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Articles about book / author promotion and marketing, and author platform.

Ten Marketing Questions Authors Are Asking

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This post, from literary agent Chip MacGregor, originally appeared on his blog on 6/24/09. While Mr. MacGregor isn’t a supporter of self-publishing, his advice here is equally useful to mainstream and self-published authors.

I’ve received a bunch of marketing questions from authors over the past few months. Let me take a stab at a random sample…

Jennifer wrote to ask, "What is the most important thing I need to know about marketing my book?"

To me, the most important thing for you to grasp as an author is that you are responsible for marketing your book. Not the publicist. Not the marketing manager. Not even the publishing house. YOU. Think of it this way: Who has the most at stake with this book, you or the publisher? (You do.) Who is more passionate about it, you or the publisher? (You are.) Who knows the message best, you or the publisher? (You.) I think an author should work with his or her publisher’s marketing department as much as possible. Make yourself available. Say "yes" to everything they ask. Express appreciation every time they do something that helps market your book. But then go do everything as though it all depended on you, because it does. Whatever the publicist does for you is gravy. YOU are responsible for marketing your own book. Don’t leave it to some young college grad who has 17 other projects to market. 

Clatrice asked this: "If I publish my book with a smaller publisher, will they set up radio and TV interviews for me? And can I expect them to set me up with newspaper interviews or book reviews?"

Here’s my suggestion: When you first begin talking with the marketing department at your publisher, tell them how excited you are to work with them, explain that you’ll do everything they ask of you, then ask this question: "Can you tell me what you’ll be doing to market my book? I’ll be working hard at marketing, and I don’t want to duplicate efforts." Just try to get some sort of explanation about what they’ll do — even if it’s minimal. Some will focus on media, others will send out review copies. Once you find out what they plan to do, you can begin to fill in the gaps with your own efforts. And don’t have huge expectations of your publisher — a smaller house may not have the resources to do a lot of marketing. The fact is, they are expecting the author to help them sell about half the copies of the book that will be sold. Half. No kidding.  

[And this is the perfect time to share my favorite marketing story. Years ago, when I was releasing one of my own books, I asked a very brainless marketing manager what she was planning to do on my book. "First, we’re going to give it a great cover and title." I was VERY pleased about that, since I’ve noticed books without titles and covers don’t sell. "Second, we’re going to stick it in our catalog." This is something that only goes to bookstore owners, so that doesn’t make a big difference when it comes to convincing readers to buy my title. "And third, we’re going to give it to our crack sales team." I’m not making this up — those were her three points. My response: "So… you’re not really doing anything?" Which was fine, since I just wanted to know. Again, if you can find out what they’re doing, you’ll better know how to manage your own marketing plan.]

Dave asked, "Since it seems like anyone can get a book published today through self-publishers, how do I make sure my book gets the needed exposure?"

I’m one of those who thinks that most self-published books don’t really count as being "published," Dave. Most people who self-pub lose money because they don’t know how to market and sell their own book. So if you want to really sell some copies, whether you are self-pubbed or published through a regular royalty-paying publisher, you’ve got to understand basic marketing principles. I suggest authors purchase some basic marketing books (such as a textbook from Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong, or Frances Brassington and Stephen Pettitt), in order to give them a conceptual framework for what marketing is. Maybe take a class at the local community college, or look for online marketing training. Then you can invest in some of the "how to market your book" titles available at Barnes & Noble. But the most important thing is to put together a planned strategy, so that you aren’t just trying to think up stuff on the fly as your book releases.

The key principle for anybody doing marketing of their own book is simple: Figure out where your potential readers are going, then go get in front of them. If you’re doing a book on lowering cholesterol, research to find out what websites people with high cholesterol are visiting, what blogs they’re reading, what magazines and e-zines they’re checking out, what the most popular sites for information sharing are. That’s the first step. The second is to get yourself involved with those venues. 

On a related note, Greg wrote these words: "You have frequently told authors to find out where the potential readers are, then go get in front of them. How can an author find the target audience for his book?"

Research, man. This will take time, but start checking out key words and topics. Find other books and sites that cover similar material and check them out. Start doing reviews on Amazon and TripAdvisor. Get involved with Digg and Flickr. Create del.icio.us bookmarks. Join Facebook and Twitter. Begin researching your topic and you’ll soon discover interesting sites, as well as being steered toward other places people go. This takes time — there’s no hurry-up formula for getting this information. The key is to have multiple venues for finding new friends, and see it as "participation," not just "promotion." 

Read the rest of the post on Chip MacGregor’s blog.

What's A Book Blog Tour?

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This post, from Yen Cheong, originally appeared on her The Book Publicity Blog on 6/11/09.

An interesting discussion emerged on Colleen Mondor’s blog Chasing Ray a couple days ago about the blog book tour and in particular who schedules them and how they are set up.  I caught the tail end of the discussion on Twitter.

Blog tours aren’t new — this New York Times article from a couple years back explores one author’s blog tour experience – and sites like Blog Book Tours or this post at The Dabbling Mum contain some excellent information about what exactly a blog tour is.  But beyond that, I thought it might be useful to look at how blog tours are set up and how they differ from online publicity in general.

First, the basics: for those of you who attended the book blogger panel at BEA, you will have heard the blog tour explained as an author going from blog to blog (rather than from store to store as they would on a traditional book tour) which is a great, quick way to explain it.   Depending on the author and the blog, coverage may consist of any of the following: book review, Q&A (either posted or live) or book giveaway and then I’m sure some bloggers have gotten creative and come up with other ideas.  Blog tours, like traditional bookstore tours, will feature a designated number of “stops” — often 10 to 20 blogs — and can roll out over the course of a week or a month (or whatever other length of time that has been decided upon).

Here’s some more information about blog tours.

How do blog tours get set up?

Blog tours are typically set up either by the publicist of a book or by blog tour companies / coordinators.  Since it takes time (and expertise) to schedule blog tours, publishing companies sometimes feel it is worthwhile to pay a third party — an online marketing company, a freelance publicist, a blog tour company, etc. — to set these up.  (We’ve been doing this for years with the broadcast industry — we hire companies to set up a series of radio or TV interviews, also known as radio or TV “tours.”)

Although typically book publicists ask authors not to contact the media directly, different rules apply to (some) blogs.  For example, Natasha from Maw Books Blog, mentions that authors sometimes contact her directly to schedule a “stop” on a blog tour.   (Other bloggers may prefer to work directly with publishing houses — many bloggers will have information about how to contact them on their sites.)  Sometimes, a group of bloggers may come together on their own and contact the author (or publishing house) to schedule the tour.

Regardless of who sets up the blog tour, the end result is the same.

What’s the benefit of a blog tour?

As with radio and TV tours, blog tours enable a book and author to generate buzz for a book without having to travel.

How is the blog tour different from online publicity?

A blog tour is simply one type of online publicity.  One difference between a blog tour and online publicity in general is timing.  Blog tours start and end on designated dates, the goal being to generate a certain amount of publicity within a certain amount of time.  A general online publicity push, on the other hand, could start months (or weeks) before the publication of a book and could end months (or weeks) after.

Also, while the goal of online outreach is to generate any coverage of a book — from a mention to a full-fledged review or interview — blog tour “stops” will typically skew on the more robust end of coverage, e.g., a post rather than a one-line mention.

Are bloggers paid to participate in the blog tour?

