Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

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Checklist for your media kit

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

These points apply to your printed media kit as well as your online presentation.

  1. Make sure the package sells you and your story, not the book.
  2. Choose endorsements strategically for best effect.
  3. Synchronize your contact information across all media: website, Facebook, blog, media kit, press releases, business cards, video clips.
  4. Triple-check the ISBN and other book specifications for accuracy.
  5. Using links to pages with more detailed information is fine. Give them just enough; if someone is that interested, they’ll follow you there.
  6. Excerpts must be brief. But links to sample PDFs are popular.
  7. Update your calendar of appearances and activities. Frequently and doggedly.
  8. Review your whole kit regularly. Does it still do the job? Is everything current and accurate?
  9. Keep using those hard-earned interviews. Collect and feature your interviews on the site. A well-hosted interview that conveys your message—and your personality—keeps paying dividends long after the show airs or it appears one place in print. A good interview carries legitimacy and timeliness to your message that no self-written marketing material can begin to touch.

    Only by investing and speaking your vision with passion can the truth, one way or the other, finally penetrate the reluctance of the world. ~ Søren Kierkegaard

    Posted in Book Marketing, Social Media | 4 Comments »

    Social Media for Authors Test

    Friday, October 1st, 2010

    Do I have to? You’ve written and perhaps published your book. You’ve discovered how much time it takes to make even a traditional sales kit look professional. You fought for some local publicity. Now you are asking, do I really have to get into the social media thing, too? I am supposed to tell you “yes.” But the honest answer is “maybe.”

    To find out if you should commit your precious time to building your social media presence—or if it is more likely to be a frustrating waste of time you could better use elsewhere—take my patented Author’s Cut-and-Run from Social Media Test. Answer yes or no:

    1. Do you have a Facebook account that you use to communicate with your audience (not just your high school clique)?
    2. Does your book distill your detailed expertise in your career field?
    3. Is your book controversial, shocking, groundbreaking, or funny?
    4. You watch a funny YouTube video. Can you forward the link to a friend in less than thirty seconds?
    5. Have you published a blog consistently for six months or more?
    6. Do you know how to use Twitter #hashtags?
    7. Would you rather send a witty email than chat on the phone?
    8. Do you regularly scan more than three blogs related to your book topic?
    9. Do you have someone dedicated to helping you who would answer “yes” to most of these questions?
    10. Would your book’s audience answer “yes” to most of these questions?

    Results:

    • If you answered “yes” to 7–10 of these questions, you are already in the choir and should update your apps, renew your SEM strategies, and take it to the bank.
    • If you answered “yes” to 4–6 of these questions, it is time to take the following steps: 1)  objectively analyze whether or not the subject matter of your book lends itself to social media activity, and 2) honestly assess whether you’ve got the time and discipline needed to translate online traffic into real fans and sales.
    • If you hesitantly answered “yes” to a few of these questions, keep up your blog if you have one, install a “Share This” button on your website, and call it a day. Focus instead on quality “set it and forget it” content.

    [If you didn't answer "Yes" to any of these questions, good on ya; it's important to be honest with yourself. There are many more important ways to spend your time as a professional writer.]

    IF you dive into the social media community, religiously divide your time (and your accounts) between personal and business chatter. Your site serves as a “landing page” for all other social media and web activity. Never lose sight of the directive that all the time you spend sending email blasts, tweeting, scanning relevant blogs, and ignoring virtual games serves one purpose only: to direct readers to your website.

    Posted in Author Audience, Book Marketing, Social Media | 1 Comment »

    All In with Multimedia

    Friday, July 23rd, 2010

    Every book we are working on now has multimedia elements.

    Among the textbooks for which we manage production, a large percentage of academic references are website links; that’s where the current, peer-reviewed, accurate sources live now. Most reference works and textbooks have supplemental websites where students go for the in-depth research, study questions, and video. After all, for today’s students, bound books are inefficient and old fashioned.

    No longer do the visual arts and the printed word run is separate circles. For an upcoming title exploring the relationship of natural environment and culture, it helps that the author, Osprey Orielle Lake, is not only a renowned speaker at international conferences but also an accomplished sculptor of monuments in bronze. There is no limit to the ways her important words can be strengthened by art in all media, weaving history, ecology, culture, governance, and women’s leadership to map out an integrated approach to working in partnership with nature.

