We’ve just finished a round of changes to our share buttons to make that process a lot easier. They look the same—but using them to actually share is much smoother and simpler. (We’re particularly pleased with the new email button.)

So next time you’re moved to tell someone about something of ours—our Unraveling the Mysteries of The Big Bang Theory giveaway, say, or yesterday’s Psychology of Joss Whedon essay about Buffy and Spike—I hope you’ll be as happy with the changes there as we are.

We’ve made a few other alterations that may not be immediately obvious. We’ve added a Google+ button to our sidebar, most prominently. If you’re on Google+, we’d love to see you there. We’ve refreshed our About page, and added a Submissions Guidelines page for authors and agents. And we’ve made some behind-the-scenes changes to our book pages that you’ll see in the coming weeks, too.

But we’re particularly excited about the share buttons.

Heather’s been interning for us since Fall 2009, and as of last Monday, she’s BenBella’s newest employee. She’ll be doing both editorial and marketing work, supporting Jennifer and I on all Smart Pop titles (as well as continuing to be in charge of our YA site), and we couldn’t be more excited to have her on board!

You can read more about Heather in her bio on our About page.

Some new things to watch out for:

1. A more streamlined design. You’ll notice this all over, from our main page all the way to our blog pages, but the place it’s probably most obvious is on our individual essay pages (see today’s essay, for example).

2. Improved comments. Let’s start with the blog. Comments on posts are now a heck of a lot more attractive and, I think, easier to read. If you have an avatar associated with your WordPress log-in, that will now show up. Jennifer and my responses are easier to spot; our comments will show up with a blue rather than dark gray background. And comments are now threaded, to make replying to specific comments easier and following conversations easier.

3. More ways to talk about your favorite tv and book series and films. We like to think of every Smart Pop essay as an invitation to a conversation, whether you’re reading that essay in a book at home or here online. Accordingly, we’ve added the ability to comment on individual essays, so you can respond to our authors’ words . . . and our authors (as well as fellow readers) can, if so moved, respond back.

We’ve also added a ShareThis icon, to help make it easy to take the conversation to your own blog or Livejournal or share with friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter—or even, if you’re feeling old-fashioned, via email.

4. An easy way to tell us what you like. You can also now show your appreciation for specific essays directly, by clicking the “LIKE” button located at the top of the essay. This does a couple of key things:

• First, it gives us a chance to get your feedback on the content of our books. Sometimes it feels like book publishing happens in a vacuum: we know when our books do well, but we don’t always know why. Telling us you like an essay lets us do a better job of putting together books you want to read.
• Second, it lets other readers, browsing the site, know what essays they shouldn’t miss.

5. Bright yellow buy buttons . . . and more buy options. If you do want to buy one of our books, we’ve made it easier—the button is now bright yellow, and located beneath the cover image. We’ve also added, in many cases, more options. Bookshelves too packed? Buy the e-book edition. Just interested in a single essay by a favorite author from one of our anthologies? Just buy that essay. (We have nearly 600 available now, and are still working through our backlist to add to that number.) Speaking of which—

6. The launch of direct digital sales. Many of our Smart Pop titles are available for sale through Amazon, for the Kindle, and through other e-book vendors, for the Sony Reader, the Nook, etc. But we’ve also chosen to offer direct digital downloads of our books and essays, in PDF format, DRM-free. Which means you can send them to be read on your favorite e-reader or read them on whatever computer you have handy—and, like you would with a regular book, you can also share those files with a friend.

Does this increase the chance our books will end up being pirated and end up on file-sharing sites? Maybe. But we believe that the trade-off—easier usability for our readers, and not feeling like Big Brother—is worth it.

I also, personally, believe that the market, and the way content creators/publishers and audiences relate to (and compensate) one another, is changing. As past Smart Pop contributor Cory Doctorow has pointed out, honest users are going to stay honest users whether we use DRM or not . . . and I believe that, if you’re reading this right now, you are an honest user. You have a relationship with us, through this site and this blog, and you know that piracy (uploading content to file sharing sites) can hurt us and the writers we work with.

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There are definitely more upgrades and changes we’re looking at for the future. (One commenter, for example, pointed out how helpful it would be if we linked the footnotes in our essay for easy toggling back and forth, something I’d very much like us to do but just haven’t had time to implement yet.) If you have any suggestions as you check out our new look, definitely let us know.