No — paying anyone to cover any books would be unethical.  (Paying for ads is a perfectly ethical practice, of course, but with PR, coverage — good or bad — should come free).   To clarify — since this can get confusing – with blog tours (or with radio or TV tours), publishing houses aren’t paying bloggers (or radio or TV hosts) to cover a book; we’re paying someone to schedule the tour: finding blogs that would be appropriate for the book, arranging dates for the reviews / interviews, reporting back to us about who is running what when, etc.  It’s like we’re paying a party planner to put together a party and the guest list (but we don’t pay guests to actually attend the party).

Read the rest of the post on The Book Publicity Blog.

Stay Ahead of the Shift: What Publishers Can Do to Flourish In A Community-Centric Web World

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This post, from Mike Shatzkin, originally appeared on his Idealog site, and represents a talk he presented at BookExpo America on 5/28/09.

Michael Friedman and I were having lunch and he said to me, “You know Mike, the word is “evolve”.” And that’s the word. So in fact it’s not going to be about how you flourish, it’s going to be about how you evolve. How publishers who create products can evolve into a world that’s going to be about community.

There are a few fundamental premises that really ground this speech that we want to start with, and the first one is Things Will Change, and I don’t think we’re going to have a lot of disagreement about that. So, we can move on to the fact that It Is necessary to have a view of the future to anticipate change. Think, for example, that people in the future are going to look up publishers on the web, and search those publishers for the books they want. Well then you would do things differently to what I’m going to suggest to you, because I don’t really think that’s what the future is. But you have to have a view of the future in order to know what to do in the present.

Another premise that I believe is true is that the market is going to shift in some ways, from now on, between the time you acquire a book and the time you publish it. Every book that is being published now was acquired before anybody had heard of Twitter. And every book that is being published now depends on something that is in Twitter. So that’s going to be normal. And because that’s normal, you’re going to be constantly trying new things. You’re not going to have any choice but to try new things! Because Twitter is a new thing, and things become new, and you don’t have the chance to sit on the sideline and watch how it works and analyze it.

You have to be opportunistic, you have to see what opportunities are out there and you have to try new things all the time, and you have to do that within some sort of framework, within some sort of understanding of the future because we know that there are so many new things going on. We can barely remember them all from the last two weeks, let alone try them all. So if you don’t have some sort of an idea of where you’re going, and where the world is going, it gets very very hard to distinguish between the opportunities.

A Lot Happens in 20 Years

Now, before I describe what I think will be the world of content and publishing in 20 years, I want to make the point that a lot happens in 20 years, because I’m going to describe a world that is pretty different from the one that we’re in, and that would raise a lot of skepticism. Think about this:

In 1968, there were about three broadcast networks that had about 95% market-share. There was nothing else to do with your TV, and there weren’t a lot of things to do other than watch TV. So, half the country or 60% of the country, could watch The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, that kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore. By 1988, half the homes in America had cable, and half the homes in America had VCRs. There were five broadcast networks, not three. And there were 40, 50 , 60, 70 channels on the cable. And the broadcast networks knew that that day they had, 20 years before, was never coming back.

I picked 1980 for the record companies because that was just before a huge boom. As a matter of fact it was before two huge booms, because the Walkman 2 was invented in 1980. So between 1980 and 1983, the record companies got to sell me all the records I bought until that time, as cassettes. And then in 1983 or 84, they invented the CD, and they got to sell me all the records they sold me as cassettes again as CDs. And that made the record companies a lot of money. And things looked great for them. And the future was booming. And we know where the record companies were by 2000. 2000 was before the invention of the iPod, but not before the invention of Napster.

Newspapers. Well 1989 was a peak year for newspaper ad revenue. It went down a bit after that, but you know what saved them? In the mid-1990s, classified advertising saved them. But you know what classified advertising is now? Craigs list. It’s not on the newspapers anymore. You know where newspapers are now. They’re threatened. So in 1989 they had a peak year, and in 2009, they’re facing extinction. That happened in 20 years.

Mass-market paperbacks. Now this is something where you have to be as old as I am to remember when book publishers made a lot of money selling mass market paperback rights, and the fact that that was the jackpot. You published that title in hardcover, and then you could sell the mass market rights for a lot of money. I’ve picked 1975 as a starting year there, because the record sale for mass market paperback didn’t occur until 1979. That was Princess Daisy. Remember Princess Daisy? Pretty forgettable book. 3.1 Million dollar sale from Crown to Bantam. That number has never been topped. By 1999, mass market paper backs were where they are now, which is that they are category books. 95% of mass market paperbacks fall into a fiction category. So in 20 years, it went from a business that meant, that mass market books were bookseller, to a business where it doesn’t anymore.

Online Access in 20 years. Well, in 1989, the World Wide Web was in the process of being invented. But you could go online. To Prodigy. Through a dial-up. And now, 20 years later, you carry the internet in your pocket. So, that’s changed a lot in 20 years!

Books. Well, 1989 was before two great booms, sort of like the music business in 1980. Because in 1989 the owners of Borders, and the owners of Barnes & Noble were headed down to Wall St. to get a lot of money, to open up superstores. And all those superstores stocked a lot of backlist. So in the early 90s, publishers were printing a lot of backlist to put into all those superstores. And then Amazon came along. And that, as a matter of fact, got the backlist for the guys who didn’t have enough sales clout to get into the Barnes & Noble and Borders. Their backlist is sold on Amazon. So everybody was moving up. But you know what? The last 10 years, unit sales on books are flat. And bookstore shelf space is now sinking, where it was really expanding. We have gone from a business that was expanding, to a business that is contracting in 20 years.

Read the rest of the post, view the PowerPoint presentation, and watch videos of the BEA talk, on Idealog.

10,000 Ideas And Resources For Writers

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This post, from Kathryn Vercillo, originally appeared on her Real Words From A Real Writer blog on 3/13/08. While the post was originally aimed at freelance writers, most of the resources on this fantastic list will be useful for any writer.  

Every once in a while I come across an article or blog post listing the "Top 100" of something for writers or bloggers. Every time that happens, I’m a little bit impressed. After all, it is common to see "Top 10" lists but it takes a lot more effort to compile a list that includes 100 things. However, it makes more sense to be thinking in terms of hundreds and not tens when it comes to freelance writing.

With thousands of new blogs launching every single day, there is a lot of material online for people to be reading. There’s certainly far more than ten authority sources on any particular topic. So, in an effort to be ambitious as well as to provide others with information about the best writing tips and sites out there, here is my Top 100 collection of “Top 100″ lists that others have put together. That means that you’ve got 10,000 tips/articles/ideas to read here. There are lists about books, lists about blog tools and lists about everything in between. That should keep you busy during your downtime!

