A BLOGGING BONANZA

FOR THE HOLIDAY SEASON 

In an innovative foray into online advertising, Kmart launched a most unusual program that enlisted the reach of key bloggers to spread the word about shopping at the nation-wide chain. Through its agency Izea, a social media marketing firm, the retailer gave six bloggers a gift certificate for $500 and invited them to visit a Kmart store and write what they observed with no restrictions. 

The program was completely transparent with bloggers required to disclose the fact this was a sponsored event. In addition, a contest was run on the blogs and one winner from among the people who posted on each of the six blogs was selected for a $500 shopping spree.   

A novel idea and a win/win situation just as long as the impression the bloggers received on their store visits were all favorable, as they apparently were.. 

Technorati Profile

SOME INTRIGUING OBSERVATIONS

ON THE FUTURE OF THE BOOK INDUSTRY 

A recent edition of the Publishers Newsletter produced by the Jenkins Group included some interesting comments on our industry and where it is headed in the future. I thought these were an appropriate post for this-last- of- the- year blog.  

“There may still be something to the theory, much circulated these days, that books can produce an escape from financial misery,” says Motoko Rich in a New York Times article. He cites the first year sales of a million copies of Gone With the Wind when it was released in the Great Depression year 1936.  

In the article, literary agent Larry Weissman is quoted saying that people haven’t been reading this past year because they were clicking onto political blogs for election updates every 20 minutes. But Weissman adds, ”I think and I hope …there’s a yearning for authenticity out there and people are going to go back  to the things that really matter, and one of those things, I hope, will be reading books.” 

Authors Guild president Roy Blount, Jr commented on the hit bookstore sales are taking this season, but coyly adds, “Booksellers don’t lose enough money to receive Congressional attention,“ an allusion to the government bailouts for banks and car makers. 

Blount suggests a “book-buying splurge” to help the stores because authors need them and so do neighborhoods. Blount also reminds readers that everyone will have a birthday over the forthcoming year, and books are an ideal gift. He recommends holding off GPS and flat screen TV purchases, using the money to buy books now because those appliances will be discounted heavily after the holiday season. 

A solid idea was included from Steve Rosen, author of Cincinnati City Beat. With Obama already looking like a replica of New Deal originator Franklin Roosevelt, the columnist recommends reviving the Federal Writer’s Project, one of the New Deal successes back in the 1930’s. That program put 6,600 writers of all skill levels back to work. Not a bad idea to launch side-by-side with the President-elect’s plans for a massive infra-structure works project. 

It’s reassuring to know that there are people churning up ideas to preserve the health of one of the nation’s most treasured cultural industries. 
 

Technorati Profile

Charlie’s Choice

Weekly Tips to Help You Write,

Publish & Promote Your Books 

OUR FINAL REVIEW FOR THE YEAR:

RECALLING PREVIOUS COLUMNS ON PUBLISHING 

      Gosh, 2008 is almost over and this represents the last of the year’s columns. You will remember that I have decided to pass on next week in an effort to find the time to clean up all the odds and ends that linger from the past 12 months. I suspect that most of you will  far be too busy with holiday festivities to read another column.  

      Today, we’ll summarize the third major category of our profession – publishing. The past two weeks have been a retrospective on writing and promoting your books that I hope helped to refresh some of the detail that we had presented in the earlier columns. Now let’s take a look at the opportunities new technology and the changing nature of the publishing world provide for us.    

      With so many of the traditional major publishing houses now absorbed by mammoth conglomerates, it has become harder and harder for beginning authors and even more experienced ones to use this route. The majors generally limit their interest to books with a potential of massive distribution. That usually means works by politicians and celebrities, many of which are ghost written, often by writers chosen by the publisher. 

      Expense accounts have been slashed mercilessly. The days of lavish launch parties and cross country signing tours are pretty much a thing of the past, limited only to those books by star-studded authors. The rest of us can expect a five to ten percent royalty out of which we have to finance our own promotional expenses. That’s why you are seeing so many authors shifting to smaller independent publishers, POD houses or self-publishing. 

