Publetariat

Don't Hate The Wait

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It’s a cliché that so-called overnight successes are many years in the making, but it’s also true. As you plug away at your day job and your manuscripts, year in and out, it’s easy to get discouraged. It’s hard not to feel nothing’s ever going to happen for you. And when you read about some hot new author du jour you’ve never heard of who got a six or seven figure offer, landed a spot on Oprah and got a full-page profile in The New York Times, it can seem impossible to be happy for her. In that moment of—let’s be honest—bitter resentment, it is impossible to imagine your dreams coming true. But if they ever do, it will be due in large part to all the time you spent waiting for it to happen, and how you spent that time.

I queried agents on a novel of mine for the first time about thirteen years ago. I was fortunate to land a great agent in that first round of queries, and I thought my writing career was well on its way. Thought is the operative word there. The novel didn’t sell. I wrote and submitted a second novel, which also didn’t sell. Most frustrating of all, the reasons for the rejections had nothing to do with the quality of my writing, which New York editors said was very strong. It came down to what those editors thought they could or could not sell up the chain. So I back-burnered my writing dreams for a while and got on with life: marriage, kids and jobs. It was just a few years ago that I became an advocate for the indie author movement, and I won’t have a book out from a trade publisher until next year. But looking back on it, I can honestly say all the time I had to wait, and how I spent it, was instrumental to my eventual success.

Marriage and becoming a parent have informed my work in authorship to an extent that can’t be overstated. This isn’t to say I think you’ll be a poor writer unless you get married and have kids, I’m just saying that the experiences I’ve had in those two areas have changed the person I am, caused me to abandon many of my formerly-cherished views, and caused me to look at people and the world differently. Others can get the same benefits from relationships with family and friends, romantic partners, travel, or any sort of life-changing experience.

My day jobs have all had their part to play as well. Working as a technical writer made ‘writing tight’ a reflex for me. Being a software engineer ingrained discipline and attention to detail, both of which are critical skills for any writer. Managing software projects taught me the value of organization, working to a plan, and prioritizing my time and effort. If I hadn’t learned those lessons, there’s no way I could’ve found the time, energy and will to pursue my goals in authorship with everything else I had going on in my life. Working as a web developer and database administrator paid huge dividends when it came to launching and growing my author platform. And continuing to work those day jobs exposed me to all manner of personalities and experiences I could draw upon later, whether in terms of creating a composite character for a story or working with peers and industry people on the business side of things.

What if that first novel had sold? I would’ve been thrilled at the time, but once the initial fanfare died down I think disappointment and failure would’ve settled in pretty quickly. The publisher wouldn’t have lavished a big offer and promotional budget on me, and I wouldn’t have had the money, skills, discipline or maturity to tackle promoting myself and my book on my own. I wouldn’t have had the first idea how to map out a project plan, assemble the necessary talents I lacked (if I even recognized that I lacked them in the first place), or network effectively. My novel most likely would’ve faded from store shelves pretty quickly, and I’d be damaged goods as far as publishers were concerned. Even if the story had been much brighter, if the book had been a surprise hit, I doubt I would’ve sustained a writing career for any length of time. How could I cope with this new, ubiquitous thing called the internet if I’d spent all my time holed up in my comfort zone with a word processor? Given my naiveté, relatively sheltered life to date and ordinary, suburban upbringing, what more could I draw from the well that would inform, entertain or inspire readers enough to keep them buying my books? How could I write about loss, the brow-beating yoke of responsibility, or the push and pull of adult relationships with any authority?

Some of you may already be protesting that there have been plenty of young, breakout writers. But ask yourself this: how many of them have had solid careers that spanned decades, and how many had a hit book or a single hit series, then never struck gold again? There are probably so few exceptions to this that you could count them on one hand, and in every one of those cases the author in question was most likely a true prodigy. For the rest of us, being made to wait till we’ve lived a little longer and experienced a little more of what life has to offer isn’t a bad thing.

Having to work a day job while you’re doing all this living and experiencing isn’t a bad thing, either. If you’re a cashier, bar tender, waitress, salesman or customer service rep, you’re learning how to comfortably interact with strangers and that will serve you well when you’ve got a book to promote. If you’re a worker bee in a tech field, author platform is going to be a walk in the park for you. If your job is the type that isn’t terribly interesting or intellectually demanding, such as assembly line work, driving a bus or working a fast food grill, be glad you have all that mental freedom to ruminate over your ideas and characters for hours a day; just keep a notebook and pen close at hand so you’ll be ready when inspiration strikes. If you’re a teacher or a caregiver of some sort, your daily interactions with the people you serve will enrich your characters and strengthen your dialog in a way no amount of creative writing seminars ever could. No matter what your day job is, it’s keeping you solvent and improving your writing. It, and the wait, are helping to ensure you’ll be ready when opportunity comes knocking.

So don’t hate the wait, and don’t resent your day job. Embrace them, and welcome all they have to offer.
 

This is a cross-posting of a post that originally appeared on my Indie Author Blog.

Crafting Your Back Cover — The Selling Continues….

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…or at least it should continue.  The work you’ve put into designing an effective, attention-grabbing cover now continues with the spine and back.  I’ve made a point of mentioning in the first installment of this discussion, that I believe the spine can be as important as the front cover in generating interest.  It might be where your sales presentation begins.

If your book is going to be marketed to book sellers, and they will display it in the stacks, then the spine may be your only chance to persuade a reader to pull your book out and give it a look.  It’s a possibility that you should plan for, whether bookseller sales are a definite part of your strategy right now or not.

Of course, if your book will be hard-bound in cabretta leather with gold-leaf titling, then this discussion won’t be appropriate, but for anyone marketing a paper-bound book, this is for you.  

Tradition seems to work…

Tradition dictates that on a book spine, the authors name appears at the top, and is smaller in size than the book title.  Unless you have a very compelling reason why you want to alter this, having to do with your book’s content, resist the temptation to get too creative here.  The traditional way is what readers expect to see, and it might confuse them, and lose their interest, if it is not set up that way.  Be sure to leave space for your publisher’s imprint, if needed. 

I like the way a wrap around cover/spine/back leads the reader to naturally turn the book over and over in their hands.  If your background graphic image can be set up that way, it subtly implies a "continuing" story — on the cover.  Hard vertical edges, such as in abruput color changes, from font, to spine, to back cover, stop the eye and might distract the reader’s attention from abosrbing your carefully crafted pitch.

Even if only a small section of the front image will wrap around, I believe it is an effective tool to carry the reader’s interest to the back cover, where you do the main selling.

The point of the excercise…

The reason for a back cover design, is to persuade the reader to open up your book.  It will carry some very important information.  Foremost, is your hard-hitting, highly condensed lead-in copy.  A paragraph. Two at the most. Only narrative that leads to action. Events.

Use a "lead in" as the heading. It should be considered your agent pitch on steroids — lean and mean.  You shouldn’t summarize here, you should give the reader a savory taste. Whet their appetite for the salient meal inside: tasty, well-defined and believable characters, an intriguing plot, and questions. 

I’ve found that it makes good sense to end your back-cover pitch with a question or two.  The idea is that the answers will be found inside — in the reading.  Never ask a prospective buyer a question they can answer "no" to.  Leave them with "leading" questions — the kind that pose a situation, impart emotions or create empathy.  In the case of a non-fiction work, it’s always a good idea to reinforce the benefits by leaving them with specifics — here, concentrate upon the strengths of your work, as opposed to any other source where the answers might be found by the prospect.

Assembling the pieces…

Insert this element using the grid we discussed before — the rule of fives or fifths.  Be sure to include live space for barcoding/publisher’s imprint in the grid design.  A cover wrap around here can carry over to bleed, or end 1/3 of the way over.  You can end it with a hard color edge — creating a dark field for your copy — or a gentle fade, if a white or light-valued copy area is what you have in mind. 

If the background ilustrative or photographic cover image wraps, look for apparent lines within the image that will provide a good visual tie-in the the pitch heading.  Use the same visual eye-movement ideas we discussed in the first two installments. Lead the reader’s eye to your pitch. Put your pitch copy in the proper position for maximum retention and readability using at least 12 point type here in a font that carries into the book’s content.  You’ve got one more element to place.

Smile….Really?

Another element that will be found on the back cover is the author photo.  It isn’t an absolute, unless who you are is central to the work inside.  On the other hand, a good portrait can work well in helping the prospective reader find "comon ground" with the author.  This personalizes the message, and gives the writing inside a real voice. 