Thanks for being here!

We’re asking Glee fans to share your Glee: to tell us how Glee has impacted your life, from the silly to the sublime. We’ll publish your stories alongside the book’s essays and special reference sections. (The book’s scheduled for release this fall; more details to come!)

We have another month to wait before we get more Glee; have to use that time for something, right?

As of this morning, she’s taking over chief hosting duties for our blog, Twitter account, and Facebook page. I’ll still be blogging, giving book updates, and sharing the occasional comment or link. But when you @message us or comment over on Facebook, chances are Jennifer will be the one answering.

I’ll miss getting my daily Twitter fix, but—as you’ll see over the next few days—having Jennifer take the reins is going to be a great thing for stepping up the frequency and quality of what we’re doing online.

• updates on the contest and book (including the first look at the cover)
• notice that we’ve posted another essay tip on the blog
• a reminder a couple of weeks before Feb 1 so you don’t miss the deadline

It’s right up at the top and hard to miss; just go to our contest page, enter your email, and hit submit!

Hope your essays are going well!

You may have noticed the big “BETA” stamped on the right side of our header . . . or a glitch or two around the site. Have you found a typo in an essay, or a bad link, or something else that looks like it’s gone awry? We want to know about it!

Email me at leahATbenbellabooksDOTcom with anything you find . . . and for every honest to goodness error, I’ll put a metaphorical slip of paper with your name on it into the (equally metaphorical) hat. After midnight on Friday, I’ll randomly select 10 names and send those people a Smart Pop book of their choice.

I’m your de facto host, Leah, Smart Pop series editor—and this is the new Smart Pop Books.

I wanted to use this inaugural entry to give you a feel for the site: what we’re aiming to be, and what kind of content we’re trying to provide.

Overview

First and foremost, you’ll find essays we’ve published in our Smart Pop series—a new free essay every day.

Over the past six years we’ve put out nearly 50 anthologies, each with an average of 18 to 20 essays—a huge amount of content.  Starting today, we’ll be putting up the full text of a new essay from one of those anthologies every day, Monday through Friday, and leaving it up for a full week before letting it disappear back into the ether. (The links will still work after that week; they’ll just take you to a shorter excerpt.)

Second, you’ll find this blog. As we go forward we’ll be blogging once or twice a week ourselves, and inviting our past Smart Pop writers to do some guest blogging.

Our goal, at least for the moment, is not to review episodes or books or movies (there are already plenty of places you can find smart people doing a fabulous job at that) so much as it is to talk about both the minutiae and the big picture—to make comparisons across series and across mediums, to talk about pop culture in a way that’s hopefully thoughtful and creative. We’ll give a peek behind the scenes of the Smart Pop series and keep you updated on books in progress.

Also, you’ll be able to browse through and search all our past Smart Pop anthologies and their essays; see what other essays writers you like have written for us; and of course, buy the books.

What You Can Look Forward To in the Next Few Months

Excerpts for all the rest of our essays. We’ve got that “BETA” up there in the header for a reason: we’re still testing things out, and getting content loaded in. But over the next few weeks, those “Essay excerpt to come!” lines will quickly start being replaced.

The ability to rate and comment on individual essays. Because what are our Smart Pop titles, really, if not a printed discussion of tv shows, books, and movies we’re passionate about? And it’s a discussion we want you to be able to join.

Links to purchase e-books and individual essays. It seems unfair to tease you with an excerpt if we aren’t going to follow through. You won’t be able to get every essay, but we’re working with our authors to make as many available as we can.

Stay in Touch!

Over on the right are plenty of ways to keep up with us:

1. Twitter and Facebook. We’ll tweet/post whenever a new essay or blog post goes up, in addition to offering book discounts, passing on links we like, and making the occasional 140 character observation of our own.
2. RSS. We’ve set up separate feeds for our essays and our blog—subscribe to either, or both.
3. Our weekly email. Every Friday we’ll send you an email with links to the essays we’ve posted over the past five days. It’s an easy way to make sure you didn’t miss anything, and since the next essay won’t go up until Monday, you have the weekend to read at your leisure.

And please don’t hesitate to leave us a comment and let us know what you think: of the site, of our books, of my sorry attempts at spicing up a long introductory post. We’re always looking for feedback!

Thanks for stopping by—hope we’ll see you again soon!