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Yesterday an elderly gentleman was in my office asking what he should do with his fourth book. He’d paid a “publisher” out of Southern California $25,000 to publish his first book and $5,000 to publish his second. The publisher published the third for free. None of them sold any copies to speak of even though the publisher said he sent out a bunch of review copies.

To make matters worse, my visitor had heard that millions of books were sold on the Internet so he paid to be included on a book-selling website that told him he would “earn consistent income from the site selling 4,000 to 5,000 books a month.” He sold 21 copies. He thinks friends bought most of them.

A member of the hope-springs-eternal crowd (as we all are), he was there to ask if he could pay me to publish his book.

If you are an author, and you are paying to get published or for services that guarantee to sell your books, chances are you will have a bad experience. Is this always the case? Almost. What can you do about it? Learn the industry—learn what works and what doesn’t—before you open your checkbook.

Just a write thought.

[Under the "everybody needs an editor" category, the following paragraph was left off this post. Ooops.]

There is a huge industry built upon the dreams of would-be published authors and startup publishers. Look around a little and you’ll find any number of dubious opportunities. For instance….

For $305 ForeWord magazine will write a review of your book and give you the opportunity to have it placed on their website and distributed to other online sites.

Is this worth $305?

Conventional wisdom holds that paid reviews offer little value in terms of selling books. In many instances you can have a colleague write a review and distribute it to the same sites. If your colleague has a name or title people respect, the review may be better received than one from a little-known magazine. Why pay hundreds for something of doubtful value?

Wait, it gets worse.

For $195 more ($500 total), iUniverse will send your book to ForeWord for you. What is the postage on a book today anyway?

Are there better ways to spend one’s money promoting a book?

Here’s a fun idea: The $500, Three-Day, Three-City Book Blitz.

Arrange for three presentations on your book’s subject or, if you are a novelist, on some aspect of your story, in three different cities within driving distance of each other over three days. Think beyond bookstores to Friends of the Library groups or senior centers or fraternal organizations. Be inventive.

Be sure books are available for sale and signing at each event. Alert the media in each city. Mention it in your blog—both before and after. Have pictures taken of you speaking and the crowd and post them on your site and around the Web.

Now for the $500.

Use $300 to pay for lodging and gas. Treat yourself and a companion to a gourmet dinner each night of your trip with the other $200.

Not only will you have more fun, you’ll likely sell more books.

Just a write thought.

Here, in random order, are a few quotes worth contemplating —often paraphrased—from various speakers at the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference. My apologies to the speakers for not attributing these, all were brilliant and many said basically the same things in different and enlightening ways.

• Mobile publishing does not equal digital publishing.

• Mobile is more like print than digital.

• Engagement is on the user’s terms.

• Mobile users are acceptive of ads.

• Usage is in short bursts of 3.5 to 4 minutes.

• Monetary exchange answers aren’t clear yet.

• In 2005, Apple’s first attempt at cell, the ROKR, held 100 songs.

• 2010 will be “The Year of the Mobile.”

• Consumers are trained now.

• The pieces are finally in place: Content, distribution substructure, devices.

• No buginess is accepted by users.

• Apps run from $3,000 to $100,000. Sourcebooks spends $3,000 to $7,000 for an app.

• Collect and analyze data: Metrics, metrics, metrics.

• Mobile devices are “super measurable.”

• Apple’s app store: 200,000 plus apps with 2 billion downloads.

• $4.99 is the pricing “sweet spot” for an app right now.

• No gatekeepers, but no quality controls.

• 75% of apps are paid, 25% are free.

• Symbian is the most-used cell phone operating system, but not popular in the U.S.

• Vendors (set up to assist you in making apps) make money by confusing you.

• One app sold for $800 and just returned an image of a ruby. Three were sold before Apple took it down.

• Plan your app’s launch day like you would with a book.

• Tuesdays and Wednesdays are best for launches.

• If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.

• Fail quickly, iterate rapidly.

• For wirelesss downloads mentions on Mashable and TechCrunch are better than regular media.

• There’s a free Stanford course on iPhones available from Apple’s iUniversity.

• Most success stories are without a marketing budget.

• Learn XML.

• Your website is the hub of a social media strategy.

• Choose team members passionate about your topic for social media marketing.

• Offer tools so your audience can promote your content.

• Content is king.

• Sales are driven by instant gratification.

• Embed links generously.

• Don’t be a commercial.