    Another White Cloud Press frontlist title is a flagship for books converging with other media. Itself a marriage of lyrical words and art photography, Grace and Tranquility (July 2010, Eric Alan) is tied to a music CD of the same name by Gypsy Soul. The songs draw their lyrics from passages of the book, images in the book mirror the moods of the songs. Author and band are touring together, making a reading also a slideshow and concert. The gift market and booksellers are beginning to see the undoubted beauty of combining the book and CD as an attractive sales package.

    A children’s storybook with whimsical drawings tells its story in more ways than ever before. Marketing for the book has to include video of the author reading the story. The author is active on Facebook and her illustrations are ideally suited for sharing across social media (copyright issues alert).

    Even a fairly traditional travel guide just released depends on the associated website, which in turn is linked to all the websites of the featured wineries, weaving a true web. The website augments the print book with updates and news, as well as audio interviews by the author.

    No author should be thinking only of words on paper  ever again. Your story, your message, will be words on paper, in pixels, in audio, in video, in previously unimagined lively combinations that bring your readers right to your elbow  as never before. Celebrate and maximize the possibilities.

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    Posted in Book Publishing, Publishing Trends, Social Media | No Comments »

    Standing on the Internet Tracks

    Monday, July 19th, 2010

    Clay Shirky is the smartest guy out there right now. By “smart” I mean not the first or only guy to see a train coming, but the one who looks down the tracks we’re standing on and says, “That’s the 502, it’s packing 900 tons, and it will be here in one minute ninety seconds. How about that?”

    In our case, the train is how we use the Internet. It was a Shirky lecture on TED that helped me recognize that all media is converging: print, audio, video, interactive communication all merging online. Shirky is credited with being one of the first to predict the pervasive power of a collaborative digital world, institutionalized now in Facebook, Twitter, and the rest of social media. Based at New York University, Shirky is now pointing down the tracks and leading the debate about using the Internet for communal or civic values; that is, are we going to share news about Lady Gaga’s wardrobe or are we going to provide clean water to all of Africa?

    Leisure time is now a global resource, he observes. So he looks at what people are doing online and notes, “All of these are effusion of people pooling their spare time and talent, but some of them are good for the participants, and some are good for society as a whole.”

    Shirky’s new book, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age Standing on the Internet Tracks (Penguin Press), looks down the tracks at the possibilities of the Internet age and the obligations that will come with it. “If we don’t celebrate civic value, we underuse the medium,” he says.

    On traditional publishers adapting to the digital age: Shirky quotes Upton Sinclair. “It’s hard to make a man understand something if his livelihood depends on him not understanding it.”

    On who to watch in publishing: “I’m interested in young writers and editors entering a system that is plainly structured around the vestiges of a world fast draining away.”

    On the opportunities for authors today: “…while I hope [Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown] does get recognize and gets picked up to do a book, she doesn’t need a book to have a voice. In literature there’s never been the kind of place for women’s voices that there is now. It’s spectacular.”

    I will be buying Shirky’s new book, Cognitive Surplus Standing on the Internet Tracks, which I confidently predict will be full of additional concise observations and conversation-starters. Though I am also standing on the tracks, I’m an old guy, so I hope Clay won’t mind if I buy it ink-on-paper.

    Reference: “Here Comes Clay Shirky,” Publishers Weekly, by Parul Sehgal, Jun 21, 2010.

    (more…)

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    Posted in Book Publishing, Collaboration, Publishing Trends, Social Media | 1 Comment »

    Author’s Website: But wait, there’s more!

    Friday, July 9th, 2010

    Whether working with a major house or self publishing, an author today must maintain a website. Having a professional online presence is as standard as having a sales sheet and a business card. But the old (that is, more than two years ago) expectation that a website can be just a glorified billboard is obsolete thinking. What can or should an author-and-book website do for an author now?

    First, the site does serve as a sales tool, but only if it is a dynamic tool where reviews and endorsements are added on the fly and news about you and your book is kept current.

    Your site serves as a “landing page” for all other social media and web activity. Never lose sight of the directive that all the time you spend sending email blasts, tweeting, scanning relevant blogs, and ignoring virtual games on Facebook serves one purpose only: to direct readers to your website.

    You can’t fit everything want to grab people with into posts and email, or even fliers and mailers. Send your potential fans to your site, where you can wow them with rich content. In other words, include your URL on everything. Then give people good reasons to come back.

    There are no finished books, only deadlines. So what to do with that great extra chapter or the appendix that got cut? You site is where you give readers something more than the material in the book. If it’s fiction, you can tell side stories about the characters or explore your world. Any nonfiction work will have updates and additional resources to provide. Often the best way to sell something is to give it away. Your site visitors will gravitate toward free excerpts and sample chapters from upcoming titles.