Don’t just use any old shot of yourself you happen to have handy.  You’ll want to consider contrast and lighting, so the best of the image will be communicated even in a smaller size. It should be cropped tight for maximum "interaction" with the viewer, and your eyes shuld seem to make eye contact. 

Your expression, in the image should connected with the feeling of the "voice" inside, and the subject matter.  For example, I wouldn’t use an author photo with a big, toothy grin on the back of a work dealing with the Irish Famine.  I wouldn’t want to use an image that looked like you were burying your mother either.  I tend to like a generous, open, yet pensive expression in author photos.  Unless you’re pitching (you’re still pitching here…) something hilarious — when a big grin might actually work well. 

Try out a few different images, on dummies of the back cover, printed on your trusty photo printer, until you select one that covers all the bases for you and those whose opinions you trust.  Find out why they like the shot, not just that they "like" it.  You’ll get more insight as to what an author photo can do.  Also don’t be afraid to use a gray-scale image for your photo — it seems to carry a bit more "gravitas" for most viewers, but color might really be important, say if you’re a colorful person (red hair, green eyes, for example) or need to make a more personal connection with the reader.

Double-check the size of the publisher’s live area — for your publisher’s barcode, imprint, etc.  They will usually tell you what size they want you to leave, or it will be in their cover template.

Testing…testing…1,2,3…

One final step, that I recommend, is to find an old paperback, the approximate size of your book and glue (rubber cement works really well here) an actual size full-color dummy of your cover to it, making up a full dummy of your book. 

Then, dummy or full color proof from your publisher in hand, pay a visit to your local book seller. Even if bookstore sales are not going to be a major part of your marketing, the knowledge gained from hands-on experience running a bookstore can be invaluable to acheiving the best cover you can for your book. 

Make an appointment firsthand, explaining that you want to get some impressions from the seller and staff, and that you want to test your cover on tables and in stacks to see if the cover design works the way you want it to. 

Then go in, and do it. Take notes.  Be sure that every impression you receive is the one you’re after. If one differs, be sure to take it seriously. Consider a re-design if the departure is distracting enough to be a problem.  You’re looking for raves here — and while they may be low key (no gleeful clapping, etc.) they are what you need to hear. If you don’t — ask why not, and try to get your respondents to be specific.  Take their comments seriously — and consider them all before signing off on that final proof.  It’s always easier to fix something before putting it out there in front of the market. 

Finally — keep listening. Keep asking. If there is a distraction of problem with your cover, you can still revise it — if you’re POD publishing, that is — and acheive better sales as a result of your effort.  Don’t lose interest.  Your book may have new lives ahead you haven’t considered.  Maybe an entirely new market niche will open up that will require a specialized edition — who knows?  Keep your options open, and be ready to implement them on a moment’s notice. 

Good luck — remember that the writing is supposed to be the fun part. The rest is hard work.

Note: If you’d like specific feedback, in a curmudgeonly fashion of course, on your book’s cover design, then by all means, submit jpg image(s) for my consideration in your comments.  I’ll get back to you within a week, if I can.

#FridayFlash: Justice For Cody

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This is something new for me. Since I’ve been so busy with the whole indie author dog and pony show, I haven’t had time to work on my latest novel in over a year. But this new thing, flash fiction, has come to my rescue and I’m finding I really like it. Flash fiction is short stories of just a few pages (or less!), and many authors have begun posting them on Fridays. Hence, #FridayFlash.

The brevity of the format makes it feel much more doable than trying to make progess on a novel, and I’m finding the limited space forces tight writing and necessitates focus in a piece. I think it builds and hones skills. As often as time allows I’ll be posting my #FridayFlash here on Publetariat, since people come to my Indie Author Blog to read stuff about self-publishing and indie authorship, not my fiction. So here’s ‘Justice For Cody’. – A

 

She drifted back into awareness as the voice intoned, “…but we’re afraid your son’s—” the doctor glanced at the chart, “Cody’s vision impairment is permanent.”

“Vision im…you mean the blindness?” she whispered.

“Yes, Mrs. Cortez.”

She didn’t react, just sat there, pale and blank, in shock. After a full minute of uncomfortable silence, Dr. Whaley cleared his throat and motioned for a nurse to take Linda by the elbow. “Mrs. Cortez, Carrie will take you to a private lounge where you can lie down and rest for a while. Is there anyone you’d like us to call?”

“My husband,” she mumbled.

Two long, blurry days later, Linda and her husband sat at the breakfast table in their small apartment. Linda slapped the Formica surface hard with an open palm and raged, “No, Rafael! Paying the medical expenses is the least of this, our son is blind! He will be blind forever!” She stood up and paced the room as she became desperately businesslike. “He’ll have to quit Little League, and you know how he loves it. Then there’s karate, I don’t see how he can keep going to karate. The fun run in May, he’ll have to withdraw.”

Rafael grabbed her by the shoulders, forcing her to stop her frantic movements and thinking. “Linda, please. Forget about all of that for now, none of it matters. What Cody needs most right now is both of us, and his best friend.”

Linda’s eyes narrowed and her jaw clenched. “A proper best friend wouldn’t have made him do anything so dangerous. I never liked that Steven, I never trusted him!”

Rafael pulled her firm to his chest. “Shhh! You know that’s not true. We both love Steven as much as Cody does; he’s a good boy. It was an accident.”

“No!” she shrieked, and Rafael hugged her tighter. She buried her tears in his chest. “Don’t you care? Don’t you want…justice for Cody?” she whimpered.

“Baby, there is no justice for Cody. This is nobody’s fault.”

Linda yanked herself back from him and fixed him with a hateful stare. “You can give up on our son, but I never will.” She grabbed her purse and stalked out, leaving Rafael to gaze out the window. And feel guilty for being able to do it.

It took weeks to find the right attorney, but at last Linda was satisfied the Lynch boy’s family would pay and pay dearly for what their son had done to hers. She knew Steven’s mother would be bringing him to visit Cody at 4pm today, as she did every day right after school at Steven’s insistence. All of this Linda had learned from Rafael, having successfully avoided running into those awful Lynches herself during visiting hours.

Linda clutched the papers in her hand as her heels clicked curtly on the tiled hospital floor; she was looking forward to seeing the reaction on Debbie Lynch’s face. Rafael’s ultimatum sprang to mind one last time like a warning bell, but she shoved it aside. If Rafael didn’t want to do right by his only son, then she didn’t want to stay married to him, either.

She took a deep breath and threw the door open. “Debra,” she said, flatly.

Steven rushed up to her, shoving brochures and papers up toward her face. “Mrs. Cortez? I been learning about all the things to help Cody—well, my Mom helped me look on the internet…” At this, Linda shot a glance at Debbie, who averted her reddened eyes and lifted a Kleenex to her nose.

“—an’ I found out there’s this special school for the blind right here in Austin, an’ I got this application for a seeing eye dog an’ my mom and dad said it’s even okay if I wanna raise a puppy to be Cody’s seeing eye dog, an’ I can help Cody learn his way around the neighborhood till then, an’ I’ll walk him anywhere he wants to go, an’…an’ I’ll….” he burst into tears and threw his arms around her hips.

“Mom?” Cody’s small voice called from the bed, his bandaged head swimming to try and locate the sound. “Is Steve okay?”
Linda’s hand curled into a fist, crumpling the papers. She weighed them for a moment before tossing them in the wastebasket. She put a hand down to stroke Steven’s head. “Yes, honey,” she said. “Steven’s just fine.”

Don't Be Part Of The 5%: Master The 5 Crucial Author Platform Skills

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For the past several months, I’ve been working on the Publetariat Vault. Among the hundreds of authors who’ve registered for Vault membership, about 5% are completely overwhelmed by the listing form. They refuse to read or follow the instructions on the form, or think 17 required fields are too much to ask, or don’t know how to create a synopsis or excerpt in pdf, rtf or txt format, or don’t know how to upload files to the site using the typical “Browse” + “Upload” button combo. And they’re kind of pissed off that we’re asking them to do all of this in the first place, they’re walking away from up to 5 months’ free listing time on account of tech frustration.

A couple of years ago I would’ve said the 5% are absolutely right, such a form is too demanding and no author should be expected to have that level of tech savvy. But the bar has been raised, and nowadays any author with a strong platform has all the skills necessary to easily complete the Vault form. The rest can no longer afford to be part of the 5%. It’s not fair, and it has nothing to do with quality writing, but it is the reality.

Any author who’s not yet heard the term “author platform” could only have been lost at sea or living in Amish country, but even among those who know it, I’m finding the term is often not fully understood. Many authors, both aspiring and published, indie and mainstream, think succeeding with author platform means having a blog or author website. And maybe they Twitter a little, or have a Facebook or MySpace page. They also often think author platform is something that’s very difficult and/or expensive, and only applicable to published authors.

