Business End

Articles about the business aspects of publishing and self-publishing.

Platform Evolution

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Here’s a graph from my Twitter Quitter post:

A basic premise of independent authorship is that authors should establish their own platform in order to reach out to readers and potential customers. I believe in that premise. What constitutes a platform, however, remains undefined.

Implicit in the idea of an author’s platform is the creation of an online presence. Because the internet has become commonplace it’s easy to forget that an independent platform for individual artists would be impossible without it. (Prior to the internet an artist’s platform was limited by geography. Bands were limited not by their music but by their touring range.) While the advantages and opportunities provided by the internet are astounding relative to the pre-internet age, the internet is still a communications medium devised by human beings, with inherent strengths and weaknesses.

Understanding how the internet works in a business context is an ongoing process. Two days ago the New York Times put up a paywall, attempting for the second time to derive revenue from its own online platform. (The first attempt failed.) That one of the most prominent newspapers in the world is still struggling to monetize content despite almost unparalleled visibility and economic muscle is a reminder to everyone that the platform question has not been answered.

Depending on your perspective, the tendency of the human mind to cherry pick information can be seen as either a bug or a feature. In the context of online platforms, it’s easy to see successes like iTunes as indicative of potential and promise when it’s actually the result of a unique set of circumstances. Finding gold in a stream may spark a gold rush, but only a few people will stake claims that literally pan out. The internet is no different. As I noted in a post about the future of publishing:

In return for making distribution almost effortless and almost free, the internet promises nothing. No revenue. No readers. Nothing.

Possibilities are not promises. Possibilities are chances, which is why I always say that writing for profit is gambling — and gambling against terrible odds. Determining what your online platform should be, and how much time you should devote to that platform, is an important part of nudging the odds in your favor.  

Lowering the Bar
Platform-services consultants, like marketing consultants, will always tell you that you can never do enough. Because the time you can devote to your platform is limited, but the time you should devote is infinite, these people will offer to bridge that gap on your behalf, for a fee. Because the internet is driven by technology, and because anything less than a cutting-edge platform means you’re falling short, platform consultants will also offer to sell you myriad apps and solutions, all of which they will teach you about, maintain and upgrade for a fee. (The New York Times was convinced by these same people to spend $40 million dollars on a paywall that can be easily circumvented.)

Approaching your platform as a vehicle of infinite possibility constrained only by your own feeble lack of determination is a recipe for failure. You do not have an infinite amount of time and resources to devote to your platform. Even if you did, there’s no guarantee that such a commitment would equal success. From part IV of my marketing and sales series:

In the real world, if you really did grab a pick and shovel and head out into your backyard to strike it rich, your friends and family would rightly think you a loon, no matter how deeply felt your convictions were. Why? Because it’s common knowledge that gold isn’t plentiful everywhere. Rather, it’s concentrated in veins of rock or in waterways that hold gold from eroded veins of rock.

If you try to dig in the wrong place it doesn’t matter how much time or money you spend, or how cutting-edge your tools are. You’re not going to get any gold even if you have infinite resources. Because the internet obviates geographical limits it seem to negate all limits, but as the NYT’s second attempt at a paywall makes clear that’s not the case. The internet is not an infinite vein of gold waiting to be exploited if only you’re smart enough to pick the right mix of apps, site functionality and marketing techniques.

(This false premise echoes the happiness industry’s determination to blame everyone for their own failings. If you’re not a happy person it’s your own fault: stop whining and try harder. If your platform isn’t racking up clicks and sales it’s your own fault: stop whining and try harder.)

Platform Motivation
I think the right question to ask is how each independent author’s platform can most effectively dovetail with that author’s individual goals. If you’re the kind of writer who wants to write a lot of books, slaving yourself to a complex or time-consuming platform is going to keep you from reaching that goal. (I’ll elaborate on that in a moment.) If your writing goals are more modest or limited — and if the work you’re producing is itself part of a larger goal — then creating a more complex platform might make sense. For example, if you’re a public speaker or have a primary profession, authoring a book might help you further those pursuits even if the work itself never becomes a bestseller.

I think it’s also important to be conscious of the motivations behind the voices championing the idea of a platform. As a writer I think you should have a platform in order to make yourself visible. Making yourself available online allows people to find you and your work, and it allows you to have information or products waiting for them whenever they choose to arrive. Without a presence on the web you are invisible and mute, no matter how many pages you crank out.

Publishers, agents and editors want you to have a platform, but for slightly different reasons. To them your platform provides a metric by which they can measure your popularity in an uncertain marketplace crowded with aspiring writers. The measure of dedication you show to your platform also indicates how interested you might be in doing the things those people would want you to do in order to maximize sales. Given that they only make money if you make money it’s understandable that they would have these interests, but those interests do not put writing first.

In my case, for example, the decision to quit Facebook and Twitter was made after considerable deliberation about what was best for me as a writer, including assessment of the workloads involved. I’m fairly confident most publishers, agents and editors would see my choices as a mistake, if only because I’ve made it harder for them to assess my platform relative to other authors. Staying active on those sites would please them, but it would make my writing life more difficult without any demonstrable payoff. (If I write a runaway hit I can always join those sites again in order to capitalize on that success.)

Platform Criteria
So: how to juggle all of the available platform options? Well, after testing some of the options I’ve changed my own platform weighting as follows:

  • Creating and publishing new work is more important than any platform activity by at least an order of magnitude. If there’s a choice between writing and working on my platform, I’m going to write. Doing so emphasizes the proper ratio of time I should spend on my platform.

    As I said above, writers who crank out books probably need less of a platform relative to other writers. Why? Because after you establish even on an online toehold, your growing body of work becomes the greatest expression of, and attraction to, your platform.

  • Becoming a better writer is more important than bettering my platform by at least an order of magnitude. Because I’m never going to be able to drive sales with my celebrity I need to make sure I can compete with my content. Here’s how I put it in the conclusion to my series on marketing and sales:

    Writing is a qualitative act. It matters whether you suck or not. As such I believe mastery of craft is the most reliable predictor of critical or commercial success for the great majority of writers. There will always be people who succeed despite a lack of authorial gifts and there will always be good writers who are overlooked in the marketplace. But if you’re determined to play the percentages and protect your own authorial vision, nothing pays off like focusing on being the best writer you can be.