    You will be told your website is where you can engage your readers. That sounds good, but can it really be done? Yes. People are hungry for the author-reader connection. Readership loyalty is not a thing of the past; indeed, the interactive media you are using right now has ushered in an age of reader participation never imagined before. Integrate a blog on the themes of the book and write riffs on highlights from the book, keeping it fresh in context of current event and your life. (For example, see Grace and Tranquility.) Respond to comments. Join online discussions elsewhere on the Web. Review other relevant books. Be creative with it.

    If you have published several books, your site evolves into the primary stage where you tie your work together, where you integrate and relate the arc of your writing to your larger vision. If your books are an actual series, make sure your site evenly represents the whole series and always highlights the latest. (See a new one set up for more in a series: The Wine Seeker’s Guides.)

    No book is a print-only instrument anymore. You are not two-dimensional, and neither is your book. You site should carry podcasts, video interviews, and candid author images. Include links to videos and other multimedia sites. Keep vigilant for content that could augment your story, then find ways to draw new readers to you with it.

    More than ever, readers want—and will soon expect—to feel like they know  and are interacting with the author, or that they can in some manner participate in the book. So put a personal face on your author persona  that reveals more than just the dust-jacket copy.  Use this amazing interactive medium to let your readers feel like they are part of your story. That’s what good storytelling has always been.

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    Posted in Author Audience, Book Marketing, Social Media, Storytelling | 1 Comment »

    How Will Your Audience Find You?

    Friday, December 18th, 2009

    Authors—especially those writing in support of a cause or as part of a business—recognize that publishing a blog keeps the interest high and grows the audience. Fortunately, if you’ve written an entire book, you already have a ton of material to draw upon for those blog posts, just by adding new examples, catching a news peg, or exploring new angles. Yet, no way around it, maintaining a blog is a significant amount of work and a long-haul commitment. To make it worth it for you, how will new readers locate you in cyberspace?

    For book authors, readers will find their way to your blog through three primary avenues:

    Author or Book Search. They heard you speak or saw a reference to a book of interest—yours. So they got your address directly from you, or they “googled” you or your book title. These readers will want to find you quickly and get drawn into your stream with blog, video, and news. These are your dearest friends! These readers will share what they find on your site with others, add comments on your blog, provide honest feedback, and buy your next book. Woo them, offer them free previews, get their email addresses. Friend them on Facebook. Engage them personally online to the extent possible.

    Social Media Hook. You captured their attention with a blog reply on a related site or a comment in a Facebook group. Perhaps one of your witty Twitter rejoinders won them over. Even better if someone they respect posted a link to your online presence. These are your soon-to-be best friends. Draw them in with timely content within the theme that caught their eyes. Keep up that consistent online persona and message. If possible, find out where they heard about you, so you can turn more of your time and resources that direction.

    Direct Search on Subject. Someone who searched the Internet on a term that leads to you may bring you a whole new audience. If your website or blog supplies answers and fulfills the promise of your expertise, you’ve won a new fan who will dig deep into your work. It is worth being diligent and technically savvy about search engine optimization (SEO) in order to make sure these readers can find you. The tricky aspect is that initially you don’t know for sure what the best search terms will be. Make sure your SEO analytics tell you how and why people are finding you.

    However your audience finds you, the work of keeping them engaged is never-ending. Today, many of your potential raving fans have browsing attention spans that don’t run past 140 characters or a ninety-second video. Draw them into your blog with deeper content laid down like breadcrumbs in the forest leading to articles. Catch them with surprises on your site, such as a humorous video or a related game. Develop a resource page to browse that may draw them back. Above all, respond to comments and keep promises.

    In short, getting a book published is easier than ever, but being an author is not a single accomplishment: When your audience finds you, it is the beginning of a dynamic, ongoing conversation.

    How Will Your Audience Find You?

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    Posted in Author Audience, Social Media | 1 Comment »

    The Best Content Coyotes

    Friday, September 4th, 2009

    In the American West, the coyote is renowned for its ability to thrive in diverse habitats, even adapting to the urban/wilderness interface. I grew up hearing the night chorus of coyotes in the hills of the Los Angeles suburbs. They (and perhaps blue jays) are species so adept at exploring and exploiting the ecotones—the rich and dangerous zones between habitats—that they prosper no matter how radically the environment changes around them.