  1. Writers Digest 101 Best Websites For Authors (updated to 2009 edition)
  2. The Top 100 Freelancer Blogs @ Bootstrapper
  3. 101 Ways to Monetize Your Website or Blog @ Vandelay
  4. Top 100 Blogs @ Make Money Online
  5. Top 100 Articles on Writing @ Writing Information
  6. 100 Tools Freelancers Can’t Live Without @ Bootstrapper
  7. 100 Writing Tips @ How to Write for the Web
  8. 100 Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Blog @ InternetBabel
  9. Make Money Online: 100+ Tools and Resources @ Mashable
  10. 101 Ways to Create A Powerful Web Presence @ Hello, My Name is Blog
  11. 100s of Resources for Finding Blog Content @ Lorelle on WordPress
  12. 101 Reasons Freelancers Do It Better @ HR World
  13. Top 100 Novels Of All Time @ Time Magazine
  14. 101 Ways to Monetize Your Blog without Irritating your Readers @ Inside CRM
  15. 114 Ways to Build Links @ SubHub
  16. 100 Niche Job Boards for Web Workers @ Bootstrapper
  17. Top 100 Essay Sites for Students
  18. 100 Ways to be Better Entrepreneur @ Entrepreneur.com
  19. Top 100 Social Bookmarking and Social Networking Blogs @ Virtual Hosting
  20. 100 Web Apps for Freelancers @ Codswallop
  21. 131 Legitimate Link Building Strategies @ SearchEngineWatch
  22. Over 100 Best Firefox Extensions @ LifeHack (many of which are great for improving writing productivity)
  23. 120+ RSS Resources @ Mashable
  24. Top 100,000 Search Keywords @ Aleksika (useful in SEO, when adding keywords to your posts) 
  25. 101 Great Posting Ideas To Make Your Blog Sizzle @ I Help You Blog

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Read the rest of the post, with links for resources #26-100, on Real Words From A Real Writer. While we’ve verified the links provided in this excerpt (and updated them as necessary) , due to the age of the post we can’t guarantee that when you click through to view the full article, all the remaining links in the post will still be valid. 

5 Steps for Successful Social Media Damage Control

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This post, from Sharlyn Lauby, originally appeared on Mashable on 7/9/09. While it’s primarily aimed at companies, much of the advice here is just as useful to an individual, or group blog, that’s run into some social media trouble.

I spent many years of my career in the hospitality business and the first rule of thumb when dealing with customers was, “if a guest had a positive experience, they’ll tell 3 people and if they had a negative experience, they’ll tell 10.” That same idea holds true in the new media world, except the numbers have grown exponentially. Instead of it being 3 people – it’s 3,000, or instead of 10 – it’s perhaps 100,000. The numbers aren’t meant to scare you. But what should you do when something goes wrong?

Our goal, of course, hasn’t changed – work to increase the number of positive comments written about your company, product, or service and take care of those who have negative experiences. But, how do you make that happen in the social media world? What steps to you take to keep negative social media damage to a minimum?

Minimize the damage

Before we even talk about how to fix what goes wrong, let’s talk about the positives. One of the best ways to minimize social media damage is to proactively create an environment that encourages positive feedback. There are two main things you should do to keep the accolades coming.

1. Foster a positive culture. There are plenty of studies showing that if your employees are happy, they will deliver good service to customers. Not only does this minimize potential damage, but it leverages your brand in a very positive way. Keeping your employees engaged and letting them know how they fit into the corporate culture goes a long way.

Case in point: I recently returned from a conference in New Orleans where Harvard Professor John Kotter showed us an old video of a Roto Rooter employee who had pimped out his van to make his job easier. It had everything from pull down maps (obviously this dated prior to the Garmin) to a makeshift toilet. The point is, this employee created all of these conveniences for himself so he could spend more time servicing customers. How many of your employees are doing that?

2. Train employees on the proper use of social media tools. Your employees represent your organization, and if they have a solid, credible personal brand, it will carry over to the company’s image.

It’s not enough to allow employees to have Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. Organizations need to show employees the proper way to use them. For example, Zappos employees are not only encouraged to have Twitter accounts, but they receive training during company orientation on how to use the application. Again, if your employees use social media well, it will benefit both those employees and the organization.

Keep in mind, however, that someday the other shoe might drop. Many companies have fallen prey to negative press, so don’t put your head in the sand. It’s not about “if” something will happen; it’s about “when.” In this transparent, authentic and real-time world, expect a hiccup to occur. But be prepared.

In the end, the issue is less about the mistake that was made, but the reaction that came after. So, here are some tips to follow if you find yourself in a damage control mode.

1. Monitor social media sites 24/7

Daniel Ruby, director of marketing at advertising network Chitika, recently had an issue where McAfee flagged one of their ads, thus making their entire network have issues with aggressive McAfee antivirus alerts. Ruby credits Twitter for alerting them to the issue. “We actually found out from one of our publishers who was telling a reader via Twitter, as well as the comments box on his site, that our ads were…giving McAfee users a red flag,” he said.

From there, Chitika could respond to concerned users (also via Twitter), and keep users up-to-date on the steps they were taking to fix the problem.

 

chitika tweet image

 

 

2. Respond quickly with a consistent message

No matter how proactive you are, customers will start to question your organization when they see problems. And, whenever there is an information void, those customers will tend to fill in the gaps with their own thoughts on what the cause may be. That’s why it is important to respond to issues quickly, even if the message is just, “we’re looking into it.”

Ruby elaborated that he “reached out to the publisher via his comments box, letting him know what happened and what Chitika was doing to resolve it.” He also kept him updated via Twitter (apologizing as profusely as one can in 140 characters).

Communication is key here. Make sure each employee knows the same message all the way down the chain of command. And, when that message changes, don’t forget to communicate those changes. This serves two purposes; (1) it gives the public a sense that you have your arms around the issue; and (2) it gives your employees a sense of unity – working together to solve a common problem.

Read the rest of the post, including steps #3-5, on Mashable.

Interview With Soft Skull Press Editorial Director Denise Oswald

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Soft Skull Press. The Huffington Post calls it, "The literary version of a punk rock label."  Canada’s Quill & Quire describes it as "One of the most visible and respected alternative houses in the U.S…like Grove Press in the 1950’s and 1960’s." Among its recent releases you’ll find Osama Van Halen and Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys: Sex Workers and Prostitutes writing on Life, Love, Money, and Sex. Clearly, Soft Skull Press is not your grandfather’s trade publisher.

In this interview, Editorial Director Denise Oswald talks about Soft Skull’s philosophy and approach to publishing, the advantages of working with a small publisher, how Soft Skull succeeds with books the majors won’t touch with a ten foot pole, and more.  

Soft Skull is known for being a sort of "punk" publisher, in the sense that SS frequently publishes edgy and nontraditional material. Can you elaborate a bit on what Soft Skull looks for in its acquisitions?

I’d say we’re drawn to gritty, dissident voices. Risk takers that are in their own way willing to speak truth to power. The focus could be on just about anything, really—it’s all about the author’s take on it.

What specific advantages do you feel Soft Skull can offer its authors, in comparison to a big, mainstream publisher?

It’s really easy for all but the biggest books to drown on a large, mainstream publisher’s list. For a book to just get subsumed amid the sheer volume of other titles vying for the attention and energy of not just the retailers and media, but of the in-house sales, marketing, and publicity staffs. A small press offers a boutique publishing experience. Odds are everyone in house not just knows about the book but has read it and shares the editor’s enthusiasm for it. And odds are the editor who was so enthusiastic about the project from the get-go is going to have a larger hand in how that book gets marketed and sold. So it’s a very intimate relationship.
 
Does Soft Skull have a set number of titles it can release each year, or do you let the quantity of desirable material dictate your release schedule?

Well, I think every publisher, large and small, has a range specific to them that they’re trying to hit in terms of the number of titles published annually. There’s a minimum number you need in order to achieve pragmatic results, like keeping your lights on, and then there’s a maximum number beyond which I think everyone sees diminishing returns because all the key players are working at capacity. But that doesn’t mean if a small publisher falls in love with a project she might not be able to take it on because she’s already maxed out on the number of books that can be published that year. At worst it means waiting a season to put the book out but it never means passing simply because you don’t have a slot to fit it into. 
 
You took over as Editorial Director for Soft Skull following the departure of Richard Nash earlier this year. Do you have any specific goals, or changes in mind for the imprint?

