The Hartsock Agency

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…..

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