  • Both Twitter and Facebook demonstrate the same inescapable truth: if you have celebrity you’ll have more success at exploiting those sites; if you don’t, the road to cultural currency (to say nothing of sales) becomes much, much more difficult. The written word is the root of any storyteller’s celebrity. It is the engine of an author’s success in every way, including platform success. I agree that authors should launch their platforms before they launch their books, but the success of that platform will be defined largely by the success of those books, not the other way around.

  • All platforms are not the same. Some authors focus on issues, some authors focus on readers, some focus on both. (Zoe Winters wrestles with these choices here and here.) I’m at the point where I want to write and self-publish more fiction, and engage more readers. Again, however, my success at doing so will come from spending more time writing things for people to read, not more time working on my platform.

  • After a year and a half I can say with conviction that an author can have no better platform than their own website and blog. If you want to extend that locus through other sites like Facebook and Twitter, that’s fine. But you should have your own home base and you should own it. It doesn’t have to be a complex site, and probably shouldn’t be if you want to protect your writing time. And you should always protect your writing time.

Everything I’ve learned over the past year or two says that an author’s platform should be smaller rather than larger. Everything I’ve learned also says that authors should concentrate on writing rather than augmenting their platform. You do need to have a presence. You don’t need to obsess over it.

The Platform in Context
Launching an online platform is like staking a claim. You hope you pick a good spot but you also know you have to compete with everybody else working the same territory. However much time and money you decide to devote to your platform, some of your competitors will have more money, some will work harder, and some will have trained professionals helping them.

Treating your platform like a competition with others is tempting but it’s a big mistake. I’m convinced that the people who visit my site and read my words are less concerned with how my platforms stacks up against other sites than they are with how well I deliver on my promises to them. I certainly don’t want my site to look amateurish, but beyond that low bar my focus needs to be wholly on my readers.

Because the internet potentially allows an author to connect with everyone on the planet it’s tempting to try to drive readers to your platform. I’ve come to believe that doing so is a waste of time. You should approach your platform and presence as something long-term and make it easy for readers to find you when they’re interested. The best of all possible worlds is one where readers promote you and your work by word of mouth, and apart from celebrity-driven successes I can’t find any examples to the contrary. Bottom line: it takes time, so plan accordingly, including emotionally.

One of the most oft-quoted remarks about the obstacles facing independent artists comes from Tim O’Reilly:

Lesson 1: Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.

This idea has also been heavily promoted by anti-DRM advocate Cory Doctorow:

That’s because my biggest threat as an author isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity. The majority of ideal readers who fail to buy my book will do so because they never heard of it, not because someone gave them a free electronic copy.

The problem with this claim isn’t that it’s false, it’s that it’s meaningless. Obscurity is also a far greater threat to authors than smallpox, grapefruit and linoleum. If nobody knows who you are, yes, that’s a big problem. But ignoring the costs of piracy doesn’t solve any author’s obscurity problem. In fact, based on my Twitter experience, I don’t think anything can solve the obscurity problem because it’s baked into the online cake.

The internet made information available 24/7. It also made it possible for anyone to distribute digital content. Now, with the advent of Facebook and Twitter, it’s effortlessly easy for people to express every stray thought in their heads. As a result, the wall of noise that any content provider must compete against has grown exponentially. We’re at a point where every single person on the face of the earth is a direct competitor. There is no longer any distinction between the people who make content and the people who consume it.

The fact that everyone seems so deeply invested in expressing their own thoughts means fewer and fewer people are listening. Attention has become a commodity as critical to the lifeblood of a writer as obscurity is daunting:

Many of the filters earlier generations took for granted, the ones imposed by the absence of real-time communications and efficient transmission and storage, have now been eradicated by the advent of internet and digital media.

The only possible solution to the obscurity/attention quandary is not to play. No matter how great your celebrity or big your platform, there are limits. Just ask Roger Ebert. (There are also good reasons to believe that Facebook and Twitter are overvalued financially and culturally. Just ask Warren Buffett and Vincent Eaton.)

Picturing Your Platform
When I first thought about my own platform I imagined it as a kind of soap box. It was my spot in the public square of ideas. Later, I also came to think of my platform as a retail space. It was my shop and display.

Now, however, I’ve come to see my platform as a launching pad. It’s how I try to put stories and ideas and conversations into virtual orbit. Some of the things I launch may blow up on the pad, some may go to the moon, and the fate of some launches may be unknown for a long time. And nothing I do to my platform will change that.

 

This is a reprint from Mark Barrett‘s Ditchwalk.

Write Lots Of Books Or Build An Author Platform. Which Is More Effective?

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It seems there are two opposing camps in terms of author marketing.

On the one hand, there are  people who say “Just write a lot of books” and the books themselves will sell the other books and you don’t need to do any other marketing. The evidence for this can be seen in Amanda Hocking’s ebook sales numbers and other writers on JA Konrath’s (brilliant) blog who basically write and distribute ebooks but do little hardcore marketing. It looks like they all do something but don’t focus on it.

On the other hand, there is the “build your author platform” camp advocating blogging, social networking, speaking, podcasting, videos and more. Obviously all this marketing takes away from writing, so which should you focus on?

I try to be very careful on the blog to only talk about things I’ve done myself. I don’t have a huge back-list of novels ready to load up into the Kindle store, I’m not making thousands per month on ebook sales. I have built a reasonable author platform and I have enjoyed every minute of it, so clearly I sit in the second camp at the moment.

BUT/ Amanda Hocking’s sales numbers gave me pause so I thought we’d better discuss it here. Justine Musk also wrote a brilliant post over at Tribal Writer on the same topic.

Here’s my thinking on the matter but please leave a comment as to what you think at the bottom as this is a critical discussion point as we all have limited time.

What are your overall goals for your career as a writer?

I want to be able to define myself as an author, speaker and blogger and I want to help people. I’m also an entrepreneur and sell my speaking services as well as online products. I make the least amount of money from fiction ebooks and the most from other products and services (at the moment anyway). Therefore my author platform gives me more than just a sales platform for fiction.

I speak at least once a month and last year spoke at a writer’s retreat in Bali, all from my online presence. I couldn’t do those things if I just had books. So my overall goals involve having a platform to run my online business from. I’m also passionate about sharing what I have learned in order to save you time, money and heartache so I have an inner drive to get the message out there.
 