I’d like to expand on the fiction publishing program. It’s a spectacular list that I’m eager to build on, particularly in terms of voices from abroad–in translation or otherwise. Beyond that I’ve always done a lot of music related projects so I think you can expect to see that part of the list growing, as well.

Soft Skull is known for championing the very books mainstream publishers avoid: books that are controversial, difficult to classify, difficult to boil down to a sound bite, and frequently for, from, or about underrepresented or fringe populations. Why do you think Soft Skull is able to succeed with these types of books when the majors cannot?

To invoke an oft-abused term, it’s all about authenticity. When you embrace those kinds of books with purpose and show that you’re discerning about what you take on and that you can publish those that you do take on well, people trust your opinion and pay attention when they otherwise might dismiss a project out of hand.  When it comes to mainstream publishers, they probably have few people on board who’d understand the relevance of some of the books Soft Skull is known for, let alone be willing to devote the time and effort to making them work. This isn’t to say that something controversial or difficult couldn’t make it through at a big house due to the passion of the editor, but it can also die on the vine if the other departments don’t get it or what the readership is for it. 

To what extent, if any, does Soft Skull plan to utilize ebook and Print on Demand technologies?

Well, both are valuable tools that can be used in either standardized or more discriminating ways. Most publishers I know of, including us, utilize POD technology to help keep their backlist going when limited demand might have otherwise forced good books out of print. This is one embodiment of the The Long Tail theory. But I think the most interesting use of POD is what’s going on at ELECTRIC LITERATURE. The editors there have created a new literary journal that plays to both internet and traditional paper readerships and in order to make it feasible the terrestrial edition is purely available as POD. I think it’s a very smart way for a literary endeavor to navigate the digital transition.

As for e-books, at this point they’ve become an established format that stands alongside traditional hardcover and paperback—and one that will likely come out the victor in years to come—but for now it’s a fellow traveler that can be  be utilized in more proactive ways. For instance it allows for the rapid publication of timely material.  So if you’re doing a book that’s tied to current events, instead of releasing an e-book simultaneously with the hardcover or paperback original, perhaps you get that e-book out first. Or perhaps you’re doing a book on the environment or technology and you need the medium to live up to the message. Then maybe going e-book first or e-book only is the way to go. It all depends on the particular context of the project at hand.

Author platform is becoming an increasingly important consideration for mainstream publishers when it comes to considering a debut book for acquisition; how important is author platform to Soft Skull press in its acquisitions of debut books? 

Platform gets such a bad rap, but everyone potentially has one so it’s a question of figuring out what yours is and how to utilize it or further develop it. It’s another way of cutting through the sheer volume of voices out there and making yourself stand out. It’s a kind of road map to your reader and in an era of seemingly endless choices for our personal amusement and enlightenment, that’s crucial. Think of it like building your resume. You need to gain experience and exposure to get better and better job opportunities. If you’re a would-be novelist that can mean working on short fiction and trying to get placement in journals and magazines. It’s very rare that you can publish a debut book by someone who hasn’t made their way to some extent through the newspaper/magazine/journal circuit. If I can use a sports metaphor, getting a book published is like marathoning. A wise coach once told me: the marathon isn’t the hard part, it’s sticking with the months of training that’s the hard part. The marathon is your reward.

In a recent Idealog column Mike Shatzkin said self-publishing is now an acknowledged strategy for authors looking to break in to publishing, but some industry people still strongly advise authors against self-publishing. What is your opinion of the burgeoning "indie author" movement? Can self-publishing be a smart move for authors whose books don’t fit the conventional, easily-classifiable mold?

I think if you look at the number of break-out books amid self published titles you’ll see the percentage is very small. I’m clearly biased, but my feeling is that it always benefits a writer to see if they can place their work with a good house and a good editor who gets it before going the self-publishing route. There’s a lot more to publishing that simply creating the book itself. And sometimes the fact that a book has existed in a prior edition can hinder its chances of getting exposure on a grander scale.

April L. Hamilton is the founder and Editor in Chief of Publetariat, and the founder of the Publetariat Vault, a new crowdsourcing tool for use in literary acquisitions.

Authorfail: When Authors Attack

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This post, from Victoria Strauss, originally appeared on the Writer Beware! Blogs on 7/7/09. In it, she shares some past and recent examples of authors behaving badly as the result of receiving a bad review, and gives authors many reasons to think twice before Tweeting, blogging or posting in anger.

Last week, the Twitter- and blogosphere were abuzz with two tales of authorial bad behavior: much-published author Alice Hoffman’s Twitter meltdown over a poor review (Hoffman tweeted several angry messages about the review, including one that provided the reviewer’s phone number and email address and encouraged fans to "Tell her what u think of snarky critics;" Hoffman’s publisher subsequently yanked her Twitter account, and Hoffman issued an apology);

…and philosopher and author Alain de Botton’s blog explosion (de Botton posted an angry comment on the reviewer’s blog, concluding "I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make"; he, too, subsequently apologized, excusing himself by saying "It was a private communication to his website, to him as a blogger…It’s appalling that it seems that I’m telling the world." Well, duh).

Although you can blame these errors in judgment on the social media phenomenon, which encourages us all to tweet (or comment, or post, or email) before we think, they are hardly isolated incidents. Authors wigging out over criticism is nothing new.

This past April, a Russian court ordered a journalist to pay compensation to a writer who objected to the journalist’s review of his novel. Compensation amounted to US $1,000; the writer had originally demanded much more. Per the news report of this incident: "Observers have commented that this judgment creates a very dangerous precedent, opening the way for lawsuits based on subjective opinion. Some have even suggested that if a book reviewer can be sued, a reader who did not like a book can sue the author for making a bad quality product." Holy frivolous lawsuits, Batman!

A recent article on the Hoffman debacle from Salon.com provides several more examples of authors behaving badly over criticism. Authors Caleb Carr, Jonah Goldberg, Stanley Crouch, and Richard Ford have (respectively) written invective-laden letters to, blogged obsessively about, slapped the face of, and spit upon/shot holes in the books of reviewers to whose analysis they objected (one of those reviewers, ironically enough, was Hoffman herself).

In 2007, Stuart Pivar sued blogger PZ Meyers for libel for Meyers’s negative review of Pivar’s book Lifecode, which proposed "an alternative theory of evolution." Most observers dubbed the charges "frivolous" and "empty." Pivar eventually dropped the suit.
 

Read the rest of the post on the Writer Beware! Blogs.

Internet Defamation, Author Platform And You

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Building and growing your author platform requires you to be very active and vocal online, and this opens the door to two outcomes you will want to avoid: being guilty of online defamation and libel yourself, or being the victim of someone else’s online defamation and libel. Most people seem to think that anything published on a website or blog is automatically classified as opinion, and is therefore protected free speech. They’re wrong. Bloggers have been hit with millions of dollars’ worth of libel judgments, and there are entire legal practices specializing in internet defamation.

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What Constitutes Libel?
I’ll open with the usual disclaimer: I am not an attorney and nothing in this article should be construed as legal advice. I can sure quote the heck out of people who are attorneys and legal experts, though. Nolo Press, the US’s oldest and most respected provider of legal information for consumers and small businesses, defines libel as, “An untruthful statement about a person, published in writing or through broadcast media, that injures the person’s reputation or standing in the community.”
 