They are wrong, on all counts.

Author platform encompasses everything you do both to promote your work and to establish yourself as a “brand” in the marketplace, and ideally, it begins long before you have a book to sell. Even if you intend to go the totally mainstream route of writing the best damned manuscript you can and then querying agents and publishers, you can no longer expect to get a pass on author platform. I’m currently working with Writers Digest on the publication of a revised and updated edition of my book, The IndieAuthor Guide, and when our talks began the very first questions they had for me were all about my author platform. What websites do I have, and how much traffic do they get? How many pageviews, how many unique visitors? How frequently do I blog? How frequently do I have public speaking engagements, and where and for whom have I done such engagements? Do I maintain an email newsletter or membership list, and if so, how large is it?

If you’re lucky enough to get a request for the full manuscript from an agent or publisher, are you prepared to answer all these questions? Because if you’re not, you’re not ready to have your full ms requested. And if you’re intending to self-publish, you should be asking these questions of yourself already.

Lucky for all of us, the minimum skills needed to do a pretty decent job with online author platform are few, and easy to master. The way it works is, with each new skill you acquire, new online promotion and publication options are opened to you. And when it comes to author platform, you want every available option at your disposal.

You must know how to use webforms to comment on articles or blog posts online, create and maintain your own blog, create and maintain a fill-in-the-blanks sort of author website, or have a Facebook or MySpace page.

If you also want to provide an online cover image of your book, or an author photo, you must either know how to create digital images (pictures a computer can read because they’re stored as a computer file; if you use a digital camera and know how to get the pictures off your camera and onto your computer, you already know how to create digital images) or have the images supplied by someone who does know how to create them, you must know how to use a graphics editor program to resize the images as needed to meet the file size and dimension requirements of the various sites on which you intend to share them, and you must know how upload files to a web server using a “Browse” + “Upload” button combo.

All the skills mentioned thus far are also needed to self-publish your work in hard copy formats via an online print service provider such as Createspace or Lulu, and to self-publish in various ebook formats via online ebook conversion services such as Smashwords or Scribd.

If you want to make excerpts of your work available for free viewing on your blog or website (which is one of the cheapest and most effective ways of growing readership), on top of everything else you must also know how to create an excerpt of the full work and output that excerpt to pdf format.

Let’s stop and take inventory. If you know how to use webforms, how to create and resize digital images, how to upload files to a web server and how to output your work in pdf format, you’ve got most of your self-publishing and online author platform options covered with just five basic tech skills. You can have a blog and a fill-in-the-blanks type of author website. You can comment on blogs and articles all over the ‘net. You can publish your work in multiple formats and make it available for sale online through various outlets. You can make excerpts of your work available online. You can Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn to your heart’s content—and you can do all of these things for the cost of nothing more than your time and the price of a single author copy (in cases where you’re self-pubbing in hard copy)! You’d be a fool to turn your back on such an embarrassment of author platform riches, but that’s what the 5% do every day.

Now, if you also want to Twitter, you’ll want to bone up on web abbreviations, emoticons and hashtags. If you want to be able to add cool little widgets (e.g., hit counters, ‘my Goodreads bookshelf’, BookBuzzr, etc.) to your blog, author website, Facebook, MySpace or other online pages, you’ll need to be comfortable copying and pasting snippets of HTML or script code from the widget provider into the desired location, but even then, someone else is providing the code and all you’re doing is copying and pasting it the same as you’d do with any ordinary text. The best part is, most such widgets are available for free! If you don’t know how to use them, you’re missing a huge opportunity to jazz up your platform at no cost.

When you’re ready to graduate to the master class, you can learn about RSS syndication and how to set up a simple web form on your site or blog to allow your readers to subscribe to your email newsletter, but this is nothing you need to think about right away.

For now, just focus on mastering the 5 crucial author platform skills and get yourself out of that doomed 5%.

Addendum: Regarding the Vault form, I’m the first to admit it’s a lengthy form. Authors will need to spend half an hour or so pulling together all the information they need to create a listing, and an additional 5-10 minutes to complete the form. However, the form includes very detailed instructions for every section and field, required fields are limited to those items publishers have said are most important in making acquisitions decisions, and authors participating in the Vault’s current promotions are getting several months’ free listing time. I’m sure those who go on to strike deals with publishers or producers will feel it was well worth filling out the form.

This is a cross-posting of a post that originally appeared on my Indie Author Blog on 10/8/09.

Promoting Books With Keyword Rich Articles

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This article is cross-posted from The Savvy Book Marketer, where it originally appeared on 10/7/09.

Posting articles on your own blog and submitting articles to article directories, newsletters and other blogs are very effective ways of promoting books. Articles posted on other sites can drive direct traffic to your website and improve your site’s search engine optimization.

Good keyword optimization will increase the chances of people who are interested in your topic finding your articles in article directories and through search engines. Here’s my formula for promoting books by writing keyword rich articles:
 

  • Determine the goals of the article: how will this article help you in promoting your books and what action do you want readers to take?  
  • Define the target audience: who are you writing to?  
  • Select the topic of the article: what do you want readers to learn?  
  • Determine the approximate length. I usually shoot for around 500 words, but anywhere from 400 to 700 is a good length.  
  • Outline the points you will cover.  
  • Select a primary and perhaps a secondary keyword phrase for the article. I use Google’s keyword tool for keyword research.    
  • Write the headline, using the primary keyword at the beginning.  
  • Write the article.  
  • Go back and find ways to work the keywords into the text of the article, while keeping it sounding natural. I highlight keywords in yellow as I insert them, so I can easily see how many times the keywords are used.  
  • Write a good resource box at the end of the article, giving readers a reason to click through to your website.  
  • Proofread carefully. I find it more effective to print my articles for proofreading.
     

You may hear various experts talk about keyword density – the ratio of keywords to total word count on a Web page. I don’t count the words, I just try to make it look natural and don’t overdo it. If you stuff in too many keywords or write awkward sentences, it will be obvious and will tend to turn readers off.

In this article, Promoting Books is my main keyword. I didn’t try to optimize for Article Marketing because that term is too broad and not focused enough on my target audience, authors. I used the keyword phrase Promoting Books seven times in this 434-word article.

Keep in mind that the most popular keywords are not necessarily the best ones, because you will face much more competition. According to Google’s keyword tool, Book Marketing gets 60,500 queries a month, while Promoting Books gets only 1,600. But there are far more web pages using the term Book Marketing. I use a mixture of highly popular and more specific "long tail" keywords when promoting my books through article marketing.

Dana Lynn Smith, the Book Marketing Maven, specializes in developing book marketing plans for nonfiction books. She is the author of the Savvy Book Marketer Guides. Dana has a degree in marketing and 15 years of publishing experience. Read her complete bio here.

How Book Authors Can Use Facebook As Part of Their Social Media Strategy

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This post, from SACHI Studio, originally appeared on the SACHI Studio site on 4/23/08.

This is the next in a series of guides on how book authors can achieve social media success. The first was a 5-page article on why book authors should use WordPress as part of their web presence.

The following is a 4 page primer on how book authors can use Facebook as a viable social media tool to give more exposure to their book and work.

If you wish to read a print version of this, you can download the 4 page pdf guide here. Otherwise, you can read the entire guide in its entirety below.

Sachi Studio is available for Facebook social media consulting for selected book authors as well.

Update 8/13/09: Our new free eGuide, “Facebook Fan Pages for Book Authors” is out. Click on the badge to learn more.

[Publetariat Editor’s Note: we’ve disabled this link since it leads to a page where you’re asked to complete an online form; as Publetariat has no control over the site or form, we prefer that if you’d like to follow the link, you do so on the source web page.]

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A Primer to Social Media Marketing on Facebook for Book Authors 

Like many other businesses, book authors are flocking to various social media communities such as Facebook and Myspace. They want to leverage these sites as best as possible to give more exposure to their books. But too many are lost and lack both direction and strategy as to how to best use these communities.

The following is a primer for authors to use Facebook as a viable social media marketing tool.

Before we get into specific methods and activities to use on Facebook, there are five principles that any book author should adhere to in the social media space. It is important you are aware of these fundamentals as they make up the foundation of success in social media.

  1. It’s not about you. It’s about the community. Too many overzealous marketers forget this principle when it comes to social media. They focus too much on promoting themselves at the risk of ignoring the needs of their users. Your followers have a voice that want to be heard. Create initiatives that allow your users to voice their thoughts and opinions on your work. Try to focus on their needs while simultaneously meeting yours.
     