The Alternatives 

      The growth of indies has been remarkable, but very understandable now that access to the majors has become so limited. These smaller companies care deeply about quality. While they obviously must watch the bottom line, they are not obsessed with profit as the majors are. They care about their authors, look for new talent and nurture those they represent.  

      Many will accept book proposals directly from an author, although it is always wise to submit your work through a literary agent if possible. They not only know the market better than you do, they also will shepherd your book through contract negotiations and oversee it throughout the publication cycle.   

      Indies have now become a very important and active segment of the industry. That became so obvious to me when I attended Book Expo America in Los Angeles last June. As I have told many audiences at my frequent talks, an entire section of the display floor was devoted to indies. Seminars and special events were staged exclusively for them. 

Publishing on Demand 

      When it first began a decade or so ago, publishing on demand  (POD) was ridiculed and demeaned by many in the industry. I don’t know whether this was because existing publishers felt threatened by this new boy on the block or whether it was the result of the number of charlatans who jumped aboard looking for a fast profit from this new concept. 

      Over the years, most of the unsavory operators have fallen by the wayside, and the remaining field of POD publishers is gaining greater respect every day. Retailers in the past refused to stock POD-published book, but now most accept them, especially from those houses that have developed return programs. (Most houses charge authors an extra fee to participate in the return program.) Better reviewers, who also used to avoid POD books, now are beginning to review them, and occasionally a POD house places one of its books on the best seller lists. 

      The system is ideal for newcomers to our field. You submit your manuscript along with the initial production payment that usually starts around $400, but can climb as high as $1,200 depending on the company’s reputation and the bells and whistles you request. The house then prepares a cover; formats the interior text; and obtains an ISBN, barcodes and  Library of Congress cataloguing. It then prints your book, places it with one of the major wholesalers and with the three .com booksellers Amazon, B&N and Borders. These services are well worth the production fee. 

      You, the author, are able to purchase any quantity of books you wish at the price the POD house charges the wholesaler. You are also able to help set the level of royalty you receive. But understand that it will have to be relatively low if you want to keep your retail pricing competitive with similar books, for the share of the net profit taken by the POD house is usually quite high. 

      While POD is not a lucrative method of publishing and does require the production payment up front, you will generally end up with a financial return per copy that is similar to what you would get if you had followed the traditional path. You will, as in traditional publishing, have to pay for promotion, and I strongly suggest you not waste money on the promotional program the POD houses offer. They generally are a waste, a costly mass mailing of a canned press release that usually ends up in the editor’s circular file.  

Self-Publishing 

      Many authors have turned to self-publishing. While it represents a good deal of effort because you are the one doing all of the chores that I indicated the POD house does for you. For those who are shy about tackling the task, book shepherds are readily available. Shepherds can advise and guide you through the routines or if you wish, we can perform all of the tasks for you.

I would estimate that my clients are basically split 50-50 in their choice of the services they request. 

      The value of self-publishing is that you are completely in charge of your book. You make every decision from the conception and writing through the final printing and promotion. Although you must lay out funds up front to produce your book, every penny generated by sales is yours to keep. I decided to self-publish my most recent book because I refused to accept a low royalty and still have to cover all of my promotional expenses with little or no help from a publisher who is profiting from the book. 

Holiday Wishes for You 

      In 2009, we will begin a brand new cycle of Charlie’s Choice columns. They will range across the spectrum, tackling specific aspects of writing, publishing and promoting. There will be 52 fresh pieces to help you improve your abilities and your knowledge. 

       I sincerely thank the many, many subscribers who have remained faithfully with us all of this year and especially those who have written such supportive and appreciative notes to me. That alone is reason enough to continue the columns next year. So this is not the end. Instead, it is the beginning of a brand new series, and I invite you to stay with us throughout the next year. 

