I’m at BEA and it’s wonderful. The only downside is that my modem in my laptop crashed so I’m writing this from the press room itself!
So here’s a wrap up so far:
1. Taught two classes on Advanced Blogging and Web 2.0 for PMA’s Publishing University. This was a wonderful experience and lots of authors/publishers are really understanding the importance of having a web site or blog site initiative to keep the conversation going! I used my client Beth Kephart’s amazing example of blogging because Beth had not blogged previously and her blog now is both beautiful and a great representation of one simple step any author can take to establish a web conversation with like-minded and link-minded readers.
If you’re an author the best thing for you to understand about Web 2.0 or the Web (or even when it gets to Web 80.0) is to take small steps and you can start establishing a Web footprint! Don’t get discouraged – don’t get overwhelmed and feel like you have to do everything! Just do one simple thing. (Remember the song from the movie of Santa Claus when we were young? “Put one foot in front of the other and soon you’ll be walking out the door.” (The Web door!)
Also don’t forget to set up Google Alerts on yourself, your book title and your main competitor’s name and book title. This is a superb way of building a simple outreach list without ever using a publicist! When you do outreach to bloggers or journalists, keep it simple, short and authentic.
Now back to the list of five things!
2. Had a panic attack because my modem in my laptop died!!!
3. Saw Jeff Bezos deliver what I would term (if I’m in my journalist mode) a dry, verbatim, live press release about Kindle. I really think Bezos missed an amazing opportunity to truly engage and initiate a real conversation with folks about what Kindle means. Rather, he delivered a perfectly encapsulated marketing commercial about Kindle. Boring. Although, it was fun to see Neil Gaiman talk about why he uses it. (Read “Good Omens” by him and Terry Pratchett)
The Q&A, what Bezos termed an informal interview conducted between him and Chris Anderson of “Wired.” Not all that exciting either. And no questions from the audience. What I would have asked and I mean this seriously is, “Can you read a Kindle in the bathtub?” – I ask this, because more important than all my other work, I”m a Mom, and I know that Moms across the world would be sold on this gadget immediately if they did a commercial with a Mom sitting in a bubble bath reading her Kindle. It’s about the only half hour 24/7 moms get to sit and relax and it’s a giant selling point for me.
I highly recommend Joe Wikert’s blog on Kindle by the way if you want to keep up on all that is happening.
The other thing I would ask Bezos is to now spend time on getting the Amazon Connect for authors really working as it should! I can’t tell you how many frustrated authors I’ve worked with who just simply want their blog feed under their book and cannot get it to work. (We ultimately get it to work, but with no help from Amazon, unless you count the voluminous emails their help desk will send back saying, “We got your email and here is something to try.”) Where is the person that could take five minutes at Amazon and simply tell an author over the phone, how to get their blog’s feed going under Amazon????!!!!
4. Went to the Ingram party which was very fun and had belly dancers. (Note to self: do more situps.)
5. Have explained to probably 30-35 authors that you don’t need to pay a ‘Blog Consultant” thousands of dollars to set up your blog for you! (Once you’re really famous or if it’s a business blog, sure there are great blog designers out there and it might be worth it.) But you can yourself set up a blog at Blogger.com in as little as five minutes and it’s free!! You can do this, don’t get intimidated. There’s not a secret behind blogging, other than you just simply need to get over bloggers’ block and start doing it.
Yesterday I spent the whole day with my pal Christian and we laughed our way through the whole day and ate burgers at a fantastic cafe.
Today will be walking around the show and this afternoon I will be waiting in line to get an autographed “Bone” comic novel for my husband and daughter.
More later…..
I’m at Book Expo America and have spent the past two days being surrounded by amazing, insightful and fantastic folks through the PMA University, where I was lucky enough to teach two classes this year. The classes were Advanced Blogging and Web 2.0.
Both of them went really well and there are so many independent publishers and authors who really are excited about what the Internet can do for them.
This makes me happy because the Internet is such a powerful tool and you can do so much completely on your own to get your book, brand or product out there!
One of the big questions/discussions was around whether or not everyone must have a blog. My answer is no. You don’t absolutely need a blog if you’re an author and you should only do it if you’re committed to writing and posting at least 3 times a week.
I have worked with authors who needed my help to start a blog, and they’ve gone on to have great success as bloggers. Beth Kephart is a great example of this – her blog is fantastic and she continues to blog. I know her blog will not someday become part of the blog cemetery.
My client Lloyd Dangle does a superb blog and I have several business book authors who blog. But again, not everyone needs a blog. You really have to look at the time involved and then decide if it’s a right fit for you.