  2. Be sociable. It’s not called social media for nothing, folks. This means that you shouldn’t just upload photos of your latest book tours or just promote the book on your Facebook profile. Be personal and allow those connected to you to see some personal stuff of you. In the world of social media, it helps to be three-dimensional.
     
  3. Think long term and be consistent. Don’t quit after a few days of work. Social media is a relatively new field. You have to continually test and benchmark various initiatives before you start to see results.
     
  4. Focus on user generated content. Much of the successful social media strategies today focus on allowing the end user to generate the content for us. There are too many authors who ignore or don’t realize how much power their users have in contributing to their work. Look for ways where you can get the community to do the work for you.
     
  5. Focus on multiple generations of users. Many of the failed social media strategies today are a result of marketers focusing on their first generation users. Successful strategies rely heavily on getting the first generation of users to continue to spread the message to their network and getting that network to spread it to their network. Hence, don’t just market to friends but to friends of friends of friends. As they say in networking, it’s not who you know, but it’s who they know.
     

Now that we’ve listed the basis tenets of successful social media strategies, let’s get into specific activities that authors can use on the Facebook platform.

Read the rest of the post, which includes 8 specific Facebook strategies for authors and book promotion, on the SACHI Studio site.

Rising Above The Grass

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This post, from Bob Spear, originally appeared on his Book Trends Blog on 10/6/09 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

Last year over 275,000 new books were published. Actually, there were more than that because not all were reported to Bowker, the keepers of the assignment and registration of ISBNs and publisher of Books In Print. Then add to that very large number the books written and proffered to publishers which didn’t make it. Now, look at the various Best Seller lists and count the number of books listed (a few hundred at best). Now you have an idea of the odds involved in marketing books, especially your own. How can you rise above the crowd or grass level so that you’re seen?

There are many genres and sub-genres; however, for our purposes, let’s address nonfiction, fiction, and leave children’s books for another blog.

Nonfiction: This is the easiest genre to market. There are major distributors who refuse to carry anything but nonfiction because of this. It’s easier to: write well, define, identify market segments, and has multiple delivery channels. In addition to traditional bookstore channels, other channels can include: selling off the back table at a speech or training, partnering with a corporate entity to publish their own edition, selling direct by snail mail or by internet. Nonfiction lends itself very well to “Long Tail” marketing, which is identifying small but myriad niches that are outside the radar of the major publishers but can be lucrative to small, specialized presses. Working the media is far easier because specific topics and themes break out nicely for talk show themes.

To be seen above the grass in the nonfiction pasture, one needs to understand all these market channels and more. Use any and all the channels in conjunction with publicity, article marketing, blogging, social networking and general word of mouth. Obviously, any one of these areas is deserving of a separate blog.

Fiction: This is much more difficult to write well and to market. Although fan groupings can be broken out and defined, it’s not so easy to do so as it is in nonfiction. Fiction can be far more emotional (except for certain nonfiction “causes”). Reader tastes vary widely and reader needs are more difficult to nail down than they are in nonfiction.
It’s more difficult to align a book’s story with a talk show theme, for instance, yet that is what an author or publicist must do to fit into a media format. Some fiction genres, such as Sci Fi or fantasy are especially difficult to shape into an interview environment.

For fiction to be seen above the grass, social networking and word of mouth are king. Another avenue is getting your book turned into a movie, which usually won’t happen in nonfiction how-to books. The marketer’s focus is at the mercy of people who are opinion drivers. That’s where their focus should go: toward opinion makers such as Oprah and the like.

Endurance: Nonfiction tends to stick around longer due to its education potential. It lends itself to updating and new edition publishing. It can be milked for a long time. Fiction, unless it becomes a classic, is here today and gone tomorrow. Even really popular fiction authors are only as popular as their latest book (how have you entertained me lately?). These are considerations when deciding what to write. Some of my nonfiction has been around since the late 1980’s and still sells steadily. I expect my fiction, which will be coming out this winter, will have its day in the sun, and then I’ll have to write more, if I want to stay above the grass. As an author, you need to consider all these aspects and elect how you want to spend your writing minutes.

You Can't Ignore Your Passion

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This post, from Andrew B. Clark (a.k.a. The Brand Chef), originally appeared on his The Brand Chef site on 10/2 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission. The cartoon panel which appears in this post is also by the author, and is copyright Andrew B. Clark, all rights reserved.

What’s your passion?  Is it your job?  Do you paint?  Play an instrument?  Are you lucky enough to get paid to do what you love?

That’s okay…  I don’t either.

In college, I thought I was going to be the next superstar cartoonist – the next Berkeley Breathed, Bill Watterson, or even the freakishly odd Gary Larson or Robert Crumb.

baile_cartoonIn retrospect, I had a good start. I had a small following for my cartoons – mostly girlfriends and fraternity brothers; but the word was starting to spread.  Their parents were requesting copies of my panels.  Some (of the less offensive) panels were being reviewed by King Syndication.  I even had a professor from The University of Iowa contact me asking if he could put one of my panels onto the last page of his biology mid-term as a “stress-reliever”  for his students. Nice!

For a brief period in 1991, I was living the dream…

Then, I started listening to people.  I took suggestions (gasp). I “commoditized” my art – my passion.  I kowtowed to the masses. I stopped being creative.  I stopped trying to surprise.  It stopped being fun.

So, I stopped cartooning… I put down my pen and refused to do another silly panel.  I always intended to start it up again, but one thing led to another and, well, we’ve all heard it before.

Then, a few weeks ago, I stumbled upon this post from Brand Autopsy.  I immediately re-posted my thoughts on their video as well as ordered the book, “Ignore Everybody: And 39 Other Keys To Creativity“ by Hugh MacLeod.  I devoured the book in about 10 lunches (about the only time I get to read these days), all the time, Hugh was making me think back on my “more creative” days.

Hugh is bizarre, sarcastic, brilliant and pragmatic all at once.  His blog, gapingvoid.com, was an outlet for his passion – drawing cartoons on the back of business cards – which was quite unique in itself.  But then you add his view on corporate nonsense, marketing, social media, social networking, communication and dating, and it becomes hilariously addictive. He took his blog, the wisest and wise-ass-est of it, and made it into a perfect, creative self-help manual… just for me.

If you have a passion, a dream that you want to or wanted to pursue, “Ignore Everybody…” is a great place to start.  It succinctly provides a “how-to” on fostering the creative inspiration that led Hugh MacLeod to create gapingvoid.com and turn his professional  and personal world upside-down – in a good way…  It’s kind of a Cinderella story, but Hugh gives great reason and forethought to his success.

Here’s a little nugget that really got me thinking about my own passion:

ignore_everybodyChapter 10: Everybody has their own Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.

You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven.  But if you don’t make at least one serious attempt to get above the snowline, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed, and all you will feel is emptiness.

So, after reading the book, I put it down and immediately registered two new domains that will hold my past and future cartoons, illustrations, and musings.

Will I “make it big” like MacLeod?  Who’s to say?  But I’ll start by ignoring everybody…  and listening to my passion.

What’s your passion?  Painting? Accounting? Pan flute? Are you doing it right now?

Keep Cooking! (your own brand of passion)
Andrew B. Clark
The Brand Chef

Learn To Sell Yourself As An Author

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On Saturday, I went to a niece’s bridal shower in Cedar Rapids. Along with the rest of the family I now eagerly await the wedding November 14th. This couple, after five years of making sure this commitment is for them, have decided to tie the knot. We are so excited for them. We are looking forward to having the welcomed edition of this new nephew to the family. To sanction this union, the couple did what we in-laws have had to do for many years. They made a trip to Arkansas to get the approval of the rest of the Risner Clan. That consists of the groom being able to hold his own in bragging rites about hunting and fishing. For the bride, this test means being appreciative of the women kin’s southern cooking. Truthfully, I almost failed that test. I’m not a fan of white gravy but I do occasionally make it because my husband and I were raised eating gravy and biscuits. Where I had a problem was hiding my breakfast egg under bacon grease gravy. My refusal to dip into the gravy bowl the first morning was cause for concern that was only alleviated by my husband’s aunt passing the blackberry jelly for my homemade biscuit. I’ll never turn down any food flavored with blackberries. We’re proud to say the groom to be passed the Arkansas scrutiny test with flying colors. Now we can relax and enjoy this couple as they grow old together.