What do you enjoy spending time doing?

Writing and being a blogger can be a solitary profession and as much as I love being alone, I also enjoy the community we have online as bloggers and also on Twitter and Facebook. I enjoy connecting on Skype and making my podcast and videos. I love being part of a group and improving my blogging/online marketing skills as well as my writing. So my author platform also serves a personal development and social purpose that goes beyond selling books. Blogging has given me so much joy in the last few years that I would continue doing it if I won the lottery! Writing a novel is a totally different feeling altogether.

What do you think is more effective for author marketing? Writing lots of books or spending time building an author platform? Why do you do what you do?

This is a reprint from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.

Getting Started With Barnes & Noble's PubIt!: A Mini Tutorial

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Although Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader is the dominant force in the e-book world at the moment, Barnes & Noble, the business based on a huge network of brick-and-mortar book superstores, is also growing.

With the launch of the Nook Color last year, Barnes & Noble has gone the Kindle one better, and people who have tried the Nook seem to like it quite a bit. Barnes & Noble also allows Nook owners to bring them into a store and read any book for free for an hour at a time, from the collection of over 2 million titles.

Like Kindle, Nook has apps that allow you to purchase and read your Nook books on your iPad, your smartphone and your PC as well as on the readers themselves.

I’ve seen estimates that over 3 million Nook Color e-readers have been sold, and that Nook now accounts for 25% of the e-book market. That’s a lot of potential customers. To make it easy for indie authors to sell their books for the Nook and the Nook Color, Barnes & Noble has installed a simple and easy to use interface. They call their publishing program Pubit!

Even Easier Than Kindle?

I went over to the Pubit! site to check it out and upload the ePub files of A Self-Publisher’s Companion. These were prepared for me by Joshua Tallent at ebookarchitects.com.

You’ll have to go through the usual Account Setup, and I won’t bore you with that. Even though you’re a seller, you’ll have to give up a credit card, too.

But that only takes a minute, and then you get to the main dashboard and data entry area.

Pubit! has cooked the whole e-book submission process down to one screen, and it’s a pleasure to use. Here’s a look:

Barnes & Noble Pubit!

In 5 easy-to-follow steps, you’re lead through all the information needed to get your book into the Barnes & Noble system. This is publishing at its simplest and most streamlined. Here’s what you can expect.

  • Product listing, including the book title, price, author, publication date and publisher name.
  • Upload Your eBook provides a browse and upload utility. It’s highly recommended that you have your book converted to ePub files first, although you should know that you can upload a Word file and Pubit! will convert it for you, you just don’t know what you’ll get.
  • Upload Your Cover Image gives you another browse and upload utility for a 5KB to 2MB JPG of your cover.
  • Help Readers Find Your eBook asks for ISBN, for a related print edition, the age group of your target market, the language in which the book is written, the geographic rights you’re able to assign, and whether you want your e-book protected with DRM (Digital Rights Management) which may or may not prevent a buyer from making illegal copies of your files.
  • Tell Us More About Your eBook is the crucial section for your marketing efforts. Obviously you want to get all the numbers right in the first sections, but here you’ll be able to pick five subject categories (Kindle only allows you two), create an author bio (about 400-500 words) and enter reviews you’ve received. The other two areas here are keywords (you get 100 characters—use them wisely) and a Description field that will allow about 800 words (5000 characters). This is a huge opportunity to put your best, benefit-oriented, keyword rich copy to work. Really work on this book description because it will become the basic sales copy in the Nook store.

After your upload, you’ll get a chance to look at your e-book in a Nook emulator. Here’s what it looks like:

Nook emulator

Click to enlarge

 

Here’s the handy category picker:
PubitCategories

Making Money With Pubit!

The pricing policy is clearly spelled out in the excellent and space-efficient help section. Pubit! tries to get you to price your e-book between $.99 and $9.99. It tries hard. In this range you will earn a 65% royalty, so a sale of a $9.99 book will yield you $6.49. However, go outside those bounds and your royalty drops drastically to 40%. This means that you will earn more with a book priced at $9.99 than you will with one priced at $15.00 ($6.00 royalty). So you can see they mean business. The maximum price allowed is $199.99.

As with Kindle, you have to keep the price of your e-book consistent across retailers.

About As Easy As It Gets

Having published many print books, it’s almost eerie how easy it is to publish e-books, whether on Kindle or Pubit! The whole Pubit! experience is well designed. The dashboard has four tabs that give you access to sales reports, payments, help topics, your books, and your account info.

If you have all your copy ready before you log on—and you should have this copy written out in advance for the many places you’ll need it—the whole process takes less than 15 minutes.

Now if we could only get these companies to agree on one, flexible, sophisticated and user-friendly file format, e-books would really take off.

 

This is a reprint from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer.

Paying Up Online

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This podcast and transcript, from the Copyright Clearance Center’s (CCC) Beyond the Book, originally appeared on that site on 4/3/11 and are provided here with that site’s permission.

Subscription services favored over single file sales; no significant difference in behavior of men and women; a typical monthly “spend” of $10. Those are among the findings of a recent survey of 1000 American internet users by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Perhaps most surprising – given that so much of online content is “free” or used without permission – is that two of three Americans have paid for music, books and games, among other digital media.

“Our findings were that 18% of Internet users have paid for a newspaper article, journal article, or online report,” Pew senior fellow Jim Jansen told Chris Kenneally at the “Buying & Selling EContent” conference presented by Information Today. “The ability to buy digital content online is critically important to a lot of people, a lot of businesses, a lot of artists and photographers.”

According to Jansen, the most common digital media products purchased are music and software. The average spend was about $47 in a given month, although the typical user spent $10 to $15. In addition to his work for Pew, Jansen teaches at Penn State’s College of Information Sciences & Technology and is recognized as expert in Web searching, sponsored search, and personalization for information searching.

 Paying Up Online [13:42m]: Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download
 
Transcript of podcast in pdf format

 

Dress For Success: Just Don't Expect The IRS To Help You Foot The Bill

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Your latest book is going gangbusters; the reviews are to die for; and sales are off the charts. Oprah wants to schmooze, and you’re green-lighted for Dr. Phil, Regis and Ellen. On the other hand, you’ve been chained to your keyboard for a year, and your wardrobe shows it!

