Week Five: Early Word

EarlyWord is definitely a keeper. As a fan of many book-to-movie titles - Never Let Me Go, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Mortal Instruments, etc. etc. - I love that EarlyWord has a strong focus on media tie-ins. And I know that customers at our branch have been gobbling up our "The Book Was Better..." display, so I'm not the only one! Lists of upcoming releases (which helpfully point blog-readers back towards our friends, the original books) and trailers for recent/upcoming movies and television shows based on books (Squee! Shakespeare as done by Joss Whedon. So psyched!) were among the many many resources aggregated by EarlyWord.


Actually, the amount of links, ads, and categories on the site is a bit daunting. The experience was just not as slick and streamlined as I prefer in a website. While on the positive side, there aren't oodles of pictures and flashy goo-gaws to slow the site down (I'm looking at you, Goodreads!), EarlyWord is still a less-than-thrilling visual experience. Navigation is also a bit tricky: I resorted to using the ubiquitous Internet Explorer "find" function to locate the bestseller lists.

Ignoring much of the sidebar material (for sanity's sake,) the blog itself is definitely one to follow. And I can see a lot of value in having a source handy which brings together so much useful information (bestseller lists, media tie-ins, upcoming releases, reviews, award winner lists, media coverage, etc. etc.)  from around the interwebs.