A book selling instinct kicks in when I least expect it. A couple weeks ago, I was talking to the bride to be’s mother who hosted the shower. She told me 20 women were coming. Many of them friends of the couple and groom’s relatives that I don’t know. So at the bottom of my gift bag under the shower presents I placed my latest book – A Promise Is A Promise (ISBN 0982459505). My niece already owns three of my books. I thought she might like one more. When my niece held up the book, she proudly announced that Aunt Fay wrote it. Fay who? "That woman over there. She’s an author," my niece told them. As the book went along for gift inspection, the guests passed on other items the bride had opened up (barely looking at them) and held onto the book to read the back cover. Questions came fast for a moment. What genre do you write? How do we get your books? Then the attention was turned back to the bride where it should be. This was her moment.

Did it end there? No. I happened to have a stack of business cards with me just in case. Now I didn’t feel comfortable pushing the cards on the women at the shower, but the niece sees these ladies all the time. I had no problem handing the cards to my niece when I went to her house after the shower. I ask her if any of her friends or the groom’s family wanted to contact me about a book could she give them one of my card. She was delighted to help me out. She informed me these same women all belong to a book club. She grinned mischievously as she watched an eager glow light up my eyes at the mention of a book club.

The hardest thing in the world for a self published author of a new book is to sell themselves as an author. Putting the spotlight on ourselves is hard. I came from long line of women too bashful to keep on nightclothes after they got out of bed each morning just in case company showed up early. I live in the country, hidden by seven feet tall corn stalks on all sides for months. Still I find the thought of stepping outside in my nightgown difficult. To my amazement as I drove through town one early morning, I noticed a woman in her pajamas setting her trash on the curb. Her family tree surely had women the total opposite of mine.

Public speaking has been a big help for easing my bashful streak. Knowing my subject (my books) helps me have the confidence to stand in front of an audience. Last June when I was invited to Anamosa for the library’s author day, the other authors and I had fifteen minutes to talk about our books in front of a video camera as well as an audience. I was at a slight disadvantage since I had 13 or 14 more books to discuss than the rest of the authors. Talking about that many books in that length of time took some doing. My husband sat in the back of the room. He told me later while I was speaking he heard one woman remark that I was a good speaker. It must be that my public speaking training was something the other six authors didn’t have. I have no idea what purpose the video was used for, but I can hope that it will be to my advantage as an author.

I went to Author Day convinced that I wouldn’t sell many books. New to the area, unknown author and this is a small town. So I took a basket and a small note pad to use for a book drawing. My three smaller books of short stories, inexpensive to publish, were made to use for giving readers a taste of how I write if they don’t want to pay for the larger books. The audience could pick the book they would like to win. After the day was over, I drew a name and mailed the book to the winner. I sent the library a thank you note for inviting me and being so gracious. Whether I had sold any books or not, I felt the librarian deserved to know how much I appreciated the invitation. The audience was around forty strong. I sold a variety of my 16 books and gave out many bookmarkers for their future reference. From the way the day ended, I am fairly sure I will get an invitation to Author Day next year.

In August for my high school class reunion, I gave away 21 copies of my latest book. For me that was quite a sizable amount of money, but I put an inventory list in each book along with contact information. These former classmates live all around the country. Hopefully, my gift of a book will lead to other sales. Giving each of them a book wasn’t easy to do. Their critiques of my book might be quite critical. (So far I’ve only heard from readers who were pleased.) They have known me for years and never once thought of me as a prospective author at the other reunions. They do now. Since that night, I’ve sold classmates 11 other books which helped me to break even on the give away.

I signed in on Classmate.com awhile back. I spent most of my childhood in southern Missouri so besides signing in for Keystone High School in Iowa, I signed in for Schell City High School in Missouri. Recently, I heard from a former classmate and emailed another one. Now do I expect to make books sales from those contacts. Not really but by word of mouth, one former classmate might say to another, "I heard from Fay the other day. She has become an author. Sells her books on Amazon. Isn’t that something?" The curiosity to see what my books are about might lead these former classmates to check out my books on Amazon and eventually to a sale. After all, one of my books is about a family from that area in Missouri during the Civil War.

During a book sale, one of the hardest things for me to remember is to ask if the buyer would like to have me sign the book. At the start of the Civil War Days book sale in September, I didn’t think of asking until the buyer started away. She liked that about me that I was a novice yet about the workings (pushing myself as the author) of a book sale. However, I did try to remember to ask to sign the books after that. Once in awhile, someone would have to remind me to do it. In one instance, I asked if I should sign the book. The woman said yes because she only buys signed books. My first thought was lucky her. If I waited for a signed copy of books, I wouldn’t have very many on my book shelf. Then it occurred to me I should feel honored that I would be in this lady’s collection of signed books.

Of course, speaking one on one to a buyer is easier than a whole room full of people. Knowing the books I want to sell by heart because I wrote them does help my sales pitch. I talk nonstop about the book a prospective buyer is interested in until that buyer shows me the cash. One man listened to me start a detailed account of my Civil War book and he stopped me. (I try very hard not to give away too much, but I want to make the buyer curious enough to buy the book to get the rest of the story.) That buyer told me not to tell him too much. He wanted to buy the book and read it. I’m so enthusiastic about my stories and eager to share them that I don’t see how that can be all bad.

When I’ve been asked to sell my books, my first thought always is I probably won’t do very well with sales. Each time it has been my experience that I have done very well indeed. I feel it has something to do with that personal one on one contact with my buyers. You see by selling myself, I sell books.

Pirates Ahoy! Why The Media Just DOESN'T GET The Ebook Piracy Issue

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This post, from Dan Holloway, originally appeared on his The Man Who Painted Agnieszka’s Shoes blog on 10/4/09 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

OK, not ALL the media necessarily, but I came across this terribly written article yesterday, and it’s representative of most I’ve seen on the issue of the ills of Ebook piracy:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/business/04digi.html?_r=2&hpw

Let me outline the gist (but please don’t take it from me – I AM biased, I may have distorted it) of Randall Stross’ article "Will books be Napsterised". As a result of file-sharing the music industry lost vast revenue streams. As Ebooks take an increasing share of the book market, the same will happen there. The problem lies with file-sharing sites like Rapidshare. Sites like RapidShare allow anyone to upload files and then post the URL for others to download them. Whilst they will remove copyright-infinging files on the request of the copyright owner, these files are not policed upon upload. RapidShare talked to Mr Stross, urging publishers and authors to learn from Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails and use free downloads as part of their business model. Stross ends with a retort to this suggestion:

"I will forward the suggestion along, as soon as authors can pack arenas full and pirated e-books can serve as concert fliers."

Now, there is so little analysis and so much fabulation in this article I couldn’t deal with it all (apparently e-book hardware is "on the verge of going mainstream", for example, whatever that means—I didn’t see a single reference to the Kindle or the Tablet, and nary a mention of the phone vs reader debate, by the way).

OK, it’s time for my disclaimer. I hate plagiarism. It sucks, and sucks major. In fact, any form of copyright violation sucks. And it’s NOT a victimless crime. But. But, but. But, but BUT. The way to beat pirating is, I’m afraid, as RapidShare’s spokesperson says, to incorporate free downloads into your business plan. That’s not giving in, it’s not kowtowing. It’s the way it is.

The obvious way to do that is, as suggested, to study the successful musicians. I’ve been talking about gigging and merching for authors ever since I got into the blogging business, and I stand by what I’ve always said. Culture is culture. It inspires communal events, it inspires fans to desire souvenirs, to desire contact. These things aren’t unique to music. And as an advocate of the "freemium" model, I’d have to say I think content itself can be charged for in different formats – the special edition, the regular paperback even.

What we need, as authors, is to work – collectively and individually – on ways to adapt to the file-sharing world. I DO have a problem with exploiting fans. I don’t like the idea that some people pay for my stuff and others don’t pay for the same thing – so for me, ebooks have to be either free or not free (or it has to be transparent which is which). I DO think, though, that we need to look for something slightly more exciting than "free".

Part of the thing about file-sharing is the fact that it creates communities – where has the industry’s sense of history gone? Do they not REMEMBER the Warehouse and Rave scene? The buzz of these things is that they’re outside the usual channels – an anonymmous URL on a bulletin board, a phone box on the M25. It’s the same thing. These are communities that exist and get their energy from being on the outside. Bring them inside and they instantly use their energy. So "free" isn’t the only answer – that would be like having your parents sit down to watch Debbie Does Dallas with you on your 18th birthday.

