by her personal serach: “I found 438 results. What’s more fun, though, is the Google ads on the side that say, ‘Allia Zobel on sale,’ and ‘We found Allia Zobel.’ I didn’t know I was missing.”
In a noble twist, editor Allison Trzop changed Google Book-ing from a vain habit into a useful writing tool. It’s great advice for aspiring writers of all genres: “Handy free tool for writers via GalleyCat. Search name of editor/agent you’re pitching & see their past books.”
“Steve Weddle found a blast from his early Internet past: “The first one, British voices from South Asia: an exhibition, is from my time working at the LSU Special Collections library when I was working on my MFA. I helped a very nice lady and two professors with some Unix code to set up Web pages for their exhibition. This was back when we had to make Web pages by scraping the backs of shovels with chalky stones.”
SwanLakeSambaGirl wrote: “Weird. They have every book that mentions, however briefly, my old law review articles, but they don’t have a preview of my novel or its book cover (though they have it listed).”
Reader Eddie Stack wrote: “This is amazing…kinda scary too…lots of footprints going back a while.”
The Writers Situation wrote: “The first thing that came up for me was a sentence in someone’s book about my addiction to Googling myself.”
Any other stories? Add them in the comments section.