      Meanwhile, do have a joyous holiday season and a fulfilling and prosperous New Year turning out reams of highly saleable copy. See you next year. 

Keep Writing!  

Technorati Profile

IT’S QUALITY NOT QUANTITY THAT DETERMINES

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SOCIAL NETWORKING 

Always a source of worthwhile information, Media Post.com last week published a fascinating article by Max Kalehoff, Clickable’s VP of marketing. It capsulized some of the high points of a study conducted at the Center for Applied Mathematics at Cornell University and HP Labs. 

The study found that “the volume of social network connections a person has is a weak indicator of how prolific a poster someone is. What really matters are actual friends.”    (Friends are defined as recipients of at least two posts from you.) But the researchers caution, “This view should be tempered by our findings that a link between any two people does not necessarily imply an interaction between them.” 

Kalehoff translates this into marketing terms by explaining that he is the recipient of dozens of magazines and newspapers piling up on his coffee table that he will never have the chance to read. Yet he is counted as a subscriber and advertisers pay a rate based on the number of subscribers a publication reports, not the number of actual readers. 

Food for thought for all of us involved in promoting ourselves and our books whether on or offline. 

Technorati Profile

SECRECY AT THE WHITE HOUSE CONTINUES,

JEOPARDIZING ACCURATE REPORTING BY AUTHORS 

It’s an administration that began in secrecy, if you recall the nefarious maneuverings over the Florida vote count, operated for two terms in tight secrecy and is now ending in secrecy. Some things never change in the Bush world. 

The Washington Post reports that efforts by American historians to recover missing e-mail records from the White House and preserve them as historical records is facing huge opposition from the Bush administration. Thousands of administration e-mails are allegedly lost, and historians are struggling to retrieve them. Amita Jones, executive director of the American Historical Association states that there is “A context that is not reassuring.” The missing material is vital to understanding the nation’s current predicaments, the Post article points out. 

The VP’s office also is battling to withhold certain documents from preservation at the National Archives. Cheney, the administration’s Machiavelli-in-chief, contends only the limited number of e-mails that came to him directly from the President are eligible to be stored at the Archives. The master of undercover and secrecy insists that documents that relate to his own initiatives are to be considered exempt. 

It certainly isn’t hard to understand why our two “great leaders” are scrambling to cover up their mistakes and what probably are their indictable activities. There’s one consolation. Both will be gone with all their baggage in another month or so. Good riddance!

Technorati Profile

A GIANT STEP FORWARD

FOR PRINT ON DEMAND 

It’s one thing to “speed-read” a book. Many of us have done it. But now it is possible to “speed-publish” your book. Techhnology has taken Print on Demand a giant step beyond with the Expresso  Book Machine, now generating a great deal of new interest. This remarkable invention can produce a complete book within 15 minutes. That means formatting, printing and binding it.  

The New York Public Library has had a machine in operation since mid-2007, but there are only nine in other locations around the world. Just recently Titles, the bookstore at McMasters University completed installation and will officially go into full operation in January. 

Offered by On Demand Books, the target market for the machine is primarily libraries and bookstores, and that has caused some concern among retail booksellers. However, at the present time, the machines that are in operation principally draw on scholarly texts, out of print books and other relatively inaccessible texts. The concern is the future impact on publishing and retailing if interest in this new concept ever escalates and becomes cost-effective for widespread  installation. Ah well, progress never stops…especially in our industry, where innovation and restructuring seem to be today’s watchwords. 
 

Technorati Profile

KINDLE LOVERS MAY FIND ONLY

BLACK COAL IN THEIR HOLIDAY STOCKINGS 

While we’re talking about new innovations related to our book world, certainly Amazon’s Kindle comes immediately to mind. Jeff  Bezos’ latest innovation has been a remarkable success. Introduced last year, it sold out in holiday season 2007, and managed a replay this year.  

