Where do you buy books online?

Gylphi recently ran a poll on Twitter asking 'Where do you buy books online?', and here are the results: WHSmith (42% of votes), Waterstones (28%), Amazon (20%), Other (4%), the rest can be seen here. While there were 788 votes cast, which is a considerable number, no restrictions were made on the number of times people could vote or the number of booksellers they could vote for. The poll ran for a week and was advertised to followers of @gylphi on Twitter. There were many votes cast for The Book Depository among the Other section, and we consider that voting may have been different if this bookseller was named in the main voting section. Other booksellers people mentioned were as follows: www.greenmetropolis.com www.bookcrossing.com www.bookmooch.com www.editotum.com www.ibooknet.co.uk www.ukbookworld.com www.biblio.com www.antiqbook.com www.bestbookbuys.com www.half.com www.betterworldbooks.com Voting was not said to be exclusively UK, but the voting seems to suggest that votes came largely from the UK, despite some US booksellers being named by contributors in the comments section of the poll. No claims are made for this poll in terms of rigour, but since students and researchers are also book buyers it is hoped that some new names are present that may well be of interest. Thank you to all who contributed and commented including: @kernel99 @editotum @xugglybug @almadsfeika @mynameiscal @catherinehaines @juxtabook @sharonkitten @andrewgcrawford@lauranicosia @marina61 @pierre_el @entitydigital @FlossieTeacake @brightmeadow @Beardy_Boy @alantrotter @skdesign @Abi_Saffrey @kieronjs

Currently a further poll is running: http://twtpoll.com/7ic7la

Poetry in Bloom

Little did we understand, when first approached by Robert Sheppard and Scott Thurston, that taking on the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry would lead to a discovery of so many new voices on the Internet. The first eye opener was when the American poet, Ron Silliman, posted a link to the journal on his blog (http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com). After this link was posted we experienced a whole stream of visitors originating from Silliman's blog page. Second was a much longer posting on Ken Edwards' publishing project blog, Reality Street (http://www.realitystreet.co.uk/kens-blog.php) entitled 'Is it Academic?'. At around the same time Gylphi began to 'tweet' on Twitter, and it soon became apparent that Web 2.0 technologies were a way to reach an audience in a new way, a way that enabled people to take a casual interest in Gylphi without committing to a mailing list or checking an RSS feed or blog. It also became apparent that these technologies were being widely used by the contemporary British, Irish and American poetry communities. So, with our Twitter 'followers' reaching into the hundreds, we decided that it was time to take a look at Facebook as well; and we are pleased that we did. On Facebook we have had the privilege of discovering yet more poetry communities, and learning about, among other things, the Irish SoundEye Festival (http://ow.ly/e6Zz). Clearly, there is an active, and interconnected, poetry community on the web. One which we are only just beginning to understand. In the hope of helping others understand and connect with this community, here are just a few of the links we have found: http://fulcrumpoetry.com http://www.saltpublishing.com http://www.defaultpublishing.com http://www.poetrylibrary.org.uk http://jacketmagazine.com http://otherroom.org http://www.pores.bbk.ac.uk http://www.modernpoetry.org.uk http://www.greatworks.org.uk http://robertsheppard.blogspot.com http://dbqp.blogspot.com http://atonalistdoc.blogspot.com http://stephenvincent.net http://www.shearsman.com http://stevenfama.blogspot.com http://acompulsivereader.wordpress.com http://michellenakapierce.blogspot.com http://lilliputreview.blogspot.com http://dodie-bellamy.blogspot.com http://www.mynewpoem.com http://toddswift.blogspot.com http://www.petermanson.com http://www.woodlandpattern.org http://openned.com

Please feel free to add further links and comments.