As a media favorite, it’s crucial that you are suitably dressed for chats with television’s glitterati. My advice for men: Wear a jacket, tie and pants. Whether this is a three-piece suit or a blazer and slacks is your call. But unless you seek to establish that you’re sartorially disadvantaged, try to look as serious as if you were applying for a loan.
 
My advice to women, gleaned from observing those who regularly show up on TV: Wear a jacket with long sleeves—not a dress or a short-sleeved jacket. You’ll look more serious. Strong, bright colors are best; avoid black or white. Overdo your makeup by about 10 percent, but tone down the jewelry and accessories. What interests viewers are your opinions, not your unusual necklace.
 
The right outfits don’t come cheap. So how about easing the pain to your wallet by writing off what you wear to interviews that result from the fruits of your labor? Don’t even think about it. Generally, clothing costs are not deductible as business expenses. They are considered nondeductible personal expenses.
 
The Internal Revenue Service and the courts agree that no write-offs are allowed for clothing that’s adaptable to general wear off the job. It’s no excuse that you need to be fashionably or expensively dressed for TV interviews. Your outfits are obviously appropriate away from work.
 
For example, the United States Tax Court threw out deductions for suits bought by Edward J. Kosmal, a Los Angeles deputy district attorney who planned to leave government service. Ed decided that the right way to impress his future employers and colleagues was to upgrade his wardrobe to the sartorial standards of a “big-time Beverly Hills P.I. [personal injury] attorney.” The court denied the deductions because, unquestionably, the clothes were fitting for ordinary wear.
 
HAIRSTYLING AND MAKEUP. The IRS and the courts sometimes differ on deducting hairdressing costs. The IRS classifies such payments as nondeductible personal expenses, even for a big-name, New York fashion designer like Mary McFadden, who’s in the public eye and “noted professionally for her distinctive hair style.”
 
However, an IRS defeat occurred in 1978, when the Tax Court sided with Margot Sider. Margot wrote off the cost of 45 extra beauty-parlor visits that were made, she argued, only because her hairstyle was an integral part of her job demonstrating and selling “a high-priced line” of cosmetics in a department store to a “sophisticated clientele.” As soon as she stopped selling, she went back to a simpler style.
 
At her trial, Margot cited a 1963 Supreme Court decision written by Justice John Marshall Harlan: “For income-tax purposes Congress has seen fit to regard an individual as having two personalities: One is a seeker after profit who can deduct the expenses incurred in that search; the other is a creature satisfying his needs as a human and those of his family but who cannot deduct such consumption and related expenditures.”
 
Margot maintained she’d spent the amount in issue as a “seeker after profit,” not as “a creature satisfying her own needs.” That satisfied the judge, who ruled she was entitled to fully deduct expenditures beyond “the ordinary expenses of general personal grooming.”
 
The IRS had no trouble convincing the Tax Court that Vivian Thomas shouldn’t be allowed to deduct grooming expenses. Vivian worked as a private secretary for an attorney who required her to be perfectly coiffed at all times while in the office. So she deducted the cost of twice-weekly trips to the beauty parlor. Sorry, said the court, but a secretary’s coiffure maintenance costs are not allowable— even in her case.
 
Back in 1979, actress September Thorp offered an unassailable not-adaptable-for-general-wear defense—and won—when the IRS challenged her deduction for makeup: “I’m in Oh! Calcutta! and I have to appear nude onstage every night,” argued September, “so I cover myself with body makeup. I go through a tube every two weeks, and it’s very expensive.”
 
—————————————————————————————————————————-
Julian Block is an attorney and author based in Larchmont, N.Y. He has been cited as “a leading tax professional” (New York Times), "an accomplished writer on taxes" (Wall Street Journal) and "an authority on tax planning" (Financial Planning Magazine). This article is excerpted from "Julian Block’s Easy Tax Guide for Writers, Photographers, and Other Freelancers".

Establishing An Author Presence on Social Networking Sites

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Editor’s Note: This week, we’re happy to promote new member Tony Eldridge’s blog post about social networking for authors to the front page.

If you’ve been online long, you’ve heard a chorus of experts say how important it is to create an online presence. When you start, you’ll see that it’s easy to set up many individual sites, but it takes a little more work to tie these sites together into a single unit that works as one. If you don’t do this, then you will create an online presence that is hard to manage.

Some authors choose to have a social networking site as their "hub". This, however, is not my preferred method. I’d recommend that your social networking sites be the spokes that feed into your main blog or website. For more on this concept, read a post that I wrote for BookBuzzr called, Creating A Marketing Hub.

Social networking sites ebb and flow with popularity, so what we discuss now may not be the same thing we might discuss tomorrow. That said, let’s look at a few sites that authors should consider joining as well as some general principles to keep in mind as we interact with others on these sites.

Tony’s List Of Top Social Networking Sites For Authors (And Why)

Twitter and Facebook round out my top two recommendations by far. This is where people are right now and if you learn to use these two sites effectively, you can find a lot of readers for your book.

GoodReads and Shelfari are two sites devoted to books. They are reader driven sites that give authors a great platform to interact with readers.

Author Central is Amazon’s site where authors can build out more information for people who are browsing for books. Why wouldn’t you carve out your spot on the biggest book-buying place on the planet?

Author’s Den is an author driven site where you can network with other authors as well as find readers for your book. 

I’ll admit that there are other great sites for authors to join. Many of these are niche sites that will be perfect for the book you wrote. For example, if you wrote a gardening book, then it makes sense for you to look for social networking sites devoted to gardening.

Once you decide to create a social networking presence, here are some things to remember:

  • These sites are created to build relationships, not to advertise on. Don’t spam your readers or you will be shunned. 
  • These sites can help you build a reputation as an expert in your field. Find ways to enter the conversations on them.
  • Keep it professional. While sharing some personal news can help you connect with your followers, too much will turn people off.
  • Give more value than you ask for and people will listen to what you have to say.
  • Don’t get ugly. While some people love to watch a fight, most are turned off by rude bickering. A "troll" is someone who gets his or her kicks from publicly fighting. Don’t fall into their trap by taking their bait.
  • For more great ideas on this topic, read: 
  • Dana Lynn Smith’s post on my blog called, The 7 Deadly Sins of Online Networking
  • Joanna Penn’s post called, Social Networking and Web 2.0 sites for Writers and Authors
  • John Kremer’s list of Social Networking Websites.