For those of you living across the pond, Website-Law.co.uk has this to say about defamation and libel:
 
Defamation is all about reputation, and in particular about statements which damage others’ reputations. The English courts have not settled upon a single test for determining whether a statement is defamatory. Examples of the formulations used to define a "defamatory imputation" include:
 

  • an imputation which is likely to lower a person in the estimation of right-thinking people;

  • an imputation which injures a person’s reputation by exposing him to hatred, contempt or ridicule;

  • an imputation which tends to make a person be shunned or avoided.  

The law of libel is concerned with defamatory writings; whereas the law of slander is concerned with defamatory speech. There are some differences in the laws relating to slander and libel…defamatory statements on a website will be libelous rather than slanderous…
 
So any online statements you make, or which are made about you, fitting the above criteria are in violation of U.S. and U.K. law and subject to prosecution. Most Western countries have defamation and libel laws that read similarly, but as you’ll see later in this article, the defamer’s country of residence need not be a barrier to the victim in pursuing a charge of libel.
 
What Doesn’t Constitute Libel?
Bear in mind, not every negative or potentially damaging statement made online or in print constitutes defamation in the legal sense. The first and best defense against a claim of defamation is simply that the statement in question is true. The next go-to defense is often that the statement in question is a statement of opinion, because in most cases such statements are generally protected free speech (see next section for information on the exceptions). For example, imagine Johnny Author, the author of a book about business ethics, has a criminal record for fraud and someone shares this information online or in print. It’ll certainly injure his reputation and standing in the community, but it’s not defamation because it’s true. Now, suppose he was tried for fraud but found innocent of all charges.
 
Web Troll A blogs, “Anyone who trusts anything Johnny Author says is a fool; everyone knows he was arrested for fraud last year.”
 
Web Troll B blogs, “Johnny Author is a liar and a fraud.”
 
Web Troll A’s statement probably has the most potential to do damage, but surprisingly, Web Troll B’s statement is the one of these two that more clearly qualifies as libel because it’s the only one making “an untruthful statement” about Johnny Author. Web Troll A’s remarks are a mixture of opinion and fact.
 
How Not To Be Guilty Of Libel Or Internet Defamation
The easiest remedy is prevention: don’t publish nasty comments about other people on your website or blog. Even if the things you’re saying are true, sharing them only makes you look like a mudslinger and a gossip—hardly the sort of person with whom your peers or people in the publishing industry will want to associate. If you have a legitimate reason for making negative remarks about some person, to blog about a specific issue related to that person for example, then don’t refer to that person by name and leave out identifying details.
 
Couching your statements in explicit qualifiers like, “In my opinion,” “If you asked me I’d say,” and “It seems to me that,” etc., may strengthen your defense if you get hauled into court, but even a statement explicitly labeled as opinion can be legally actionable as libel if the court concludes any reasonable person reading the statement would interpret it as asserting statements of verifiable fact, or as implying that facts exist to support the defamatory statement. Only an attorney versed in internet defamation can offer an opinion as to whether or not your online statements would be likely to pass this test.
 
Also, none of these cautionary measures will grant you absolute immunity from a charge of libel or internet defamation here in the U.S., where anyone can attempt to sue anyone for anything, so why not make your life safer and easier by just avoiding such statements altogether?
 
My Own Internet Defamation Story
I was prompted to write this article after being subjected to internet defamation. It hadn’t previously occurred to me that internet defamation is an author platform issue. As damaging as it can be, it’s something most authors haven’t thought about and would have no idea how to deal with.
 
At first glance it would seem my case was hopeless. The defamer posts under a pseudonym, lives in another country, and posted the defamatory statements on his/her own site. Despite all these obstacles I succeeded in getting the defamatory material removed or blocked from public view, and so can you.
 
When You’ve Been Defamed Online
If you believe you’ve been defamed online, you need to ask yourself:
 
  1. Is the offending material really libel, not statements of fact or non-actionable opinion?
  2. Is the offending material likely to be seen by large numbers of people?
  3. Is the offending material truly likely to damage your reputation?
It’s not usually worth taking action to get the defamatory material removed unless the answer to all three of these questions is a resounding YES, and the defamatory remarks are being made in reference to you under your legal name, pen name, or business name. Defaming remarks being made about your online alias aren’t usually worth fighting unless your online alias is clearly linked with your legal name, pen name or business name (i.e., in a user profile, on your own site, Twitter profile, etc.)
 
Questions #1 and #3 can only be answered by you (possibly with the input of an attorney, in the case of #1), but you can get the answer to #2 using some free, online tools. Run the URL of the website—not the specific page, but the main website URL—where the defamatory material is posted through these two tools to view traffic statistics and other data about the site:
 
Even if you’re not absolutely certain the defamatory statement(s) will pass the ‘actionable opinion’ test, if you feel very strongly that your reputation among your peers, readers and/or the publishing community is being damaged, it’s still probably worthwhile to take action to the extent you can do so without getting an attorney involved. Most people would rather take simple steps to make a problem go away on their own than risk legal action, so the threat of that risk can often get results.
 
Chain Chain Chain, Chain of Legal Liability
Let’s say you’ve decided to take action. If you ask the defamer to remove the objectionable material directly, your request isn’t likely to be honored and will most likely generate more online abuse and exposure. However, that isn’t the end of the story. Even if the defamer posts under a pseudonym, lives in a foreign country, or is defaming you on his or her own site, so long as the company that hosts the site is based in a country with libel laws, you’re still in business.
 
The defamer is just one of the people in the chain of legal liability for internet defamation, and certain others in the chain are usually easier for you to get to—and have a lot more to lose. The chain consists of every person or company involved in the creation, publication and presentation of the offending material. This group may include:
 
  1. Discussion group administrator
  2. Site administrator
  3. Site editor
  4. Site owner
  5. Blog or Site platform/software provider
  6. Content aggregator
  7. Site hosting company
You’ll probably find you’re wasting your time lodging a complaint with parties #1 – #4, even if the site or discussion board in question has specific prohibitions against defamation in its Terms of Use (ToU) or Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). All of these people are usually ignorant of the law, and will tend to dismiss your complaint. Worse, if any of them are pals with the defamer, your complaint will likely backfire.
 
There are certain legal protections that tend to insulate #5 and #6 from most claims relating to the objectionable or illegal use of their services by individuals, so these are also usually dead ends. And this brings us to #7: the hosting company.

(continued, next page; read on to learn how to get defamatory statements & reviews removed) 

Twitter Strategy To Increase Targeted Traffic

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This post, from Chris Al-Aswad, originally appeared on his My Corporate Blogger site on 5/7/09.

I’ll admit it took me awhile to fully comprehend the madness behind Twitter. But nothing is ever revealed right away in life and so it was with Twitter. In this post I will talk about a few essential Twitter tools to build a Twitter following, and my new favorite social media strategy to gain targeted traffic.

I have about eleven websites and blogs on the Web. My daily routine is juggling those sites, adding content to them, fulfilling my clients’ needs, and of course, finding new ways to direct traffic to my sites.  MyCorporateBlogger.com, what you’re reading right now, is actually one of my newest blogs and it is also my professional blog, where my clients can find me and learn what I’m up to.

If you want to dramatically increase targeted traffic to your website, here is what you will need. Think of it like a recipe:

  1. a blog
  2. a twitter account

In addition, you will be using these tools and services:

  1. Twollo
  2. TweetDeck or Hoot Suite
  3. Twitter Button
  4. TwitThis Button
  5. Huitter/Mutuality

Twitter Strategy to Increase Targeted Traffic

Step One:  The Basics, a blog and a twitter account

The first thing you will need to do is set up a twitter account.  When you choose your username, try to pick the same words of your site URL or organization.  Think keywords–something instantly recognizable.  On the twitter account I just set up for this blog, I use “mycorporateblog”.