As authors we DO need to use free, but we also need to be clever how we do so (but not, as I say, so clever we pretend our ebokos are for sale to try and make it seem a thrill to pirate them – that just exploits our fans). I’m not 100% sure what all the answers are (but Kevin Kelly’s 1,000 true fans is part of the answer). But THAT’s the interesting debate – not whingeing when we left the sweet shop open that someone took our candy canes. And I never thought I’d say this, but the places we need to be looking are those semi-legal communities that use bulletin boards and chatrooms – the modern equivalent of rave culture – be it the BDSM scene, or the dogging networks, or the secretive supper clubs I saw on the news the other day. Come on, guys – we’re meant to be creatives, aren’t we?!

A further piece of logic that niggles at me. Until now, when I’ve talked about authors following the music model, and "doing a Trent", I’ve been told – as Stross concludes – that the two types of fan are fundamentally different, so it won’t work. If they’re so different, why worry about "Napsterisation" (other than for the rather unprofessional sake of using an emotive word)? Surely if books ARE "Napsterised", that’s just one more piece of evidence for those of us who maintain culture is, fundamentally, culture; and fans are, fundamentally, fans. And if they download stuff, they’ll pay for things they like.

A final point, Mr Stross. You complain that the group the file-sharing sites never mention are authors and publishers. And HERE, I’m afraid, you give yourself away. Stop speaking on my behalf, please. As a writer, I’m more than happy to embrace file-sharing. It’s not the people who file-share my work I lose sleep over. It’s the people who DON’T. The people who will lose out in the new landscape are the publishers. Please stop bundling our fate as writers in with theirs.

Dan Holloway is the author of the interactive Facebook novel The Man Who Painted Agnieszka’s Shoes, and just-released Songs from the Other Side of the Wall;  founding member of the Year Zero Writers Collective; organiser of the Free-e-day festival; celebrator of Indie culture – doing his bit to raise the issues the publishing industry doesn’t like to face.

Interview With The FTC's Richard Cleland

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This post, from Edward Champion, originally appeared on his Edward Champion’s Reluctant Habits site on 10/5/09, and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission. In it, he speaks to Federal Trade Commission representative Richard Cleland about the FTC’s new guidelines regarding blogger product endorsements with a specific focus on bloggers who review books.

This morning, the Federal Trade Commission announced that its Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials would be revised in relation to bloggers. The new guidelines (PDF) specified that bloggers making any representation of a product must disclose the material connections they (the presumed endorsers) share with the advertisers. What this means is that, under the new guidelines, a blogger’s positive review of a product may qualify as an “endorsement” and that keeping a product after a review may qualify as “compensation.”

These guidelines, which will be effective as of December 1, 2009, require all bloggers to disclose any tangible connections. But as someone who reviews books for both print and online, I was struck by the inherent double standard. And I wasn’t the only one. As Michael Cader remarked in this morning’s Publishers Marketplace:

The main point of essence for book publishers (and book bloggers) is the determination that “bloggers may be subject to different disclosure requirements than reviewers in traditional media.” They state that “if a blogger’s statement on his personal blog or elsewhere (e.g., the site of an online retailer of electronic products) qualifies as an ‘endorsement,’” due to either a relationship with the “advertiser” or the receipt of free merchandise in the seeking of a review, that connection must be disclosed.

ftcIn an attempt to better understand the what and the why of the FTC’s position, I contacted Richard Cleland of the Bureau of Consumer Protection by telephone, who was kind enough to devote thirty minutes of his time in a civil but heated conversation. (At one point, when I tried to get him to explicate further on the double standard, he declared, “You’re obviously astute enough to understand what I mean.”)

Cleland informed me that the FTC’s main criteria is the degree of relationship between the advertiser and the blogger.

“The primary situation is where there’s a link to the sponsoring seller and the blogger,” said Cleland. And if a blogger repeatedly reviewed similar products (say, books or smartphones), then the FTC would raise an eyebrow if the blogger either held onto the product or there was any link to an advertisement.

What was the best way to dispense with products (including books)?

“You can return it,” said Cleland. “You review it and return it. I’m not sure that type of situation would be compensation.”

If, however, you held onto the unit, then Cleland insisted that it could serve as “compensation.” You could after all sell the product on the streets.

But what about a situation like a film blogger going to a press screening? Or a theater blogger seeing a preview? After all, the blogger doesn’t actually hold onto a material good.

“The movie is not retainable,” answered Cleland. “Obviously it’s of some value. But I guess that my only answer is the extent that it is viewed as compensation as an individual who got to see a movie.”

But what’s the difference between an individual employed at a newspaper assigned to cover a beat and an individual blogger covering a beat of her own volition?

“We are distinguishing between who receives the compensation and who does the review,” said Cleland. “In the case where the newspaper receives the book and it allows the reviewer to review it, it’s still the property of the newspaper. Most of the newspapers have very strict rules about that and on what happens to those products.”

In the case of books, Cleland saw no problem with a blogger receiving a book, provided there wasn’t a linked advertisement to buy the book and that the blogger did not keep the book after he had finished reviewing it. Keeping the book would, from Cleland’s standpoint, count as “compensation” and require a disclosure.

But couldn’t the same thing be said of a newspaper critic?

Cleland insisted that when a publisher sends a book to a blogger, there is the expectation of a good review. I informed him that this was not always the case and observed that some bloggers often receive 20 to 50 books a week. In such cases, the publisher hopes for a review, good or bad. Cleland didn’t see it that way.

“If a blogger received enough books,” said Cleland, “he could open up a used bookstore.”

Cleland said that a disclosure was necessary when it came to an individual blogger, particularly one who is laboring for free. A paid reviewer was in the clear because money was transferred from an institution to the reviewer, and the reviewer was obligated to dispense with the product. I wondered if Cleland was aware of how many paid reviewers held onto their swag.

“I expect that when I read my local newspaper, I may expect that the reviewer got paid,” said Cleland. “His job is to be paid to do reviews. Your economic model is the advertising on the side.”

From Cleland’s standpoint, because the reviewer is an individual, the product becomes “compensation.”

“If there’s an expectation that you’re going to write a positive review,” said Cleland, “then there should be a disclosure.”

But why shouldn’t a newspaper have to disclose about the many free books that it receives? According to Cleland, it was because a newspaper, as an institution, retains the ownership of a book. The newspaper then decides to assign the book to somebody on staff and therefore maintains the “ownership” of the book until the reviewer dispenses with it.

I presented many hypothetical scenarios in an effort to determine where Cleland stood. He didn’t see any particular problem with a book review appearing on a blog, but only if there wasn’t a corresponding Amazon Affiliates link or an advertisement for the book.

In cases where a publisher is advertising one book and the blogger is reviewing another book by the same publisher, Cleland replied, “I don’t know. I would reserve judgment on that. My initial reaction to it is that it doesn’t seem like a relationship.”

Wasn’t there a significant difference between a publisher sending a book for review and a publisher sending a book with a $50 check attached to it? Not according to Cleland. A book falls under “compensation” if it comes associated with an Amazon link or there is an advertisement for the book, or if the reviewer holds onto the book.

“You simply don’t agree, which is your right,” responded Cleland.

Disagreement was one thing. But if I failed to disclose, would I be fined by the FTC? Not exactly.

Cleland did concede that the FTC was still in the process of working out the kinks as it began to implement the guidelines.

“These are very complex situations that are going to have to looked at on a case-by-case basis to determine whether or not there is a sufficient nexus, a sufficient compensation between the seller and the blogger, and so what we have done is to provide some guidance in this area. And some examples in this area where there’s an endorsement.”

Cleland elaborated: “I think that as we get more specific examples, ultimately we hope to put out some business guidance on specific examples. From an enforcement standpoint, there are hundreds of thousands of bloggers. Our goal is to the extent that we can educate on these issues. Looking at individual bloggers is not going to be an effective enforcement model.”

Cleland indicated that he would be looking primarily at the advertisers to determine how the relationships exist.

[UPDATE: One unanswered concern that has emerged in the reactions to this interview is the degree of disclosure that the FTC would require with these guidelines. Would the FTC be happy with a blanket policy or would it require a separate disclosure for each individual post? I must stress again that Cleland informed me that enforcement wouldn’t make sense if individual bloggers were targeted. The FTC intends to direct its energies to advertisers. Nevertheless, I’ve emailed Cleland to determine precisely where he stands on disclosure. And when I hear back from him, I will update this post accordingly.]

Edward Champion is a New York journalist who maintains The Bat Segundo Show, a high-octane podcast featuring interviews with today’s writers. Be sure to bookmark his site and watch it for his updates on this developing story.

How Publishers Encourage Piracy

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This post, from Chris Walters, originally appeared on Booksprung on 10/4/09.

When a recalcitrant publisher and an impatient consumer square off online, it’s almost always the consumer–at least the tech-savvy one–who wins. Here are four ways in which publishers are encouraging piracy.