I also recommend that you choose one or two social networking sites to start off with. A mistake many authors make is by trying to do too much too quickly and getting overwhelmed. If you want more than an online billboard, then you’ll need to spend a little time developing your presence on these sites. Add more once you can handle the few you start off with. 

Here are some other posts that will help you with your social networking activities:

I hope this post helps you get started on the social networking part of your book marketing plan. There are a lot of resources out there to help. What I’ve shared barely scratches the surface. With a little planning, a little research, and taking things one step at a time, you can build an online presence with social networking sites that definitely bring value to you, your books, and to all the people you connect with. 

This is a reprint from Tony Eldridge‘s Marketing Tips For Authors.

 

Establishing An Author Presence on Social Networking Sites

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If you’ve been online long, you’ve heard a chorus of experts say how important it is to create an online presence. When you start, you’ll see that it’s easy to set up many individual sites, but it takes a little more work to tie these sites together into a single unit that works as one. If you don’t do this, then you will create an online presence that is hard to manage.

Some authors choose to have a social networking site as their "hub". This, however, is not my preferred method. I’d recommend that your social networking sites be the spokes that feed into your main blog or website. For more on this concept, read a post that I wrote for BookBuzzr called, Creating A Marketing Hub.

Social networking sites ebb and flow with popularity, so what we discuss now may not be the same thing we might discuss tomorrow. That said, let’s look at a few sites that authors should consider joining as well as some general principles to keep in mind as we interact with others on these sites.

Tony’s List Of Top Social Networking Sites For Authors (And Why)

Twitter and Facebook round out my top two recommendations by far. This is where people are right now and if you learn to use these two sites effectively, you can find a lot of readers for your book.

GoodReads and Shelfari are two sites devoted to books. They are reader driven sites that give authors a great platform to interact with readers.

Author Central is Amazon’s site where authors can build out more information for people who are browsing for books. Why wouldn’t you carve out your spot on the biggest book-buying place on the planet?

Author’s Den is an author driven site where you can network with other authors as well as find readers for your book. 

I’ll admit that there are other great sites for authors to join. Many of these are niche sites that will be perfect for the book you wrote. For example, if you wrote a gardening book, then it makes sense for you to look for social networking sites devoted to gardening.

Once you decide to create a social networking presence, here are some things to remember:

  • These sites are created to build relationships, not to advertise on. Don’t spam your readers or you will be shunned. 
  • These sites can help you build a reputation as an expert in your field. Find ways to enter the conversations on them.
  • Keep it professional. While sharing some personal news can help you connect with your followers, too much will turn people off.
  • Give more value than you ask for and people will listen to what you have to say.
  • Don’t get ugly. While some people love to watch a fight, most are turned off by rude bickering. A "troll" is someone who gets his or her kicks from publicly fighting. Don’t fall into their trap by taking their bait.
  • For more great ideas on this topic, read: 
  • Dana Lynn Smith’s post on my blog called, The 7 Deadly Sins of Online Networking
  • Joanna Penn’s post called, Social Networking and Web 2.0 sites for Writers and Authors
  • John Kremer’s list of Social Networking Websites.

I also recommend that you choose one or two social networking sites to start off with. A mistake many authors make is by trying to do too much too quickly and getting overwhelmed. If you want more than an online billboard, then you’ll need to spend a little time developing your presence on these sites. Add more once you can handle the few you start off with. 

Here are some other posts that will help you with your social networking activities:

I hope this post helps you get started on the social networking part of your book marketing plan. There are a lot of resources out there to help. What I’ve shared barely scratches the surface. With a little planning, a little research, and taking things one step at a time, you can build an online presence with social networking sites that definitely bring value to you, your books, and to all the people you connect with. 

This is a reprint from Tony Eldridge‘s Marketing Tips For Authors.

Public blogging platform WordPress hit by Distributed Denial of Service strike

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A huge denial of service attack hit WordPress.com last week. The guess of the WordPress team is that the strike was motivated by political beliefs. Though WordPress.com was affected by the attack, the thousands of websites running a WordPress.org platform were not impacted.

WordPress.com gets Distributed Denial of Service attack to occur

Thursday, WordPress.com got hit by a denial of service attack. It was a huge one. WordPress.com, owned by the WordPress Foundation, is hosted by three large server farms. Part of the DDoS attack had gigabits of data sent. The WordPress servers received this data. The WordPress Distributed Denial of Service attack was larger than expected, although well-known web sites have DDoS attacks often. During the attack, websites hosted on WordPress.com were intermittently down.

The big web sites didn’t get impacted

The DDoS attack didn’t impact online websites such as CNN.com, Wired and Flickr even though they all run on WordPress. WordPress.org is the host for these online websites though. WordPress.com was attacked. The program from WordPress is used on sites such as Wired and CNN. They use WordPress as a content manager. However, using the WordPress program is not the very same as owning a WordPress.com site. WordPress Foundation hosts WordPress.com blogs. WordPress.org blogs and sites, on the other hand, are hosted on the company’s own servers. That means a DDoS attack on WordPress.com would not impact any website hosting their own installation of WordPress.

Paying for network security

It is really important to have network security in order to protect from DDoS and hacker attacks. Using WordPress.com as a larger service is where small businesses and individuals will outsource that security. Network security protection is offered by several of these hosting services. It is quite easy to send gigabits of information to a site. Keeping a site accessible for a larger business with its own website is more difficult to do because of this.

Citations

 

PC World

pcworld.com/article/221357/wordpress_recovers_from_huge_ddos_attack.html

 

On Leaving Traditional Publishing For EBook Sales Success With LJ Sellers

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It’s exciting to hear about independent authors making a living from their books and today’s interview with L.J. Sellers will inspire you! L.J. actually left her traditional publisher to go the indie route and she explains why in the interview.

 

Podcast: Download (Duration: 34:46 — 20.7MB)

 


In the intro, I talk about how Pentecost went back up the Kindle charts again when I reduced the price to 99 cents for Read an Ebook Week. It seems that a lower price does boost sales and since my aim right now is to get more readers, the 99c price might be the way forward. I explain why the podcast is moving to every two weeks instead of weekly and talk about some of your feedback from my survey. I also talk about my Ebook Publishing mini-course which just launched. It’s a multimedia course behind the scenes on publishing ebooks on the Kindle, iPad, Nook and more.