The most optimal SEO strategy is to create a Twitter account for your business or your website rather than a personal account.  This is because your Twitter page has a small place to put your website URL and a short description.  Your Twitter page will therefore represent your website.  Focus on your site versus “you” the person.  But make sure you upload a picture of yourself.

These are the basics.

Next you will need a blog which you probably already have.  If you have a business website but no blog, then start a blog.  Why?  Because a blog is dynamic while a website is static.  User-generated content is what creates traffic.

Step Two:  How to use Twollo.com

There are a number of auto-follow Twitter tools on the Web.  These tools enable you to automatically follow people.  But remember, your goal is not simply to increase your followers.  What you want is targeted followers, followers interested in what you’re interested in, followers who belong to your niche.

For example, one twitter tool called TweepMe.com charges 12 bucks a year to increase your followers.  It is not a targeted traffic tool, however, and will do you little good.

I recommend Twollo.com.  On this service, you add the keywords you’re interested in and the tool searches conversations in which these keywords appear.  You tell the app to follow 10, 20, 30, 40, 100, 200, 500, or unlimited amounts of people who are using the keyword you have chosen.  You can add as many different keywords as you want.

But wait?  You’re following them; they’re not following you.  Correct, but about half of those people will follow you.

I also suggest paying the 7 bucks to give you priority in the system for one month.  This means the system will process your requests faster and ultimately you’ll gain more traffic to your Twitter page.

The traffic comes to your Twitter page, but your website URL is right there.  If people are interested in what you’re interested in (i.e. keywords), then they will click on the link to your site.

Step Three: Use TweetDeck or even better HootSuite

The phenomenon of Twitter is not going anywhere but up.  Twitter is the next Google mainly because of the possibilities in real-time search.  It will revolutionize communication and we’re yet to see what that will look like.  We just need to learn which tools will make that communication worthwhile.

It’s best to be as personal as possible and not to simply automate your Tweets.  Here is a great article from PC World  which I’ll quote:

If you’ve got a blog that’s connected to your business, you can use a service such as TwitterFeed to directly channel your new blog posts into Twitter posts. Sounds nifty, doesn’t it?

Well, don’t do it. Your business’s primary Twitter feed ought to be hand-fed. If you publish a flood of impersonal links, your Twitter account will just seem like a faceless promotion machine. And that’s not any way to engage people on Twitter. Link to the very best stuff on your blog, as well as relevant stuff you see elsewhere on the web, and also post items that don’t contain links at all. (Don’t forget to use a URL-shortening service such as tinyurl, is.gd, or xrl.us for your links.)

Rather than use automated feed, engage!  TweetDeck is a personal browser to connect and converse with your contacts across Twitter.  It allows you to see exactly who is sending you messages and simplifies the complex rhythm that is Twitter.  Twitter can be very overwhelming; an advanced tool such as TweetDeck is very worthwhile.

If you want to engage on Twitter and only have one Twitter account, then I recommend Tweet Deck.  If you have multiple accounts, however, use HootSuite.  HootSuite is my personal favorite because you can toggle between accounts.  For clients who are running multiple business websites, this is an ideal platform

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes Steps 4-6 and the author’s results, on My Corporate Blogger.

Internet Defamation, Author Platform And You, Part 2

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(Continued from part one. As in part one, nothing herein should be construed as legal advice.)

Gather Documentation
First things first: take screenshots, create pdfs, or save offline copies of the web pages where the libel occurred. Be sure to note the URLs and bookmark them; you’ll need to share these with others later. Also retain copies of any emails, phone calls, faxes, instant messages, or other communications you send or receive pertaining to the matter going forward.
 
Identify The Site Hosting Company
Go to the Network Solutions WHOIS Search page and enter the domain name of the site where the defamatory material appears. For example, if you were investigating Google, you’d enter “google.com”. The WHOIS record will show in whose name the domain is registered, and will also list the Domain Name Servers (DNS) on which the site is hosted. The DNS entries will follow this format:
 
[server ID].[host company name].com
 
Now that you know the host company name, go to their website by typing www.[host company name].com into your browser. If that doesn’t get you to their site, do a Google search on the company name to find it.
 
Hosting Company Terms of Use / Acceptable Use Policy
Once on the hosting company’s site, look up their ToU/AUP. You may have to hunt around a bit to find it, and may have to click a link to a page where the company’s hosting services are being offered for sale, but the document you need will definitely be somewhere on that site. Find the paragraph in it which specifically prohibits defamation, libel, or ‘any other illegal activity’, which should read something like this.
 
[must not] encourage, allow or participate in any form of illegal or unsuitable activity, including but not restricted to the exchange of threatening, obscene or offensive messages, spreading computer viruses, breach of copyright and/or proprietary rights or publishing defamatory material;
 
If the document is very lengthy, you can use your browser’s Find > On This Page option to speed up your search. When you find the paragraph, make a note of the paragraph number or letter and save the entire document as a pdf, screenshot file, or offline web page for later reference. Even if you don’t find the paragraph, the fact that the host company operates in a country with libel laws gives you ammunition to proceed.
 
Put The Hosting Company On Notice
Click the host company’s ‘Contact Us’ link and look for the ‘Abuse’ department or email address. Some companies take abuse so seriously that they provide a telephone hotline.
 
Use the provided email address or phone number to report the incident(s). If you begin with a phone call, follow up with an email to create an electronic paper trail. You can follow this basic format, customized with your details:
 
Subject: Your Client In Violation Of Your [ToU or AUP]
 
Dear [Hosting Company Name] Representative:
Your client is using a website hosted on your server to make libelous statements about [me/my work/my business]. Your client’s statements are illegal and in violation of your own [ToU/AUP], [provide paragraph number or letter]. In allowing your client to utilize your hosting service for such use you may be held liable as the publisher of the libelous statements if you are made aware of them and fail to take action to remove them. Here are links to the offending content:
 
[provide links]
 
I am taking this very seriously, and if I do not receive notice that you are taking action to remove the offending material I will pursue legal action against your company in the matter.
 
–          [your name]
–          [your contact info]
 
School The Hosting Company
You may luck out and score a win with your first contact, but it’s more likely that the person on the receiving end will be ignorant of the law and respond with some boilerplate message about protecting the company’s clients’ right to free speech. So, you’ll need to take him to school. Respond with an email patterned after this one (including links):
 
You seem to believe your client’s defamatory material is protected free speech, but you are mistaken.
 
ACCORDING TO NPR’S "ON THE MEDIA": "The Media Law Resource Center, which tracks these cases, reports that there’s been over $16 million in [libel] judgments against bloggers."
 
ACCORDING TO ATTORNEY SEAN EGAN, OF LAWFIRM BATES, WELLS AND BRAITHWAITE: "The law of defamation prohibits defamatory statements being made and defendants may include the original author, a person publishing or editing the statement. Libel is making defamatory statements in writing. In principle therefore whoever hosts a webpage will be liable for any defamatory statement and will be considered to have published the statement."
 
[Host company name] is the publisher of the defamatory and libelous statements being made by your client on [his/her] site, and your company became complicit in the libel from the moment your company was made aware of the offending material and did not act to remove it or have it removed.
 