 

1. By not releasing official digital copies of works online.

Consider the work of Karen Blixen, the author of Out of Africa. Under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen, she published the short story collection Seven Gothic Tales in the 1930s, and the collection Anecdotes of Destiny in the 1950s. She’s a little obscure, but not forgotten; her short story “Babette’s Feast” and her novel Out of Africa were both adapted into Oscar-winning films in the 1980s, and she’s a widely acknowledged and praised artist.

Her work, however, isn’t available in ebook format on the Amazon Kindle store, the Sony ebook store, or fictionwise. If I want to read her work on a digital device–and I do–my only recourse is to scan a printed copy, convert it to a digital copy, and create my own digital version.

This digital version will exist entirely outside of the official publishing world; whoever holds Blixen’s copyrights will never see revenue off of it. By contrast, if either of those short story collections was available on any of the three ebook stores I mentioned above, I would have already bought them.

It’s not just a problem for dead authors, of course. In May the New York Times pointed out that a digital copy of J. K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard appeared on the website Scribd earlier this year. What’s more telling is that a reader wrote, “thx for posting it up ur like the robinhood of ebooks,” on the Sribd page. That’s not the cackling of a pirate, but the enthusiasm of a fan.

Rowling is famous for refusing to release her books digitally, and yet I can locate and download all seven Harry Potter books, plus the Beedle the Bard collection, in less than an hour. There are readers clamoring for her books in digital format, and they’d be more than eager to pay for the privilege; instead, she’s allowed piracy to dominate her online sales.

I would argue that every time a stubborn author or publisher refuses to release a popular book digitally, she contributes to the wider problem of piracy by helping normalize both the procedures by which one pirates a book and the behavior of reading unauthorized copies. That’s right, all you midlist authors afraid of your income drying up; you can thank Rowling for helping the ecosystem of pirated books grow larger by the year.

2. By crippling content so that it only works on one device, or only works if the reader is given permission by a retailer or publisher to open the file.

When I first bought an Amazon Kindle, one of the first frustrations I experienced was that my ebooks were tied to the Kindle device for no good reason. (Well, for no good consumer reason.) I had other devices that would display ebooks just as well, including a Nokia smartphone and an Asus netbook, and depending on the day I might have any combination of the three devices with me. What I discovered was that in order to read the ebook when I wanted to using whatever I had nearby, I would have to crack the encryption that locked the ebook to the Amazon Kindle.

But note that by doing that, I would be creating a new, unlocked version of the work that existed outside of the publishing industry. What’s worse, it would be in a standardized format (like ePub or PDF) that would be more popular and more robust than the locked Amazon format–which means it would be more attractive to other consumers should I ever put that new file online.

Read the rest of the post, which includes 2 more ways publishers encourage piracy, on Booksprung.

What Is A Vook, And How Will It Change Publishing?

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This is a cross-posting from The Creative Penn.

Publishers Simon& Schuster launched 4 ‘vooks’ last week, a combination of book and video to create a new medium for the reading/watching experience (video on What is a Vook here).

They are available in the Apple app store for the iPhone and are aimed at handheld devices, although are not compatible with the Kindle or Sony e-reader as they don’t do video. You can also buy them at Simon & Schuster’s website.

Check out the video below to see some of the Vooks in action.

Judith Curr points out in the video that:

  • The future is not just linear text
  • Videos already used for promotion and are an aspect of publishing for the 21st century.
  • There are 4 genres, 2 fiction and 2 non-fiction. They are testing the process to see how popular they are.
  • For non-fiction it enables the ultimate ‘How-To’ so you can see how to do the exercises or the skin care.
  • For fiction, it tells the story in a new way. It expands the experience.
  • It is important to start and then the opportunities present themselves. (JP – I fully believe this!)
  • The vook is perfect for memoirs, autobiographies. It allows imagination in a new way. It is content being expressed in multiple ways.

How will this change publishing?

I think this is a fantastic development in publishing!

  • One of the top publishers, Simon & Schuster is embracing multi-media and a digital platform for ‘book’ products. It just shows that it is not just indie authors and small presses who are interested in new technology. Mainstream publishers are also seeing the opportunity. I first learnt about these types of opportunities from JC Hutchins, author of multi-media novel, ‘Personal Effects Dark Art’, and now it’s going mainstream. Exciting times!
  • There are opportunities for new sources of revenue for both publisher and author. The authors are getting ebook royalties (whatever that means!) but Jude Deveraux wrote her novella in 6 days and then worked with a film-maker. This is clearly not the 5 years Dan Brown took to write “The Lost Symbol”! These vooks may not replace the mainstream novel but they could represent a smaller, short story based product that could make authors money in between novels.
  • The ‘vooks’ have launched on Apple’s app store, and so the possibility of creating one as an indie author is there. This week I am interviewing Winged Chariot, who publish children’s books on the App store. I will be asking them how to create an app and will be posting more on this. I am determined to have my books as iPhone apps, but not for a huge price. I’ll let you know what I find out!

I have bought “Embassy” for my iPhone, so I shall have a read/watch and report back.

Crafting a Cover, Part II…Making Relationships Work….

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Last week we covered the use of photography in your book cover to create a simple, attention-grabbing cover image.  This week we’ll look into why some colors seem to work better than others on bookstore shelves.  We’ll also investigate good layout and design practices when it comes to typography and non-photographic covers.  It’s all about relationships.

Natural Design…(Not necessarily on the test)

There was an important mid 20th Century school of design, the brainchild of Swiss-French architect and designer LeCorbusier, which at its root broke all design proportions down into fifths, corresponding to the five element of the human form: arms, legs and head. Because that is how we’re laid out, he intuited, we would be most comfortable living and viewing designs which incorporate these proportions.

I don’t know if he was right or not, but to me, layouts along these line intersections seem to “work” better than others.  If it works for me, and it may work for you as well. Of course, the idea is NOT to fill all these intersections up with content!  The idea is to set up natural alignments of only the necessary elements to your cover design. Create relationships between elements. Some of the individual elements may also be parts of your photo image.  Look inside the photo.  Considering also the typical eye movements of the reader. Combining these into an effective cover is our goal.  A cover with these kept in mind will be more effective, because it will tie-in to the reader’s mind and emotions naturally – not in a awkward, contrived way which sets up it’s own conflicts.

Design Color Points from Nature…

When designing a book cover, don’t make the mistake of minimizing the importance of color.  Color adds important elements to your cover and reactions in the reader all by itself.  The intelligent use of color will help elicit the intended response in your cover’s reader. Most of these reactions are natural and predictable, as their basis is nature itself.

Yellow animals, for the most part are dangerous to humans, including Yellowjacket wasps and poison dart frogs.  The use of striped yellow and black on barriers for protection is not just by chance.  The combination means DANGER, subconsciously and it seems to be hardwired into our genetics.  Color is an integral part of how our emotions are connected to our conscious thought.  There are color-relationships that have been proven in behavioral studies that you can use effectively in your choices. 

Red for example, is connected with excitement and alarm. Blue with serenity and sleep. Green is naturally connected with healing and growth.  One of my favorite examples is how often the walls in maximum security psychiatric prisons are often painted a soft shade of pink!  Pink seems to calm us and is one of the most non-confrontational colors.

When approaching a color choice for your cover, first try to summarize the mood of your work. how do you want the reader to feel when reading it?  Is there a specific emotion that your book revolves around – an emotional “glue”?  Once you’ve determined what that is, you can choose from images, and design elements that will help communicate this instantly to the reader, side-stepping the need to read the title or other cover copy at all.  The point is – don’t leave anything up to chance here.  Control every step along the way.

Adding Conflict with Contrast…

One of the easiest ways to add a sense of conflict to a cover design is by creating areas of extreme contrast within the layout.  These might include large size differences of elements, extreme color contrasts or the use of display typography in contrast to other elements or to itself.

Look through covers and book jackets in your own bookshelves and set aside the six or so that are instantly exciting and attention grabbing.  Now, with your notepad, quickly jot down the first three things that come to your mind when viewing these, one-by-one.  The title or author’s name doesn’t count right now. Although the importance of recognition and/or “branding” can’t be dismissed, what we’re trying to do here is train your eye to see the emotional content of an overall cover design. 

Set your notes aside, then come back to them later, and see if you’ve written down the same “feelings” for more than a couple of your chosen covers.  If that is the case, then, for you, those covers have effectively done what the designer intended.. You bought the books, didn’t you?