• Your high quality content is a targeted sales pitch.

• Stay focused.

• Start slow and build.

• Think long-term.

• Be consistent and persistent.

• A sign in Einstein’s office: Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.

• Macmillan’s Dynamic Books: Text books that can be changed by the professor are an effort to curb used book sales.

• The speed of innovation is accelerating.

• Generational shifts are coming into play in big ways.

• The 8 to 18 crowd spend average of 7.5 hours on digital device a day.

• Simplify, connect, conquer.

• Watch the periphery.

• Limit the variables.

• Leave your comfort zone.

• Publishing was B2B is now B2C.

• Golden Age of Engagement.

• Self-expression is the new entertainment.

• Moore’s law (Google if you aren’t familiar with it) applies.

• Information technology has a 50% deflation rate annually.

Attending conferences like this is expensive, but it repays you over the year many times over.

 Just a write thought.

The O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, held this year at New York’s Marriott Marquis Times Square, is the place to try and keep up with the technological advances currently flooding the book publishing industry.

I attended three workshops yesterday. The first was titled “Selling in Mobile Markets” and was presented by Rana Sobany author of the O’Reilly book Marketing iPhone Apps.

She gave some interesting history:

The 1980s, she said, was all about carriers establishing the substructure necessary for cell phones. The first cell phone call was made in 1983.

The 90s were about cell phone size with, in 1999, Motorola unveiling the StarTAC, the first cell phone to weigh in under one pound.

Today there are a reported 4.6 billion cell phones in use. This approaches the population of the world, which is approximately 6.8 billion, but there are lots of third-world countries without land lines to most places, forcing the use of cell technology and, apparently, many people carry more than one cell phone.

Sobany, an articulate woman in her 30s (I’d guess) who is passionate about her subject, said she’d bet many in the audience were carrying more than one. I doubted that, but later in the conference I was speaking to the sales rep for Publishers Weekly and he fielded calls on at least two as we spoke. I felt underprivileged with only a single iPhone in my pocket.

What does that proliferation of cell phones mean for authors and publishers? It means we had better plan on having a presence in the mobile world. It is predicted that within a few years more people will access the Internet via mobile devices than from PCs. Mobile apps are today—and will be more so in the future—important ways to support book sales.

Here, in no particular order, are a few new nuggets I gleaned from Sobany’s talk:

 • She says this decade will be the “iPhone” decade. Not meaning that iPhone will be the only player, but is the one currently defining the industry.

• Publishers, in designing apps for mobile devices need:

    —a brand vision, by which I took she meant working single titles would result in loss of momentum and subsequent impact. She said, at the least, use a common logo. This would suggest book authors should consider writing series or leave the apps to your publisher.

    —to make data-driven decisions.  Metrics, metrics, metrics…one great thing about mobile devices and the web in general is that you can obtain lots of data. Using it to ferret out what actions are best is still art as well as science, but ignore it at your peril.

    —iterate quickly. Updating to keep your app current to the needs of today’s user is important if you don’t want your app to be replaced by another’s.

    —keep in mind that the attention a user gives to his device is given in short bursts of about three and a half  to four minutes. This isn’t all bad, it is a highly-focused three and a half to four minutes, but an app that requires 10 minutes of concentration….

There was much more. I’ll try to get to some of it later, but, an interesting prediction I heard more than once at this conference is that Twitter will, in essence, be a thing of the past by the end of the year. Twitter, a short-lived fad? Who could have predicted?

Just a write thought.

Book signings at Costco?

Most people aren’t aware that Costco encourages book signings at their warehouses—or that Costco is particularly happy to host local authors.

Now a group of Alaskan authors have taken this largesse a step further. Through a wholesaler, American West Books, they have arranged to sign books all day everyday until Christmas. They rotate the duty, each of them working a table of their and the other authors’ titles for a day.

Is it working? They often sell 75-100 books a day.

 Just a Write Thought.

Publishing is such a strange business.  The New Influencers by Paul Gillin, a ground-breaking book on social media that we (Quill Driver Books) published nearly 4 years ago just got a terrific review on the Fast Company blog.

Why is this strange? Because, while we garnnered great reviews from dozens of other venues including the Wall Street Journal, as far as I know, we never could get Fast Company to mention it. Now, 3 plus years later….

Not that I’m complaining too much. In the review, David Capece says “There are many books that have followed in Paul Gillin’s path; however, The New Influencer remains an essential tool for marketers and non-marketers alike.” We at publishing companies like reviewers to call our books “essential.”  Even years after they come out.