[If you found a paragraph prohibiting defamation, libel or other illegal activity in the host’s ToU/AUP, include the following paragraph as well:]
 
[Furthermore, I am advised that if you refuse to enforce your [ToA/AUP] in this instance, given all the documentation of that fact, you are establishing a precedent which any of your other clients may use to prevent you from enforcing said [ToU/AUP] in the event any of those clients violate your terms or policies. Selective enforcement is typically deemed no enforcement at all by the courts.]
 
Please provide your legal counsel’s full name, address, phone number, fax and email so I will know where to direct a Cease and Desist letter.
 
–          [your name]
–          [your contact info]
 
 
In the great majority of cases this second contact will spur the host company to action, if for no other reason than the fact that they must pay their legal counsel his or her usual hourly rate just to read your Cease and Desist letter and reply to it—even if the reply is nothing more than a legal-ese version of, “Get lost, we’re not doing jack.” Allowing a C&D letter to get through to their attorney also puts the attorney on notice that the company is potentially in legal trouble, and in publicly-held companies this sets a chain of notification requirements in motion: senior management must be notified immediately, followed by board members and shareholders if the matter isn’t resolved quickly.
 
It’s a whole lot cheaper and easier for the host company’s Abuse department to send a notice to their client advising him or her of the ToU/AUP violation and asking the client to remove the offending material on pain of having his or her site shut down with no refund of hosting fees. It also keeps the Abuse department manager from getting chewed out by the higher-ups.
 
The Cease And Desist Letter
If the second contact doesn’t work, your next step is to obtain a Cease and Desist (C&D) letter from an attorney and send it to the host company’s lawyer. If you Google “internet defamation” you should be able to find plenty of attorneys who specialize in these matters, and the letter should only cost you around US$100. While that’s a considerable chunk of change, it may just be worth it if the libel is hurting your sales, your standing as an author, your reputation among your peers or your reputation within the publishing industry.
 
Many communities and colleges with a law school sponsor low-cost legal clinics, so those are other avenues to try if you feel the libel is very serious but you can’t afford to hire an attorney at regular rates. Contact your local city hall, community center or universities to inquire about available low-cost legal clinics.
 
A Third Act Plot Twist For U.S.-Based Hosting Companies
Here’s where things get a little more interesting for defamation victims dealing with U.S.-based hosting companies. Here, in addition to charges of defamation, you can charge misappropriation of your name, likeness or trade name for profit, intentional interference with economic relations, and more. This sample C&D letter from the Chilling Effects website includes several charges. Your C&D letter should include as many charges as can reasonably be applied, per the opinion of the attorney preparing the letter.
 
A Common U.S. Defense Tactic: The Digital Millenium Copyright Act
Attorneys for U.S.-based software companies, internet service providers, hosting companies and similar are used to summarily rejecting any defamation claims levied against their clients’ end-users on the basis that their client is protected by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act; Google it if you want to know the particulars of that piece of legislation. In a nutshell, it’s intended to protect those providers from the illegal actions of people who use their software or services. In most cases it’s a more or less bulletproof defense. Does this mean our hero (you) is ruined? Not necessarily.
 
If the plaintiff can show that the provider has access to edit, block or delete its clients’ content, and has previously done so for any reason, the provider will have a hard time proving it does not act as the publisher of its clients’ content. Nevertheless, this can be tough to prove and therefore more likely to result in a legal battle than a speedy, out-of-court resolution.
 
Misappropriation: The Charge Most Likely To Get Fast Results In The U.S.
A charge of misappropriation of a person’s name, likeness or trade name for profit isn’t so easily dodged, and violation of this U.S. law is readily apparent to anyone viewing the pages with the defamatory material. If the page with defamatory material also contains advertising, or links to buy products being offered for sale by the site, host, blog author, etc., then the page content qualifies as content being used for a commercial (money-making) purpose. See this blog post from Internet Law Attorney Erik Syverson, and this one from Internet Defamation Attorney Adrianos Facchetti for more information, and specifics on how the same concept can be applied to defamatory online reviews.
 
How I Prevailed
In my situation, the defamer’s hosting company is based in the U.S. I put the company on notice with a first email as suggested in this article, which was answered with the expected ‘freedom of speech’ boilerplate. I followed up with the suggested second email, in which I reiterated the defamation charge and also added the bit about the risks of selective enforcement of the company’s ToS/AUP. I was truly prepared to go the full distance to clear my name and protect my reputation, and I made that fact very clear.
 
I can’t say whether it was the defamation schooling, the selective enforcement schooling, or the request for their legal counsel’s contact information that finally got the company to take action, but within 36 hours one of the offending posts was deleted and the other was marked as ‘deleted or locked’. A ‘locked’ post on the site is still visible to registered site members, but the site’s registered membership is a low number so I’m not terribly concerned about it. What mattered to me was having the post removed from public view and Google search results on searches of my name, site names, etc.
 
What About Retaliation?
The sort of person who would attempt to maliciously defame another is not the sort of person to graciously accept censorship. You may find that in winning the first battle, you’ve touched off a war in which the defamer takes to spreading his or her damaging lies about you on other sites.
 
No worries! So long as 1) the site carries advertising, or 2) the site, hosting company or corporate owner of the site is refusing to enforce its own ToU/AUP, or 3) the hosting company or corporate owner of the site is based in the U.S., U.K., or any other country with libel laws, I know how to get defamatory material removed.
 
And now, so do you!
 

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April L. Hamilton is an author and the founder of Publetariat and the Publetariat Vault.

Publishers: About To Make All The Same Mistakes As The Music Biz

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This piece, from Susan Piver, originally appeared on her website on 2/11/09.

Hello book publishers. You’re starting to scare me.

I work in publishing but was a record label executive from 1990-2001 and am fascinated by parallels between the two industries. When it comes to the digitization of product and attempts to master/mangle the phenomenon of social media, the publishing business is where the music business was about 10 years ago. And although publishing probably sets its collective IQ (not to mention good manners) as superior to the music business, I can’t find evidence that their reactions to industry sea change are substantially different.

While attending this week’s O’Reilly’s Tools of Change in Publishing conference, I heard a lot of this:

There is still time to change course and we’ve got to do something now—but we don’t know what.

In the meantime, let’s co-opt whatever new trends we see out there by assigning some low-level marketing person to troll Twitter or hiring a social media consultant.

Please, please don’t let us end up like the record business.

If there’s anything to be learned from the recent past, it’s that none of these thoughts are worth pursuing. The “somebody do something” mentality duplicates the kind of hoping-for-the-best attitude espoused by long-time executives in music who simply could not or would not question the viability of the professional cocoons they’d built for themselves. And who can blame them—corporate mega structures are schooled in consolidation as the primary means of growth, not fleet-footed, shape-shifting responsiveness to change. But now we’re in a world where getting bigger is not the answer, getting smaller is.

The question I hoped would be addressed at the conference was: How will publishing avoid being trapped by its own environment? But it never was. Instead, I noticed a lot of talk of waiting and seeing how things are going to work out before making any earth-shaking, world-class responses to a world that has already changed.

At the conference, I was excited for a keynote aimed at comparing the music and publishing industries. Although entertaining, it lacked vision. The speaker talked about how only wimps fear the freedoms of the digital marketplace and attempt to control intellectual property rights and that at least we’re not going to start arresting people like those thugs over at the RIAA. I was disappointed not to hear a more sophisticated dissection, beginning with debunking the idea that digital downloads killed the music business, or could kill publishing.

