Aug
27
Writers and Publishers Marketing Via Simple Videos
Filed Under Books, Promotion, Publishing, Writing | Leave a Comment
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.
Aug
20
John Kremer’s Free Publishing Newsletter
Filed Under Writing | Leave a Comment
Book publishing guru John Kremer (1001 Ways to Market Your Book) writes a free e-newsletter on book marketing that is beneficial to writers as well as publishers. For instance, in this week’s edition he offers a free guide to getting followers on Twitter, and links to three free books on writing (here, here and here) by playwright and novelist Michael Allen from the UK. I’m not familiar with Allen and haven’t reviewed any of these and so can’t address their merits, but the price is right and John’s stuff is always worth the time. (Full disclosure: John is a friend of mine.)
The next court day concerning the Google rights settlement is coming up and the battle is heating up. This is history in the making. Be a shame for writers and publishers not to follow it.
Aug
4
Abusing the First Amendment? Senator Boxer’s Blind Trust
Filed Under Books, Fiction, Free Speech, Writing | Leave a Comment
I don’t like it when someone denigrates a book they haven’t read, or a movie they haven’t seen, but at the peril of doing so, I’m moved to say a few things about a book I haven’t read, Senator Barbara Boxer’s second attempt at writing a novel, Blind Trust.
Off the bat, I wonder if Boxer weren’t a Senator from California, would California-based Chronicle Books, not especially known for their fiction, have agreed to publish it? (Zen-like, one can also ask, What better novel—likely written by an unknown—failed to see the light of day because this one took up its bookstore shelf space?)
Another question that occurs to me is, Do senators have the time to write novels? Writing a novel takes a huge commitment of time and energy. (Full disclosure: Boxer had a coauthor, novelist Mary-Rose Hayes, who may have done most of the heavy lifting.) And, while I’m sure even Senators should be allowed their hobbies, how much time should a member of the world’s most exclusive and powerful club—as the Senate has been called—devote to fiction while our country struggles with the deepest recession since World War II and is galloping, willy-nilly, toward the biggest spending programs ever conceived?
But, maybe Boxer didn’t write the book as an avocational pursuit. According to Kimberly A. Strassel who reviewed the novel in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, the ultraliberal Boxer’s book is more an “attempt to score real-life political points in fictional form” than the thriller it purports to be.
Deep, Well-Rounded Characters
The heroine is a liberal Democratic Senator from California who is “honest, tough and energetic.” The chief antagonist is a Dick Cheney look-alike, Republican vice president who “trampled on individual liberties and jeopardized the Bill of Rights.”
But wait, it gets worse: There is also a Rush Limbaugh look-alike named Sam Slaughter (a.k.a. “Slaughterman”) who is “abusing the First Amendment.”
Well-rounded, compelling characters, wouldn’t you say?
And, while I’m not particularly a Rush Limbaugh fan, I support his right to say whatever he wants—whether Barbara Boxer or anyone else approves.
And I support her right to write whatever books she wants. But the question begs to be asked: Isn’t Senator Boxer herself jeopardizing individual liberties by accusing a radio host of abusing the First Amendment by exercising his First Amendment rights?
Or is freedom of speech just for those whom we agree with?
Subscribe to The Write Thought
My Books