After Oprah’s  description of her “favorite new gadget,” sales soared and left Bezos empty-handed. Not an impressive showing for the book selling pioneer that Publishers Weekly named its Book Person of the Year. 

Nonetheless, I think we all consider Bezos a very worthy choice for the honor. Over the 14 years of its existence, he has consistently reached out for innovative selling techniques and has built Amazon into an incredibly succesful online retailer. Using the key approaches of wide selections, easy accessibility and a consistent personalized relationship to its customer’s, the company has kept growth in the double-digit realm through most of those years. 

Congratulations, Jeff! 

Technorati Profile

Charlie’s Choice

Weekly Tips to Help You Write,

Publish & Promote Your Books 

WRITING YOUR BOOK:

AN OVERVIEW AND SUMMARY OF EARLIER COLUMNS  

      This week’s retrospective column is a refresher on what we have learned about writing in several preferred genres. It is the second in the series of three summaries as we approach the end of the year and begin anew in 2009. 

      On March 26, we began our segment on writing advice and tips with a discussion of the novel. Throughout the month of April, we covered structure, character building, description and dialogue. One of the more important columns appeared on April 2^nd in which we looked at ways to structure your novel. 

      The essence of that discussion was understanding the function of the scene and its roller coaster flow of challenge, conflict, tension, relief as the protagonist struggles to overcome obstacles on the path to achieving his/her final goal as presented in the opening paragraphs of the book.  

      The column stresses the importance of motivation to make every action of every character throughout the book realistic and believable. There must be a reason for the character to act in a certain way, and those clues must be buried in the text well in advance of the specific action. In fiction, there can be no coincidences. 

      When creating powerful characters, it is necessary to understand them intimately, and we suggested a process of interviewing your fictional characters just as you would a live person and charting each and every characteristic. We also stressed how important it is to design defining characteristics for all of your major people, giving them a positive identification for the reader to remember. 

      Also key to defining your characters was the discussion of dialogue and carefully selecting a mode of speech that matches the overall essence of the character. The importance of detail in description was emphasized as we try to immerse the reader into the scene and make him/her feel comfortable with the setting and with the fictional people you draw. We also talked about the marked difference between “showing” and “telling.” 

Crafting a Nonfiction Book 

      We opened the month-long discussion of nonfiction writing on April 30 with an overview of the importance of selecting a topic in which you have a strong interest since you will be “married” to that book for an extensive period. We reviewed the importance of specialization and niche targeting. 

      The principal elements of a nonfiction book that we looked at are coherence, pacing, rhythm, style, description and accuracy. Just as a novel must flow smoothly, so the nonfiction book must move the reader compellingly but gracefully through its pages. In the case of a how-to book, we suggested you follow the prescription used in instructions that accompany a “do it yourself” project, and lead the reader step-by-step through the process. 

      Never forget that “content is king” in nonfiction. Obviously, the elements we spoke of in the last paragraph are key to creating a readable book, but the reason a reader selects a nonfiction work is to gain information. That calls into play a real effort at research and planning as you develop the book. 

      The May 7 column poses five very basic questions that you must answer as you think through your decision to craft a book. Using your answers as a road map, you can now begin researching the subject to complement the information you already possess. But first review a copy of Books in Print to ensure that the approach (or hook as we call it) you plan to use is fresh and not previously exhausted by others authors. 

      Reference librarians are unbelievably effective as you plan your research program. They have a huge fund of knowledge and know where to point you when you need more information. You may prefer to conduct your research on your home computer. The Internet offers an almost inexhaustible collection of facts, figures, trends and other information. 

      One thing you must remember is to be exacting in the words you use when referencing search engines. No generalities. Use specific keywords to bring up the info that is pertinent to your topic. For example, if you are writing about early spring flowers, don’t enter “gardening” as a key word. It is far too general. Home in on “spring flowers,” “early spring blossoms” or look up specific types like “hyacinths,” “daffodils,” etc.  