Downloads did not kill the music business. Shortsightedness and turf-protection on the part of music business executives did. Piracy and changing distribution schema will not kill the publishing industry. Shortsighted infrastructure-protection on the part of publishing houses will.

Read the rest of the post on Susan Piver’s site.

The Five Golden Rules Of Publicity For Authors

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This post, from Katherine (Kat) Smith, originally appeared on WritersWrite.

The hard work, you think, is over. You’ve labored into many late nights writing your book, struggled to literally make sure every "i" is dotted and every "t" crossed. Your book — your baby — is all grown up now; completed and ready to set the world on fire.

Then, the cold, hard truth slaps you in the face like a winter chill. Like the proverbial tree falling in the woods with no one around, your book isn’t going to make a sound — or even be known about by anyone — unless you get the word out. You could hire a publicist, but the often high-costs can be prohibitive, and perhaps most of your "book money" went to editing, design, layout and printing.

What to do?

Relax, set your ego aside, and set up a plan and course of action. Book promotion isn’t rocket science; but it does involve a lot of hard work, persistence and some added touches of creativity. Here are some basic yet invaluable pointers for the bold author who has decided to go it alone in the wild world of book promotion.

Change positions with the media

The essence of book promotion is the utilization of the media to get the word out to the public about your book. Sure, producers, editors and journalists can be a gruff bunch, but the reality is they are literally swamped with books and press releases every day.

What you need to do is put yourself in the shoes of the media. If you were a feature editor at a paper or a producer of a talk show, what would interest you? Too often, amateur publicists simply believe that getting a book or press release into the right person’s hands will do the trick. WRONG. You’ve got to think of an angle, hook, slant — whatever you want to call it — that will interest the right people.

Listen to talk radio. Watch TV talk shows. Read the lifestyle and feature sections of newspapers. Read magazines. See what makes it; then create a press release that will make it happen for you.

Remember: No one ever interviews a book

Getting on radio and TV talk shows is exciting, fun and can really jumpstart book sales. But if you think your book will get you on the air by itself, you’re probably wrong. No one interviews a book … they interview PEOPLE. Of course, the topic your book may be gets the attention of producers, but they need and want people who can be informative, entertaining and articulate. People make a show … not books.

When you’re promoting a book, you’re also promoting yourself. Remember this, practice this, and go for it!
 

Read the rest of the post on WritersWrite.

13 Twitter Tips and Tutorials For Beginners

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This post, from Darren Rowse, originally appeared on his TwiTip site on 4/18/09.

Just starting out on Twitter? Looking for some Twitter Tips to get you started?

Twitter is bound to have a load of new users today as it is being featured on Oprah – so I thought it might be a good day to share some tips for the beginner Twitter user who is just getting going with the medium.

1. What’s in it for Your Followers? – How to be Useful on Twitter

2. 10 Easy Steps for Twitter Beginners – good sound advice and tips on getting going on Twitter  

3. 8 Sure-Fire Ways to Tick off the Twitterverse – a few things to avoid on Twitter 

4. 5 Ways I Benefit from Twitter – this outlines why I love Twitter in my business of building blogs 

5. Defining Your Twitter Goals – this one is more for those who want to use Twitter for other purposes than just letting their family know when they’ll be home. 

6. How to Set up a Twitter Account – most of your are probably past this one but it could be useful if you’re a ‘Pre-Twitter’ user.

7. 5 Steps to Model Successful Twitter Users – an exploration of a few ways that Twitter is being used 

Read the rest of the post on the TwiTip site.

Authors: 5 Ways You Can Be Your Own Alchemist

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This post is from The Creative Penn.com: Writing, self-publishing, print-on-demand, internet sales and marketing…for your book.  

Alchemy is the science and art of turning what is base into something precious. It means transformation and renewal, death and rebirth. There are many myths, legends and secrets around alchemy and it has been a creative muse for many people throughout the centuries. 

Here are 5 ways you can be your own alchemist for your writing:

 

  1. Take your darkest and hidden secrets and turn them into nuggets of gold. We all have our dark and dirty memories, but you can turn them into the basis for brilliant writing. It is not about baring your soul, but using what is down there and transforming it. Fictionalise it. Use the lessons to share your wisdom. Your story is original and people want to hear it. You are unique and you can shape that into brilliance.
  2. Edit your work dramatically. Turn your worst writing into something great. Sometimes our writing itself is base and dirty. It needs refining, sometimes drastically. The alchemist used fire to destroy and refine. You may need to be as brutal with your writing to make it into something beautiful.
  3. Transform yourself. Learn, grow and change to develop your self and your writing. “The book you write will change your life” Seth Godin. I truly believe this. The experience of writing a book, whether it is for you alone or for many readers, can transform you into a new person.
  4. Test and refine your methods and works. The alchemists were always looking for new ways to reach The Philosopher’s Stone. To be the one to finally turn lead into gold. They were chemists, scientists always experimenting. You also need to experiment as an author. Learn from failure and continue to move on. Try different techniques and methods. Include new ways of writing as well as book promotion and sales options. This is a lifetime of work, so you have time to make the changes.
  5. Include both spirituality and practicality into your writing. Alchemists have been linked with both the science of chemistry and also esoteric spirituality. Combining both creates a powerful writing career. Authors need to stay in touch with their soul and spirit in order to create and give their energy to the work. But equally, authors need a practical sensibility in order to deal with business, publishing and book promotion. To be entirely focussed on one without the other is useless.

Should You Talk About Your Article Or Book Ideas?

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This post, from Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen, originally appeared on her Quips and Tips for Successful Writers site on 6/16/09.

Successful writers create new article or book ideas all the time – but do they talk about them before they’re written? Not according to Mario Puzo, Sidney Sheldon, or Ernest Hemingway…

“Never talk about what you are going to do until after you have written it,” said Mario Puzo.

Oops. I’m not only talking about my latest book idea, I’ve actually written about it on my blog (The Adventurous Writer), in Seeking Successful Published Authors. But, the good news is John Steinbeck talked about his book ideas before they were written, too!  Here’s a few quips from published authors about talking about writing – plus some tips. For more in-depth info on getting your ideas published, click on Putting Your Passion Into Print: Get Your Book Published Successfully! by Arielle Eckstut and David Sterry.

Should You Talk About Your Article or Book Ideas?

The quip: “I don’t like to talk about works-in-progress because if I do then it’s on TV 10 weeks later, and it takes me two to three years to write a novel because I do so much rewriting.” – Sidney Sheldon

  • The tip: Okay, we may be successful writers, but most of us aren’t in Sheldon’s league! Even so, many writers fear the possibility that their book or article ideas will show up in a magazine, another writer’s blog, or a book. I believe the chances that someone deliberately steals ideas are slim (plus, you can’t legally fight it because ideas can’t be copyrighted). I also believe in a cosmic karma/common sense flow that leads people to similar ideas at the same time. That is, leads for ideas are floating around in the news, on Twitter, etc – our world is so small, writers are bound to come up with the same ideas at the same time. (To figure out if your idea is valuable, read Tips for Recognizing Great Article Ideas)

The quip: “You lose it if you talk about it.” – Ernest Hemingway

  • The tip: If you talk about your ideas, be selective. Don’t spread your ideas around writers’ forums or on Twitter (oops, I goofed again). Rather, share your ideas with inspiring fellow writers, your writing group, or people you trust. Talking your way through problems with finding sources for articles or plot dilemmas for novels is a great way to find solutions! But, I encourage you to pull a “Hemingway”, and do what works for you.

Read the rest of the post on Quips and Tips for Successful Writers.