L.J. Sellers is an award-winning journalist, editor, and mystery/suspense novelist. She has four books in the Detective Jackson series including The Sex Club and two standalone thrillers, all available on Kindle and other online bookstores.

You can watch my video review of The Sex Club here

  • How L.J. started in journalism and editing and then started writing fiction, even though she didn’t think she was creative enough initially. After writing The Sex Club and inventing the character of Detective Jackson, she found a series that readers enjoyed. The latest in the series is Dying for Justice which blends two series characters together.
  • Why L.J. left her publisher and went indie. It was a time of change as she had been laid off. It was either giving up fiction writing or making a commitment to trying to make money with fiction. L.J. had been reading Joe Konrath’s blog and was inspired to do it too. Her publisher owned the Detective Jackson series as well as two books that wouldn’t be published for a while. L.J. asked for the rights back after deciding it was worth it to be independent, despite the stigma of self-publishing in the market. She turned down freelance work for two weeks and hired herself as her own publicist – great idea! Did 10 hours a day, 7 days a week for book promotion which created a spurt in sales for all the books. Within a few months, all 4 books were Top 20 in police procedural Kindle store. By the end of the year, L.J. was a full-time novelist, earning a living with fiction.
  • L.J. invested in her small business, getting cover designs, using editors. Readers liked the stories – it was just about getting the books out there and realizing the profit.
  • Top tips for publishing successfully on the Kindle. Write a great book that will compete well against everything else. It needs to grab attention. The authors with the most success also have quite a few books out there so that is important. It lends credibility that you’re not just a one-time author. A series helps too as people are invested in the characters.
  • Make a commitment to promotion. It needs to be done every day. It’s forum posting, guest posting, commenting, dialog on twitter. Your tagline will contain your book links. It’s indirect but effective as people get to know you. You can pull back on the marketing after you have some books out there. But L.J. believes both marketing and writing are important. We discuss advertising effectiveness for saving time but it costs some money. Kindle Nation is measurable as you can see the sales rise but it’s hard to tell what’s effective.
  • On ebook pricing. It’s a balance and it’s worth following Joe Konrath’s blog as he shares all the math and experiments on pricing. You can play around with the prices. People who are successful have different price points. It’s also about value for the reader and volume does make a difference.
  • On the changing stigma of self-publishing. It’s certainly still around as self-published authors can’t join professional organizations or be on panels at conventions. There are still stratifications. It will be hard for these organizations as same author, same books, same quality of writing but now independent means the author can’t be promoted by these organizations. That will become more complicated as more authors go the indie route. At the end of the day, readers don’t care.
     
  • For new authors coming into the publishing industry, L.J. tries not to advise as some people have a dream of being traditionally published. But for herself, going independent is the best choice.
     
  • On Kindle, the market will decide – either you’re not marketing enough, or the book’s not good enough.

 

You can connect with LJ at her website LJSellers.com as well as on twitter @ljsellers

The Sex Club and other books are available on Amazon and other online booksellers.

 

This is a reprint from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.

 

 

 

Information For Innovation

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In this Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) podcast and transcript, the CCC’s Chris Kenneally interviews Martha Anderson about the U.S. Library of Congress’s efforts to collect and classify digital media. The podcast and transcript are provided here in their entirety with the permission of the CCC.

A discussion with Martha Anderson, director of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program for the Library of Congress, recording while attending the annual NFAIS Conference in Philadelphia. Anderson tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally about her efforts to collect all manner of digital content, from Twitter tweets to amateur videos.

“I think the real value of this for the nation ongoing – for each of us as citizens; for each of us as students or researchers; or just people who are interested in life – is the ability to see things come together from different viewpoints, from different kinds of disciplines,” says Anderson of the powerful potential in combining this data in new and unexpected ways. “It will help drive the kind of innovation that we want. We want new thought. We need new ideas about how to solve our problems and that’s where this data comes in.”

 Information For Innovation [14:33m]: Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download
 
You can view or download the complete transcript here.

 

A Tale Of Two Authors

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This post, by Kassia Krozser, originally appeared on her Booksquare site on 3/21/11 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission.

Monday, March 21, 2011 was a big day for publishing. On one hand, we have author Barry Eisler announcing he turned down a two book, $500,000 deal. On the other hand, we learned that super-hot indie author Amanda Hocking is shopping a new series, with a price tag climbing above $1 million for worldwide English language rights.

Needless to say, the ensuing discussion has been awesomely full of punditry and speculation. Thus, me! If I do not offer my two cents, then I will surely be kicked out of future publishing cocktail parties. After all, I must have thoughts on this madness.

So where to begin? I am presuming Eisler made a calculated decision, one that factored in the very real loss of worldwide print sales (wherein I completely agree with Mike Shatzkin on this point). Oh sure, there are ways to compensate, but this is not a trivial business choice.

On the other hand, Hocking is likely looking at those same worldwide print sales and realizing there’s money in them there books. The two authors are looking at the same worldwide market and taking different approaches. One is a seasoned author, the other is just now realizing her potential.

So who is making the right decision?

Both.

Yeah, that’s a helpful answer. Bear with me.

Eisler has an established fan base, and he can tap into a growing network of indie authors who are, for lack of a better concept, forming their indie marketing circle. This is not a new concept. It’s the way indie romance authors — those digital-first (or digital-only) authors — have built careers for the past decade. History has shown this works for some authors.

I think of it as a numbers and talent game. Only a few authors truly rise above the pack. It’s like real publishing, only with more control. However. Any author who goes indie has to become an end-to-end business. Writing, editing, production, distribution, marketing. Oh sure, some of these can be outsourced, but the author must be on top of all these function. Cannot let any one of them slip.

Just as few employees in corporate jobs have the ability to be management and worker bee, few authors have the skills to be everything and more. The authors who seem to do best have what can only be called an entrepreneurial spirit. My belief is that writing is a creative process; being an author is a job.

And it’s not an easy job. This is why I believe Eisler calculated more than a few odds. One does not walk away from a purported $500,000 easily. As many smart people have noted, you don’t go into publishing to get rich.