BTW, it is with the book The New Influencers that Gillin added the term “the new influencers” to the English lexicon, meaning the bloggers and others in social media who are replacing the old influencers such as the mavens on TV, radio, and in print and the ads companies run in those media.  Now you see the term used everywhere.

Here are some strategies to consider when making your videos:

Plan. Simple storyboarding will keep you on track.

Keep it brief. Thirty seconds to two minutes is plenty. The longer your video, the smaller your audience.

Overlay titles and words. Words—note, I didn’t say “text”—add impact.

Use sound. Either background music or voice over.

Use strong, colorful images. Remember this is a visual media.

Can the pitch. Don’t make your video an obvious advertisement.

Avoid the “talking head” video. Boring.

Let’em know where to get more information. End each video with a five-second- to six-second-long image of your book’s cover and your website’s address.

Paul Gillin in Secrets of Social Media Marketing (Full disclosure: Quill Driver Books publishes this title.) says videos that go viral, such as Blendtec’s Will Blend It series,
have: “AEIO & U.”

This stands for:

Authentic: Online video producers intentionally make their programs with a bit of the home-video feel. High production value is perceived as being professional marketing and is often equated with oversell.

Entertaining: This means fun. Weighty videos do not usually go viral.

Intimate: Videos that satisfy peoples’ inner voyeur top the popularity charts. But don’t go overboard here. Leave the crass to Jerry Springer. Intimacy can be accomplished simply by showing real people doing real things.

Offbeat & Unusual: Surprise and delight with something unexpected, something a bit daring or a little risqué.

 There are at least three types of video to consider.

 Montage: Uses preexisting images usually with voice over and/or music added. This is the simplest and easiest to do without a camcorder or large budget.

Interview: An obvious choice here is to have someone interview your author. It wouldn’t be bad to insert appropriate images here and there—say of a location or an object being discussed—to spice up the oft boring “two talking heads” video.

Documentary: Uses filmed interviews, locations, events, and more. This takes more planning and time but may be worth the effort—but then again, it may not. If you make a huge production (pun intended) out of making yours, you may not actually get around to it. Simple is often elegant.

 You may be able to make the interview or documentary videos a bit longer and still keep your viewer’s interest but be careful.

Writers and publishers, picture this:

Today: Your website where you have your book’s cover, the back cover copy, endorsements, a photo of the author, and maybe a table of contents and an excerpt. Along side this you have a “Buy Now!” button.

Now picture this:

 Tomorrow: Your website again, but now you have a 60-second, full-color video complete with background music that draws your viewer into the book’s subject. Maybe the video is a demonstration of something mentioned in the book, or a travelogue showing the places mentioned in the book, or a dramatic reading of the poetry in the book.  Next to this is a 30-second video-profile of the author. And next to that is a short video of famous and every-day people endorsing the book. Each video ends with the book’s cover.

Alongside these videos is the same “Buy Now!” button. Which button, the first one or this one, is likely to get tapped more often?

Now imagine this:

These videos aren’t simply on your website, you’ve used a service that distributed them to a dozen sites simultaneously, you’ve e-mailed them to your subscriber’s list, linked them to your blog, included a live link to them in your press releases, and are using Google AdWords video ads to target your audience.

And the best part? These videos were either free or quite inexpensive to produce and distribute.

I think videos are likely to revolutionize on-line promotion and marketing. Soon your website will be judged by the value of your videos.

There is even a chance that your video will go virus with millions of people viewing it as did the “Will It Blend” video series by  Blendtec blenders blending everything from smoothies to iPhones. Sales for Blendtec blenders reportedly soared 700 percent because of their videos.

 I’ll expand on this and give you some strategies and resources to use in my next blog.

As part of their huge push on I Can Make You Thin by Paul McKenna, Sterling (owned by Barnes & Noble) dressed staff members in red tee shirts and sent them into the streets of New York. They handed out 25,000 tape measures and postcards. The staffers came from all departments of the company and targeted commuter hubs in the city.

This is a bit unconventional, but if you have a book that has a broad appeal, handing out inexpensive freebies is a good idea. Of course you don’t have to do it 25,000 at a time but doing so might also garner some news coverage if you alert the press.

And what a fun day for the staff at Sterling.

BTW, at this writing, I Can Make You Thin is #36 on Amazon.com.

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