The most important thing to remember as we’re all reaching social media tool overload is to simply use the tools that work best for you. Do you need a MySpace page? Probably if you’re a musician but that’s about it. Do you need a Facebook account and LinkedIn account? Might be good but always keep track of your time and don’t go overboard on those. (I’m a giant fan of LinkedIn.com, more than Facebook.)
Do you have to register your blog with thousands of blog directories, post to your blog every single hour, comment on 100 other blogs and ask them to come to your blog too? No, not at all. You really just need to post three times a week, pick a few places to submit your blog too, make sure you have a Feed mechanism on your blog so people can sign up for your posts and comment on fellow blogs that you really respect and only when you have time.
Web 2.0 tools are just another weapon in your marketing arsenal, but it should never be your intention to drop everything outreach wise you’re doing and just use those. Keep everything in balance.
Great NPR brief with the Dude (if you don’t know who the Dude is, I can’t really help you.) This is part of NPR’s series on memorable characters. You can learn if you listen and either way the Dude abides.
I’m leaving on a jet plane to head out tomorrow morning to Book Expo America. It’s so exciting at the Expo and one can hardly recover from the heady joy of walking through aisles and aisles of brand new shiny brilliant books. Love it!
Before I go, I must urge a quick fiction pick for all you discerning readers out there. (No PR involved!) I just love Salman Rushdie’s new book, “The Enchantress of Florence” and urge you to read it. It’s wonderful. He’s brilliantly imaginative and his writing is lyrical.
Here’s an interview with Salman on NPR about the book.
This is a superb interview about the book world with one of the best and most respected publishers in the field, Steve Piersanti, Berrett-Koehler Publishers. I’m a giant fan of Steve and his publishing house and Curt Rosengren’s podcast with him is insightful and full of great ideas.
I got this over the weekend from a Facebook connection who is an author. It’s not an author I’ve done work for or am going to do work for. I’m deleting the author’s name because I don’t want to completely out the author.
I do feel compelled though to advise against what this author is doing in terms of social media.
Here’s what she wrote on my Facebook Wall.
“Hey, Nettie!
How are you doing? Have you seen my new book video on YouTube?”
END
Why do I think it’s not a good idea to graffiti someone else’s Facebook wall with marketing spam about a book?
Because it’s not good manners to just splash your marketing message all over the walls of folks on Facebook before you ask them if you can do so. I deleted the message and the messenger from my Facebook account and so what it really did was alienate me from the author and any book by the author.
If you want to market your book, that’s great. I encourage it! Really! But there comes a point when enough is enough and usurping someone’s Facebook wall to graffiti a message about a book on YouTube is enough. It’s impolite and it’s disrespectful.
My advice is to not do this to your connections on Facebook even if you do have a book. One way to get them to talk about your book is to authentically engage them and go from there.
Just because there is a wall doesn’t mean you should use it for your own marketing spam purposes.
This is disappointing news and what will be more interesting is to see long-term why this decision was made. Microsoft is ending its LiveSearch Publishing Program.
In books and publishing right now there is so much focus on Web 2.0 but I think it’s very important for authors to understand that you need to balance your investment in both time and money in terms of Web 2.0. Don’t spend thousands on only Web 2.0 initiatives to get your book out. You need to really focus on both traditional methods of marketing/pr as well. (And this is coming from someone who makes their primarily living being an online publicist, so I hope you will really take the advice to heart.)
While it’s good to invest in Web 2.0, have a blog (if you can keep up with it), have a website etc., it’s also good to invest due diligence on the offline side. It’s very important to maintain both.
And it will be very interesting to see how some of these Web 2.0 initiatives fare long-term as big players like Microsoft tweak what they are investing in online as well.
“The Naked Truth about Literature and Life” - Go and read the post on Writer’s Mojo by Cornelia Read.
Just read it and also click on each YouTube vid she put for each bullet point. And the first person that can identify who #3 author gets a prize themselves from Nettie. (Seriously!)
This is the only game in town to play for writers, authors, everyone who is concerned about the rice shortage in Africa. Play it! It’s fairly tough word game, but it’s free and it buys more rice.
1. Opt them into your e-newsletter without inquiring if they want to be opted in. (By the way, usually they don’t.)
2. Send them an email citing a story they wrote about your vertical pointing out all the ways they were wrong in the story.
3. Responding to pitches from PRLeads.com, ProfNet or Peter Shankman’s great new service – HelpAReporter , with a lengthy dissertation instead of a 2-3 sentence expert response to the query.
4. Belittling a journalist on your blog with no real reason to do so.
5. Demanding that they sit through lengthy and unengaging product previews!
Very cool thing that YouTube just announced. A new tool called YouTube Insight that enables you to track your videos and gather actionable data in regard to them.
Here’s a great site that lists several leading book awards and winners.
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