What Barry Eisler has going for him is control (not to be underestimated), speed to market, the ability to experiment, and instantaneous worldwide digital distribution. This comes into play in our next section.

Now back to that other hand.

Hocking has, and I think you’ll know what I mean, tapped into the Twilight zeitgeist. Something I’d note no major publisher (or minor) has managed to do. I have not read her work, but know more than a few people who have. Clearly she can tell a story that engages readers (not an easy skill!), but there is a consensus that she needs more editorial oversight. I believe in editors in a big way, and know that good editors make a story so much better.

Hocking has also, conservatively and based on news reports, netted well over a million dollars (before taxes, those pesky things!). That is serious money in publishing. I know people who’d sell their souls for that kind of publishing money.

It’s also hard money for publishers to meet. This is an author who is accustomed to making seventy cents on every dollar. Used to getting paid monthly. Used to freedom.

Yes, she’s only reaching a fraction of her audience. Print remains the dominant worldwide format, and, while digital is growing like crazy (a key component of Eisler’s calculations), ignoring any part of the publishing marketplace is something one must do with extreme intelligence and caution.

Can print publishers offer her at least as much as she’s making as an indie author? It’s easy to throw money at the problem. But is it as easy to throw money at the success?

I said I think both Eisler and Hocking are making the right choices, but, if you were to corner me in a bar and ask me which author is following the right path right now, I’d say Eisler.

He’s taking a riskier path, for sure, and there is no guarantee. His history suggests he has some talent when comes to calculated risks. And while he’s burned some publishing bridges, he also has a track record in the industry.

Hocking, however, is more of a publishing dark horse. She’s done the indie thing amazingly well. I cannot over-emphasize how critical this is, and how well she’s done it. But there is a gap between indie publishing (especially self-publishing, without a lot of professional editorial input) and corporate publishing.

The biggest challenge, and the reason I’m putting my money (virtual because the husband hates it when I bet cat food dollars) on Eisler is that the publisher who signs Amanda Hocking today will likely not have a book on the shelf before 2012, more likely 2013. Note my nouns.

The Hocking zeitgeist is right now. Her audience is right now. Her moment is right now. Can this buzz be sustained a year or more? Can her audience be engaged for that long? Yes, if she’s continually giving them the books they want…at the price point they want.

Will the Amanda Hocking audience pay $9.99 for her books? This is not an idle question.

Can publishing capitalize on an Amanda Hocking? This is a serious question.

Note: Sarah Weinman, wisely, questions my belief that Amanda Hocking will lose momentum. I did consider Sarah’s arguments while writing this, but felt then (and sorta feel now) that two things will slow this phenomenon down. The first is the competing works clause in an author agreement. The publisher Hocking presumably will eventually sign with (how’s that for confidence?) will surely balk at any works they deem “competition” for their own release. How Hocking works around that and pleases her audience becomes a challenge.

The second hesitation I have is that publishing a book is a lot of work, and even the most seasoned writer finds challenges in undergoing the full editorial process on one book while creating new works. Once Hocking is assimilated into the traditional publishing machine, there will be a constant flow of work for the series she’s creating for that publisher, and I worry it will come at the expense of her indie work.

 

Getting A Read On The Future Of Publishing

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This article, by John Barber, originally appeared on Canada’s The Globe and Mail site on 3/17/11.

Crises spawn innovation, and despite regular headlines portending doom, the 21st-century publishing industry is bubbling with new ideas made possible by digital disruptions (and the odd hand-printing tool). Some will evaporate into thin air, while others change everything. But the level of activity today in Canada and the world strongly suggests that whatever the future brings, it will arrive in the capable hands of former book publishers. Herewith, seven trends to watch.

1. THE TEXTUAL MIX TAPE

One of the country’s most ambitious digital publishing ventures began when the staff at Vancouver’s Douglas & McIntyre asked a simple question: Why is there no iTunes for text? The soon-to-be-launched Bookriff is the result. The service is “a technology platform that allows customers to repackage, repurpose and even resell content from existing copyrighted publishers, from the web or from their own content, and mash it all up together,” according to Bookriff CEO Rochelle Grayson. The result is a kind of textual mix tape. “But what’s really important is that we ensure the copyright owners all get paid for their piece of micro-content in that mix tape,” Ms. Grayson says.

2. SMALL PRESSES SPEAK UP

While some lament as digital technology drives down both production costs and potential remuneration to “content providers,” others see new opportunities. Not long after creating PressBooks, which allows users to easily create their own books, Montreal digital innovator Hugh McGuire introduced Iambik, a site that commissions and sells low-priced audio versions of literary fiction from independent publishers, an innovation made possible by revenue-sharing agreements among authors, publishers and narrators. “There are many thousands of fabulous books that are not in audio, and we’d like to change that,” Mr. McGuire says. “We do that by having a different cost structure because of our distributed model.”

2[sic]. LIQUID BOOKS

Everybody knows that what we call an e-book today will evolve into something quite different as text sheds its Gutenberg-era shackles, but nobody knows what that is or what to call it. Neither do the Goggles, the Vancouver duo of Mike Simons and Paul Shoebridge (creative directors at Adbusters magazine), whose recent hybridized whatzit, Welcome to Pine Point, is currently playing on NFB.ca. It’s not a website, it’s not an interactive documentary and it’s not a “vook” (video-book hybrid), according to its creators. Instead, they have taken to calling the production, which explores memory through the story of a small mining town erased from the map, a “liquid book.” It’s a format that allows “exploration within the narrative,” according to Mr. Simons, “but channelled exploration.”

Read the rest of the article on The Globe and Mail, and also see these related stories from the same site:
No e-books without authors, Atwood reminds us
Are mid-list authors an endangered species?
Time to Lead: The shaky state of Canadian book publishing
 

A Writer Muses On Marketing And Sales, Part II

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There’s no right answer to whether you should view writing as a business or not. It’s a personal choice dependent on myriad factors. Knowing the answer, however, allows you to effectively navigate choices you’ll face in marketing and/or selling your work. While you should always control your costs, there’s a big difference between the expense of a print-on-demand book intended for friends and family and the effort you may need to embrace in order to take a work to the competitive retail market.

Inextricably Bound
In the previous post I said that marketing and sales were two ends of the same spectrum. The desire to resolve uncertainties about potential consumer interest is the glue by which marketing and sales are inextricably bound.