The Letter-perfect Cover design…

Having trained your eye to begin to separate out the Elements of contrast and color we finally move into the realm of Title and Author’s Name.  Typography is a tricky subject.  It involves both our emotional responses and our thinking.  Letterforms vary not just in size and shape. They are each small graphic elements that contain intentional stresses and suggest certain emotional responses completely apart from their utility as carriers of language. 

Find a site online which sells typography – fontmarketplace is one I use – and look through some examples of display fonts.  Most sites will have typography pages that show entire fonts (all the letters, numbers and characters) Some of these will be extremely ornate – overpowering the eye unless used in very short, concise headlines.  If a type face design is very complicated, graphically, it has the tendency to confuse the eye, or lead it in too many directions – if confusion is your goal, this might work well for your cover – assuming a very simple title, of course. 

There will be many others which are much simpler. They may contain very subtle differences in the “thicks” and thins”, called stresses by type designers, that lend emotion and recognition while still remaining legible even in smaller sizes.  These are the fonts you will probably find most useful.  Some of these, like the sans-serif (no little feet on the ends of ascenders or descenders or along the baseline) font Machine, can be very powerful in establishing high-contrast and conflict, based upon their ponderous letterforms.  Others, such as Eras, or the font I use in my cover for The Red Gate, Papyrus, are very subtle, open type designs that convey a very different emotional content.  Some fonts are almost serene – but you would not want to use these in titling an urban-disaster-themed novel, or an auto-mechanics do-it-yourself book, unless you were seeking to insert another emotional element: humor. Humor can also be an effective element.

The most effective covers – some of Elmore Leonard’s covers come to mind – are the ones with a heightened sense of emotion, conflict, or danger.  This can be achieved most effectively with the least number of individual elements.  Sometimes a large title typographic element paired with a small, but significant photographic or illustrative element placed for contrast and conflict will draw the reader’s eye and hold it as they figure out the image’s connection with the rest of the cover.
 
As you can see the choice of typography to convey a desired emotion is very subjective, yet if you “get it” when looking at a font, the chances are that the type designer did their work well, so if it works for you, chances are it will work for your readers, too.

Letter & Line Spacing Issues…

You’ve got your title, pared down to it’s most memorable essence, of course.  You have chosen a color to predominate, based upon how you want your reader affected. Now you have to put the title on the background graphic.  Alignment and legibility are everything. It’s a relationship thing.

Party of the alignment issue is how each letterform relates to its neighbors, above, below and side-by-side.  The spacing between letters and between lines can be adjusted beyond the standard spacing written into the font.  Expanding letterspacing can be very effective if you are working with a condensed font – a narrow style.  Tweaking the inter-letter spacing by opening it up without creating visual “holes” can require finesse, but it can make a hard-to-read title much more legible. Just don’t open it up so much that you see primarily “letters” not the word. 

Another technique on heavy, compact fonts (wider, more ponderous) is to reduce the inter letter spacing, even overlapping letters slightly, especially where round letter forms meet.  It just requires that you finesse the space individually – which might require you to convert the type to curves in your layout/design program, so that individual letters can be moved along the baseline individually.  This letter-by-letter approach is called “kerning” a font, depending upon size, for best legibility and fewest visual holes in a headline, or in text.  Since your title is probably not too long, it won’t be that hard a job to get the best inter-letter spacing you can achieve. Be sure to get back, away from your monitor a few times the process, to check overall legibility and to make sure than you haven’t stacked up the letters to favor one side of the word!

Line spacing, is handled in a similar way, but here, the reverse is true in spacing considerations: the narrower the font, the more interline spacing is required visually, thus keeping the reading "flow" moving left to right, not visually jumping "up and down" with nowhere to go. If you use lower case letters in your title, you’ll have to consider ascenders and descenders in multiple-line titling. Make sure that the portions above and below the baselines don’t interfere with letters on the next line enough to affect their legibility.  You may also have a specific need to jog the letters off their baselines a bit.  This is one way to create a panicked, conflicted feeling in a title graphic. The appearance of kidnappers’ ransom notes, made up of individual letters cut from magazine headlines comes to mind.  If this kind of approach works with the “glue” holding your cover together, then use it, but remember: too much of a good thing is a bad thing – keep it legible.

Next, you’ll apply the same principles to the way your name or pen-name appear on the cover. Unless you have an established brand with your name being the most salient element on the cover, place your name below the title, both physically and in size.  If you need a subhead, or a descriptive tag line consider how adding more typography to the cover might dilute your design, damaging its impact.  Maybe re-thinking the title is a better idea.  If not, at lest make sure that in assigning its position to the cover page, it “belongs” visually” to the title, and you name remains its own focal point. 

Relationship Issues…

In the vector program I use, a nice refinement is the ability to group objects so their interrelationships are locked in place, allowing you to move the object elements as a unit, apart from the background. This allows you to experiment with different locations on the cover for the best results.  You can also use the “duplicate” function to duplicate your titling and authors name and test other type fonts while keeping the relationships constant.  Don’t be afraid to move some of these elements off to the sidelines while you work on each element individually.  When you save the graphic file, chances are you’ll also be saving the empty or not-so-empty space nearby as well, for future tweaking.  Just be sure, when you have finally decided on your design, to delete all of these in the final file.

Vertical alignment is the final key to good cover typography.  If you set up your typography, within your program to “align” left, you’re not finished yet.  In headline sizes, the letter alignments within the font may not be the best possible solution.  This is true also for right alignments as well, but personally, as right alignments lead the eye off the page, I don’t usually consider that for a book cover. You want to hold them for a while. But rules exist to be broken…

One situation where a right-aligned title might be effective would be if, say “speed” is your book’s “glue” – rushing their eyes through the cover might support the content for specific readers, but it wouldn’t work as well, say for a family saga. A centered alignment may be best here, if stability and substance is the idea you wish to communicate.  A centered type design does not usually convey any conflict, unless the type consists of several lines and they are sized differently, or jogged a bit right or left.

The key to vertical alignment whether it’s separate lines of typography or title and authors name, is to find the strengths of the letter forms and connected graphic elements and use them.  What I mean here, is to use them to create a visual unit. Make it easy, or "natural" for the reader’s eye to find the beginning of the next line. The relationships of all the typography must connect visually, to hold the eye better.  On my cover, for example, you’ll notice that the author’s name doesn’t align at the left with the left end of the top of the “T”, but with the T’s ascender.

Left alignment exampleThat’s because in this size, the ascender has the stronger movement, and aligning the stroing ascender at the beginning of my name with the ascender above moves the eye better. When in doubt, experiment.  You shouldn’t see the underlying rule of fives grid as anything more than a suggested framework upon which to work.  Your title typography and other elements may align best off the grid, for a specific effect, or for an intended conflict.  Don’t be afraid to throw out the rules, at least once for every cover, just to see what you can do – even if it ends up just an example of where you don’t want to go.

Next week: We’ll design your Back Cover and bring it all together….

Extra Information: Eye Movement Studies (This won’t be in the test, either!)…

Natural eye movements?  Again, there have been lots of studies of how a reader’s eyes move when scanning a printed page with photographic and graphics elements in combination with headlines and text. These studies have been the basis for many years of the science of ad placement and exploiting the findings improves the effectiveness of ad design as well.  It seems that with few exceptions, peoples’ eyes travel a repeatable and predictable path when viewing a composite page.  The average eye circles a page (your book cover) in two ways.  The primary circle will be clockwise, middle left, up and around, ending at the top right after a full revolution.  The secondary is counter clockwise, starting at the bottom right and circling around to end at the top left.  The primary is the one where the most important information is absorbed, and the secondary is the follow-up for remaining information.  It makes an ad more effective (your book cover) to take advantage of this phenomenon, or at least to manipulate it to your own uses in holding the viewers eye upon the page as long as you can.  Make ‘em comfortable before you sneak up behind them with the book pitch to end all pitches! Shatter their resistance gently and then take their money!

Exciting Changes To The Indie Author Stem To Stern Cruise!

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GREAT NEWS!

We’ve added Kirk Biglione of Medialoper and Kassia Krozser of Booksquare to our speaker roster, to present our workshop on Author Platform and Social Media for Authors. We’ve moved the cruise date back to October 10-17, 2010, to allow more time for you to plan and budget. We’ve reduced the first deposit required to hold your cruise spot to just US$25—and you’ll have till May 6, 2010 to make your second cruise deposit of US$250, and till July 12, 2010 to make payment in full for the cruise! You’ll now have till March 15, 2010 to book your workshop registration at US$600, and until May 30 to register at the rate of US$725. Visit the Indie Author Stem to Stern Workshop Cruise page for full details!