      It is as important to plan your efforts at research as it is to plan your book. Don’t ever be afraid of collecting far more info than you can possibly use. Exploring different aspects of your subject may possibly open the door to a fresh new approach that you never considered. 

      Carefully sort the information you gather, discarding whatever you feel is extraneous to your immediate subject. Segment the information you keep into specific aspects of the topic. This effort will more than pay you back for the effort you expend. Done properly, it will almost create a framework for your book and make writing so much easier. 

Targeting a Niche 

      In this age of specialization, it is important to become recognized as an expert in a given subject. We call this “branding.” It is little different from the branding on cattle used to identify their ownership. In our case, branding identifies us as experts in a given field of interest. You will find that journalists will begin to contact you for guidance and comments when they are writing about your specialty.  

      In terms of selling your work, it is often far more effective to zero in on a specific category of reader than to utilize a shotgun approach and attempt to reach a broad cross section of readers. The key is to target those people who have a particular interest in a given subject and therefore are strong potential purchasers.  

      Selecting a niche is very much a part of planning your book that we spoke about above. It is likely that once you are established with the first book, you will want to go on and expand your writing with articles and future books in that specialty.   

      Several columns published in the July blogs are devoted to the specialties of writing a memoir and crafting travel stories. These are both a great deal of fun to write. They are similar because they both draw on specific events you have experienced, although, of course, writing a memoir will be a far more extensive challenge than creating the story of a single travel adventure. 

      In June we discussed freelance article writing and the specialty of business (or commercial) writing, both in-house on a contract basis or as a freelancer.  

      Now that we have summarized coverage of two of the three major categories (writing and promotion), we’ll turn our attention next week to refreshing your recollection of the many columns that were produced on the complex subject of publishing your work. That will round out the year as I explained last week and allow me a breather over the holiday week to plan for 2009.

See you in a week.  

      Keep Writing! 
 

Technorati Profile

THE WIDELY ANTICIPATED DECEMBER BOOST

FAILED TO MATERIALIZE IN WEEK ONE BOOK SALES 

The first full week of holiday selling for December, 2008, fell by 6.6% according to Nielsen Book Scan. The falloff in unit sales was strongest in adult nonfiction, dropping 20.8% from last year’s figures. Total sales in all categories reached only 20.7 million units compared to last year’s 22.1million. 

Children’s fiction proved the healthiest category. Its units jumped by a little more than 24%. There are still two weeks plus of selling to hopefully turn the tide. Nielsen hasn’t yet reported on this past week and with eight days of last minute selling, books may yet prove to be the great gift item that so many believed it would in this faltering economy. 

Let’s keep out fingers crossed and our promotions heavy. 

Technorati Profile

IN A UNIQUE DOUBLE ROLE, BABY BOOMERS ARE BOTH

TARGETS OF YOUR PROMOS & TOOLS TO SPREAD THE WORD 

eMarketer  reports on several recently released studies that offer greater insight into the Baby Boomer market of more than 56 million Internet users, the majority of whom are ideal targets for your book promotions. It is generally accepted that the majority of Boomers are well educated, financially comfortable enough to buy your books (hopefully that’s remains true in this recession) and tend to share information on products and ideas that they find interesting with their peers.. 

As the largest group of Internet users, they can be reached best through digital channels and will carry your message to their acquaintances and family members. A Third Age/JWTBoom study found that 93% regularly shared this information with others.  

That was confirmed by a second survey conducted by BIGresearch that analyzed the media used for this sharing. Older Boomers (54 to 62) preferred the telephone and e-mail, while the younger set (44 to 53) turned to text and instant messaging, blogging, social networking and mobile phones.  

Far too many people think of Boomers as a completely homogeneous group. Because of the wide disparity of ages, their attitudes differ, as these surveys point out. So when you market your writings to them, those distinctions should always be in your mind.

Technorati Profile