    So, who are the best content coyotes, those exploring and adapting to the evolving online environment, finding feasts where others get hit by trucks or die of thirst?

    First, I nominate Guy Kawasaki, the public face of Alltop.com. This Guy is the Lance Armstrong of content aggregation; they should put him on the Wheaties box.

    wheaties guy sm The Best Content CoyotesOfficially, Guy Kawasaki is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm, and a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine. Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of nine books including Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way.

    Unoffically, Kawasaki is everywhere if you are tracking social media. Alltop is an “online magazine rack” of popular topics. Alltop is essential if you are tracking, well, anything.

    A note for coyotes about sniffing around: The Alltop FAQ states, “The Twitter community has been the single biggest factor in the quality of Alltop. Without this group of mavens and connectors, Alltop would not be what it is today.”

    Guy on Twitter: http://twitter.com/guykawasaki

    My next nomination is Michelle Price, who blows other social media “experts” out of the water by being both adventurous online and being brass-tacks realistic.

    Michelle admits, “If there’s a button, I’ll click on it, just to see what it does.” That is still the best way I know for content coyotes to find the good stuff. Exploration—and of course knowing the search engines, the Twitter strategies, the real experts in key fields, and how to find emerging leaders.

    Michelle is not only fearless online, but knows knows how to make social media WORK. I love her mantra: “Connectivity is the New Currency.” She lives and shares it by helping others make sense of social media venues, real networking, and by driving home her message that a clear online strategy is needed.

    Michelle on Twitter: http://twitter.com/michelleprice

    Third, I’ll send a shout-out to the folks at Mashable.com. Want to learn how Twitter works? Need the tech news about Google Wave? Have to see the latest on YouTube? This über-blog will mash the best sources out there for you.

    Founded in July 2005, Mashable is the world’s largest blog focused exclusively on Web 2.0 and Social Media news. With more than 7 million monthly pageviews, Mashable is the most prolific blog reviewing new Web sites and services, publishing breaking news on what’s new on the web and offering social media resources and guides.

    Mashable on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mashable

    There are many others in this successful pack. Who are your favorite content coyotes?

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    Posted in Publishing Trends, Social Media | 1 Comment »

    The Internet as Kiva

    Friday, August 14th, 2009

    I lived for three years in and around Santa Fe, New Mexico. And I’ve explored the Southwest extensively, especially around the ancient Anasazi sites. The names alone conjure towering sandstone bluffs, hard lines and vast spaces, the mystical close by and our unforgiven but blessed little place in it: Canyon de Chelly, Betatakin, Hovenweep.

    One of the central features of the ancient and modern Pueblo peoples’ communities is the kiva, an underground room used for ceremonial and communal purposes. A visitor, even a city-bred white kid, stepping into a ruin or a reconstruction of a kiva cannot help but feel the power contained in the space.

    One of the unprecedented and wholly unanticipated benefits of the Internet today is its ability to serve some of the roles of a kiva for tribes scattered across lands and societies.

    Find your tribe’s kiva online, and you can share your deepest insights and lightest joys with those who are intimately connected to your world, whether or not you’ve ever met or even live in the same country. As a writer, teacher, or shaman, you can tell your best stories in the smoky, digital dark.

    When you gather the tribe in your kiva online—be it forum, social net, video channel, or twibe—you can re-imagine your world. The equivalent of passing down the timeless myths that hold an ancient society together, your visions, brainstorms, business plans, campaigns, and collections, especially among those raising voices about environmental and social justice, are redefining our interconnections, politics, and arts.

    The kiva is a place for initiation. A traditional initiation marks a transition to a place of greater responsibility in life, knits people together, renews family, and carries an individual toward interdependence with a larger whole. When we all watch a girl die during a protest in Iran, is that not an initiation for us? To turn it around, on September 21, we will celebrate The International Day of Peace, a United Nations-sponsored global holiday to highlight efforts to end conflict and promote peace. We can expect (and help) the event/idea/news/art/celebration to roll out to millions of people through the social media web like never before, like a worldwide initiation ceremony.

    This thing we call the Internet allows teachers and storytellers to connect directly with their audience in the kiva again. It brings new tribes together to redefine their world, where every member has an equal voice. And it has become a place of initiation without time or space constraints opening us to new ideas and possibilities.

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    Posted in Author Audience, Social Media, Storytelling | No Comments »

    The New Media Landscape for Authors

    Saturday, August 8th, 2009

    The Internet is the first medium in history that has native support for groups and conversation at the same time.  —Clay Shirky

    Authors need to think long and hard about this evolutionary shift in the publishing landscape.

