Newsletter #77 — Google Alerts
March 1, 2024
Newsletter #77 — Google Alerts
Edith Houghton — If you have read Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball, you may remember that Edith Houghton was the thirteen-year-old shortstop for the all-girls team the Philadelphia Bobbies: she traveled with them to Japan to play against all-male college teams. Edith was in the WAVES during World War II and then became a scout for the Philadelphia Phillies.
Two weeks ago I received an email from a professor emerita of Temple University who is teaching a class on Baseball and American History, in which she is having the students study Edith Houghton and work to have Edith's home included on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places. The prof wanted to know if I would be willing to talk to her students. I said I would. She also asked if they could somehow access the oral histories (my interviews of female ballplayers done in the 1980s and 1990s). I explained that I had donated these and all my research materials to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2015 (hard to believe that was almost ten years ago!) and that everybody has access to them. She was happy to hear that.
Google Alerts — When I started self-publishing in 2010, I set up a Google Alert for my first self-published book, She's on First (which was a reprint of the traditionally published hardback of 1987), so that I could track anything that was happening that had to do with the book. Even before I set up the alert, I said to Phil, "I'm going to get hundreds of false hits on this, all of them saying something like 'She's on a first name basis with . . . '" Man, did I call that one! After maybe three or four years I ended this particular alert because it was no longer necessary to me.
Over the years I've created Google Alerts for all of my self-published books as well as the traditionally published The F Words. After a period of time (usually three years) I drop the alert. However, my alert for Jack and Larry has been running since 2012. I never dropped it because the Jack Graney family and others (me included) continued to work to have Jack Graney receive the Ford Frick Award, and I wanted to follow any news about it. Jack was given the award he so justly deserves in 2022, but my alert is still working. One of these days I might drop it.
Recently I created an alert for Exit Velocity. I suspected I might have problems: like being inundated with daily alerts. That's because when I first entered my search terms, everything having to do with a baseball's exit velocity came up. We're talking something like 86,000 hits. So I changed my search term to "Exit Velocity by Barbara Gregorich." That got rid of the baseball articles. So far, this is working out well.
Unboxing Books – It's a "thing" on social media for authors to unbox their books, and BookBaby suggested I do so. Here, then, is the video of me unboxing my author copies of Exit Velocity. I didn't intend the video to be humorous, but that's how it turned out. You can hear Phil laugh in the background.
Exit Velocity on Presale! — As planned, Exit Velocity did go on pre-sale by March 1. Here's the link. If you visit the page, you might want to scroll down to read the two back-cover testimonials.
Who Reads YA — In my March 1 blog I talk about adults who read YA fiction.