Exploring market uncertainties may involve advertising or promotional events or other common marketing and sales strategies. The results of those tests will be measured in pageviews, conversions, purchases or other metrics. As a writer, I think you should constantly remind yourself that marketing and sales are most useful when they are used to answer questions relevant to your personal objectives. Treating marketing and sales as gauges rather than goads means you will be less likely to sink cash into marketing and sales ‘solutions’ that are, at best, speculative, or be led astray by people who will gladly take your money in exchange for promises they can’t possibly keep. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Mr. SEO Evangelist.)  

The Ends of the Spectrum
Imagine you’ve created something purely, unapologetically artistic. You’ve allowed no thought into your mind other than what the final form and expression of your creation should be. You don’t care what anybody else thinks of it and you don’t care if anybody else wants it.

Now imagine putting a sign on your creation that says “For Sale” or “Free”, then tossing it out a window. You don’t look to see where it lands, you don’t look to see if the sign is visible, or if anyone has taken notice of your creation’s arrival in the world.

That’s sales in its purest form. The product has been made available and the intent has been communicated, but only in the most minimal way. If someone does not literally stumble across the item there will be no chance of a transaction taking place.

Now rewind that scenario past even the act of creation. Imagine that you want to create something — anything — that will be readily, eagerly received. Maybe it’s something you want to sell, maybe it’s something you intend to give away, but the one thing you know even before you decide what to make is that you want it to be desired by as many people as possible.

That’s marketing in its purest form. In order to accomplish your goal, at least in theory, note that you will need to have perfect knowledge of what people want, as well as the means to notify every person on the face of the earth. This is the exact opposite of the pure sales example described above. In the sales example you gave no thought to what people wanted and you did nothing to communicate the product’s availability to anyone. In the marketing example all you’re thinking about is what people want and how you can make sure everybody knows it exists.

Admittedly these are the absurd theoretical ends of the marketing-sales continuum. It should also be obvious from these extreme examples that marketing and selling any product involves both intentions in some measure. Starting at the sales end, any effort to meet the needs of the customer involves marketing. Starting at the marketing end, any aspect of a product that will not shaped by consumer interests is something that must be sold.

How authors, and in particular storytellers, can find the right balance between the need to market and the desire to sell will be the focus of the remainder of the posts in this series.

 

This is a reprint from Mark Barrett’s Ditchwalk.

How To Exhibit At Book Industry Trade Shows

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One of the best ways to promote a book to bookstore buyers and librarians is for them to see the book in person at a major industry tradeshow. Read on for information about the most important shows and tips on how to participate on a budget.

There are several large shows in the U.S. geared toward booksellers and librarians, including:

•  Book Expo America (BEA – geared to booksellers)

•  Christian Retail Show (CBA)

•  American Library Association Annual Conference (ALA)

•  American Library Association Midwinter Conference (ALA)

•  Public Libraries Association (PLA – in even-numbered years)

•  Association of College and Research Librarians (ACRL – in odd-numbered years)

•  American Association of School Librarians (AASL)

•  Texas Library Association (TLA – the largest of the state shows)

•  Other state and regional library shows

The major international book shows, such as the Frankfurt Book Fair and the London Book Fair, focus largely on international book sales and the sale of foreign and translation rights to books. For the national and international shows, nonfiction books probably have a higher chance of success.
 

How to Exhibit at Book Shows

The expense of exhibiting in person at the major shows is usually prohibitive for independent publishers, however it may be beneficial to participate in your state library association show, especially if it’s held nearby and you are able to share a booth with one or two other publishers. Be sure to find out if show management permits booth sharing, and don’t be shy about asking if your book would be a good fit for their audience. For example, I have found that there are a lot of children’s and young adult librarians in attendance at the Texas Library Show.

The most economical way to participate in the major shows is through a co-op booth, where books from a number of different small and independent publishers are displayed together. You pay a fee (typically around $50 to $100) and ship your book to the booth sponsor. They take care of shipping the books to the show, displaying them in the booth, staffing the booth, and providing literature to the visitors. These organizations provide co-op display services at a number of national, international and regional shows:

•  Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA)

•  Combined Book Exhibit 

•  Jenkins – Global Book Shows  

•  Association Book Exhibit

In addition to library shows, Association Book Exhibit participates in some other professional association conferences. If you’re a nonfiction publisher, check out their list of conferences to see if any match up to your book’s topic.

If a book industry tradeshow is being held near where you live, it’s a great learning experience to attend the show. Contact show management to find out if authors or publishers are allowed to attend.

For tips on how to sell more books at book fairs and tradeshows, see these articles:

The 12 Commandments of Selling Books at Book Fairs, Conventions and Festivals by Terry Cordingley

12 Secrets to Selling More Books at Events by Penny S Sansevieri
 

 

This is a reprint from Dana Lynn Smith‘s The Savvy Book Marketer.

The Ebook Revolution

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This post, by David Wilk, originally appeared on the Booktrix Blog on 3/15/11.

I think today it is both revealing and helpful to think about e-book pricing in the context of the rise of mass market paperbacks in the 1950’s and into the 1960’s.

As a book industry veteran friend of mine has pointed out to me, when mass market paperbacks first became popular, they were priced at approximately 10% of the retail price of the then prevalent hardcover editions, on average about $.25 for a mass market paperback at a time when hardcover books were selling for $2.50 or $3.00.

At that time, paperbacks were cheaply produced in huge quantities and displayed in drugstores, supermarkets, department stores.  Some of the relatively small number of independent bookstores did not even carry mass market paperbacks, and if they did, they were in racks and spinners supplied to them by the wholesalers that controlled magazine distribution and therefore had access to retailer channels.

Mass market paperbacks were initially differentiated by being reprints of books that had come out first in hardcover, and because publishers knew they would compete with their higher priced new books, they simply held back mass market releases until the hardcover sale had run its course, usually a year, to be sure they harvested as much demand as possible at the higher hardcover price.  Some titles, particularly those in genres like westerns, mysteries, science fiction and romance, were released in mass market first (or only), to feed the burgeoning demand of general readers for inexpensive entertaining books (which publishers differentiated, sometimes snootily, from the “serious literature” and nonfiction they saw as the core of their business).

Sound familiar?

 

Read the rest of the post on the Booktrix Blog.