What is constant and what has changed

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For posterity's sake, I'd like to post here what used to be my Blogger profile write-up:

I've learned that in my life there are only a few things I need to keep constant: my love for my family and my love for reading. The rest can come and go as they please.

Now if you look at my current profile there on the right, you'll realize what has changed.

What is constant: I am a reader, I am a mother. Things that have changed: I used to be an educator in the classroom; now I'm an occasional educator when I do teacher training. I used to work in educational publishing, which did not impede at all into my book blogging activities. Now, I work in a digital publishing company that publishes and co-publishes trade books and some academic content. So, yes, I know this will affect this blog somewhat. 

But for the kind of work I am going to do, I'm willing to take that chance. 

And what is the kind of work I am going to do (or am doing, as of Tuesday last week)? I've been hired as managing editor for Flipside Digital Content Company, Inc. Historically, Flipside is a conversion house. They've been converting ebooks for some of the big six publishers for years. But this year, Flipside decided to open their services to local authors and publishers, which means that they're not only a conversion house anymore; they're a publisher. Specifically, they're a digital publisher.

So, working for them means that I get to live my dream of helping promote Filipino (and Asian) content on an international scale. I get to help publish Filipino titles to Amazon, Apple i-Books, and Barnes & Noble. Let me spell out what that means, in case the implication has missed a few of the readers--Filipino books can now be made available and more accessible to the international market via e-publishing, which I get to help out with. And, oh my God, for one who believes that our local lit should be read by more people, what a wonderful thing this is!

"But what about the Filipino or the Asian reader?" you might ask. We here in the good ol' Southeast of A aren't the marketplace for iBooks and B&N. No, we CANNOT buy books at iBooks and B&N, even if we have the devices, the credit cards, and the willingness to pay for the book. We can buy via Amazon, but we have to live with the additional $2 charge on all of our purchases. Again, penalty for living on the "wrong" side of the world. So much for promoting reading everywhere, huh?

But Flipside is also working out solutions for the Filipino and Asian readers, solutions that will grant them easier access to ebooks and will help writers and publishers make their content more accessible to local readers. So that's the other reason I was eager to work with them--I get to help enable more Filipino readers.

But enough about me and my career choices. What I want to say is that I will mostly continue what I've been doing with this blog, because this is still my blog, and not my company's or anyone else's. However, the line between my hobby and my work is blurring even more, so I want to be transparent with that. For every review I write, I will 

• state how I got the book
• specify whether it's a book we're publishing. 

I still reserve the right to blog about what I want to blog about, but I will do my utmost to be fair to my readers, to the company I work for, and to myself. 

Occasionally I might gush about things we're doing, so you're going to have to excuse that. After all, what use is this blog if I can't gush about book-related stuff that I want to gush about?

But at the heart, I am still and always will be a reader. Wherever I go or whatever I'm called, I'm happiest when I just read. That is constant.