    Shirky explains the fundamental limitations of twentieth-century communication technologies: what was good at conversation was no good at creating groups (telephones). And what was good at reaching groups (“whether broadcasting tower or printing press”) was no good at conversation.

    Likewise, in traditional publishing a book flowed laboriously from the author through a publishing house, distributors, wholesalers, and retailers to readers. The conversation about it flowed through reviewers in newspapers and magazines, perhaps with buzz on radio and television. Publicity therefore focused on attracting the attention of “The Media,” considered an ally and adversary.

    That is so last century, my friends.

    Not only is media becoming increasingly interactive, one vehicle is becoming the carrier for all other media. All other media, including books, and what books are becoming.

    How does this evolution affect authors today? Consider this scenario, an author’s dream:

    Suppose I am a reasonably computer-savvy reader who gets excited about your work. If I am within cell-phone service range and I have a Kindle, I can download your book instantly. If I want to ask you a question, I can friend you on Facebook or comment on your blog. If you say something I find exciting, I can share it with a host of interested people on Twitter, who may in turn retweet links to your work exponentially. If I want to establish a professional connection to you, we can share a group on LinkedIn. If you have videos of your presentations, I’ll find them on YouTube. And if I want to gather an entire worldwide distributed community to explore your ideas as presented in your book, I can launch a Ning site in an afternoon that manages members, forums, photos, videos, events, groups, and blogs.

    I am just one of your readers, but now I am also your publicist and collaborator.

    As an author with a message to share, wouldn’t you do everything in your power to attract, empower, and inspire such a reader?

    The caveat is that social media gives you unprecedented power to convene your supporters—but does not allow you to control your supporters. The good news is the single professional book reviewer may no longer make or break your success. The bad news is that thousands of amateur reviewers may weigh in with their uninformed opinions instead. The question for authors is not how to avoid the new landscape, but how to thrive in it.

    Clay Shirky: How social media can make history

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    Posted in Author Audience, Book Marketing, Book Publishing, Collaboration, Publishing Trends, Social Media | 1 Comment »

    Religion Books Resurrected

    Friday, July 31st, 2009

    Lynn Garrett, long-time tracker and editor of the religion category for Publishers Weekly, made some interesting observations about her turf in the 7/27/2009 issue.

    The upshot of sales statistics is that the numbers are way down, even for the major players in the field-a 10% drop for 2008 and a projected decline of 4% for 2009. For small presses, I suspect a frightful and more accurate chart could be drawn just based on publishers that shut down vs. survivors.

    Garrett says, “What is happening to religion book sales is what has happened to all of us—the economy.”

    Of course. But, I think Garrett is closer to the pulse when she acknowledges that we are between mega-bestseller seasons, such as those that powered the 1990s.

    “Early in that decade, it was The Celestine Prophecy, Embraced by the Light and Conversations with God,” Garrett notes. “Then, when evangelical Christian books flowed into the mainstream, came the juggernauts: The Purpose-Driven Life, Left Behind, The Prayer of Jabez—all of which ended up selling 20 million-40+-million copies and skewed sales stats for years.”

    Every pastor wanting to grow a congregation dreams of being the next Rick Warren. Reality-check time, as in Christians vs. lions. However, great potential remains for pastor-authors and novelists to bring a fresh perspective and vision to niche markets, and thereby do very well—though not again at the level of phenomenon for a while. The market does appear to run in waves: I can look at my father’s bookshelf to see a previous wave of pastor-authors who headlined the self-help field in the 1970s.

    “Maybe the bloated sales of The Purpose-Driven Life et al. were like the stratospheric real estate values and Wall Street bonuses-signs of irrationally exuberant times, gone for now, may be gone for good,” predicts Garrett.

    The next wave will rise from word-of-mouth (of Tweet?) up through the social media sea. The marketing trawlers that drove the previous bestsellers will not be trusted by seekers and readers. That bodes well for small presses, who have a better chance now at catching the big ones.

    whitecloud logo 150p blue Religion Books ResurrectedGarrett reminds us, “The big books, the culture changers, come out of nowhere, unexpected and unduplicatable. Some author somewhere has to write something that strikes a mysterious chord in the souls of millions of readers. The wonderful thing about books is, that could happen anytime.”

    Obviously, I would sure like the next one to be a White Cloud Press title.

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    Posted in Author Audience, Book Marketing, Publishing Trends, Social Media, White Cloud Press | 3 Comments »

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