Turns out Lance got promoted and BookExpoAmerica is on the hunt for a new director. He has in my estimation done a stellar job with BEA. He is the most approachable person and is always up and positive at BEA. I hope they find someone to fill his shoes that has the same enthusiasm and love for books!

TODAY’S NEWS

Fensterman Promoted, Search on For Successor
“Lance Fensterman has been promoted to group v-p of Reed Exhibitions and will devote his time exclusively to running the company’s pop culture business. He will retain oversight of BookExpo America until a replacement is found. A spokesperson said Reed expects to have a successor in place before the 2010 convention set for New York City. Fensterman. who joined Reed in April, 2006, will now manage New York Comic Con, Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo as well as a number of other shows. ”

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Am in NY for BookEXPO and just finished presentation on Web 2.0 for Book Publicity with my brilliant co-hort and presenter David Mathison of BetheMedia. We were part of the Advanced Track that the wonderful IBPA puts together.

Wonderful participants in the room who really are going to embrace social media and move forward into the Web 2.0 to beyond and engage all of us with their wonderful books!

It’s extraordinary when you hear all this doom and gloom about the publishing industry that the room was filled with folks of all ages and titles and everyone there was comitted to embracing and learning about social media.

Web 2.0 (and whatever it will be called to Web 80.0 in the future) is here and publishers are very in tune and ready to embrace it. They work fervently on behalf of their authors and it is humbling to see how hard their marketers and publicists work internally to use all these tools.

My goal is always to empower and help people understand they can do these things on their own! If my 72 year old mom can blog and twitter, and my tween daughter can blog then everyone can!

I challenge you today to go and sign up for Twitter, or Linkedin.com or build a virtual bookshelf on Shelfari.com - you don’t need to hire someone to do it for you!

Join the conversation! Comment below and tell me how you feel about social media and publishing!

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The project is titled, BOOK: The Sequel and I just got my shiny new widget for it to put on my blog. I’m entering today.

Perseus Books Group is spearheading this collaborative effort to publish a book – during the span of BEA – to highlight all the new ways to publish. The book will be created by all of you and published into as many formats as possible in 48 hours.

Submissions are ongoing and readers are invited to write the first sentence of a sequel to a book they love (and the title if they are feeling espescially creative.) The website will display contributions as they are accepted.

Submissions close on Thursday May 28th, at 4pm – first day of BEA.

Samples from the press announcement include:

“You see; I was right.” (From Das Kapital (revised edition) by Karl Marx

“Call Me, Ishmael!” (From Moby Dick’s Guide to Dating at Sea)

The book party launch will take place in the Perseus Books Group booth (#4237) at 4pm on Saturday, May 30th. All royalties from BOOK: The Sequel will go to the National Book Foundation.

Perseus Books Group ROCKS! Go and enter today.

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Unfortunately, when I went to Harper’s online the article is not retrievable or viewable UNLESS you are a Harper’s subscriber.

Drats! Darn! UGH! Drats!

So though it’s very frustrating that Harper’s does not have this article online (Harper’s please trust the Web and get your stuff online completely), I have to urge all of you to go and buy Harper’s Magazine and read this article.

Read it read it read it.

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So read Sara’s blog first here and think positive!

And then you might want to read Claire Kirch’s article on independent bookselling.

My favorite store in Austin is BookPeople and I really try to maintain a balance of buying between it and Amazon, as it is so important to support the independent bookstores.

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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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Having been an Internet journalist for over 15 years, and seeing sites come and go, the only caution I would cite is that we’re all becoming inundated with disparate information and ways to receive it, so I hope the site will get much-trafficked, but I also think it’s a weighty proposition to try to be the catch all for all author tours.

However, I would encourage you to sign up your book at the site, and I will be signing up my clients and if anyone can make it work, it’s certainly the weighty founders behind the launch!

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Defy Gravity! (from “Wicked” – a show not to miss in New York).

What does it mean in terms of your book?

It means you have to not let your book sink once it’s out and published. So you’ve got a book with a major publisher and they’re pushing it out for you? I have two clients right now whose books are with major publishers and while they enjoyed the initial press push, their books are staying on the radar because they are taking on the job of marketing those books and building buzz around them as part of their jobs too!

This is where you empower yourself to ensure your book will defy gravity!

I’ll be sharing “gravity-defying” tips all week on how to keep your book in the air for all to see!

Your book can have wings for months to come and make a long migration to all the folks you want to read it. It takes time, patience, effort and money. But the return on investment always is worth it!

Nettie

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Met tons of folks and all are interested in how to get the news out about their books to online sites and blogosphere. This is one of the main things I consult with folks on and I can tell you that the key is to be authentic in how you reach out to bloggers. Below are some quick tips and I’ll be blogging about BEA all week too!

Getting Your Book To Bloggers:

1. Don’t send the book without inquiring first if they would be interested in a review copy.
2. Don’t email blast bloggers about your book. The blogging community is very dedicated and spend an inordinate amount of time on their blogs and content. Don’t waste their time, stuffing their email boxes with general queries.
3. Note the books that bloggers have already covered and see how your book ties in and what new ideas it can offer to readers as well.
4. Don’t take a blog refusal personally.
5. Be persistent, patient and polite.
6. Be willing to give more than one copy of your book out for consideration.
7. Don’t forget the online book review sites and the sites built around your book’s topic of coverage.
8. Let go of “fear of bloggers”. Too many “blog” and “publicity” consultants are hyping fear of bloggers. Don’t buy into this. Reach out and read blogs and see how you can connect with folks.
9. Don’t send your book or an email query to a blogger unless you’re willing to read the blog itself. Blogs aren’t here to serve as free commercials for your work.
10. Don’t depend soley on your publisher or their marketing team to get your book out to the Web. Personalized outreach from you has a much longer reach and is well worth the effort.

* And always be honest in your outreach.

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I’m behind on posting as of late and am heading out to Book EXPo 2007 in New York. I’m truly thrilled to be there as one of my book clients is up for several publishing awards – www.kisstheorygoodbye.com .

I know it will be lots of fun and look for this blog to feature snippets and insights all week from the BIG BOOK BLAST!

Nettie

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