The usual selection of old local pictures and some sort of ramble.

Something that I think often comes up and will come up more as the internet evolves is how does anyone get paid for adding pictures and writing, that other people want to read look at and so on.

I am pretty straightforward about this one with what I put on this blog, I work at Michael's Bookshop in King Street here in Ramsgate and use this blog to promote the activities in the bookshop.

Here is the link to photos of the books we put out today

Although if you clicked on the link you can see that all is not quite as it seems because of the old Ramsgate content in the books photographed.

There are other aspects with writing this blog and publishing the pictures here the main one being that I am interested in the content, history of the area, books, literature, photos of the area. Recently looking back over more than 10 years of posts here there is something like a diary in some of the posts, some sort of sense of being able to remember life, so I am now making an effort to record something I can connect to for any given day.

I am also interested in photography and especially the pitfalls, trying to use a phone camera when it just doesn't really cut the mustard, trying to use DSLR cameras that get bits on the sensor this link takes you to some Ramsgate and Broadstairs photos I took ten years a go and is a fine example of bits in the camera.

Something that also interests me are the motives other people have for putting pictures and writing on the internet, particularly as most people who do it don't seem to gain much from doing it, or if the do then how they gain from it is difficult to understand.

Don't get me wrong here, running and promoting a bookshop and local history publishing business doesn't make a lot of commercial sense. Obviously if it did there would be a lot more local history books and independent bookshops out there.

I suppose there is quite a lot of political content where the gain is obscured, quite a bit of promoting things that would probably have a negative affect on the local area. Also there is so much internet content that is just not very interesting, accurate etc.

Here in the book trade there is a huge problem related to writers just not getting paid enough to live on, big publishers and internet booksellers like Amazon taking too much of a cut and the writing bit of literature that used to be protected as an art, mostly by The Net Book Agreement, not getting a fair share.

Another area is news and journalism, I guess we are all familiar with the problem of news websites, where either the advertising is so intense that you and your device can't cope with it, there is also the the news site where you can only read part of the article before you have to fill in some online form or pay.

In practice with a business like mine either most people who want to use it already know where it is and when it's open or find it using the internet. I think most of our new customers now find us using Google Maps. Interested in books - go to a town - get out your phone - open the Google Maps app - put in bookshop and up they come; or not as is often the case.

The problem of how anyone can hope to get a reasonable return for producing reasonable internet content is difficult. This blog gets between about 500 and 2,000 visits a day, probably made up of mostly the same people, so I don't think advertising on it would pay, nor do I think some sort of subscription would work. As things are I am happy that it keeps the bookshop in the mind's eye of the people who read it.

If I add advertising then it wouldn't be for the revenue but because without it the blog's search engine rankings are slowly sinking.

       

 Before 1939 when the existing bandstand was built

 Before 1928 when the end of the San Clue burnt down