A-ha!

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Blog to Book to Blog

And back again.

The intersection of print and online publishing is where we live (WME Books, WME Blogs). So we are very proud and excited to share this conversation from our blog-buddy Toby Bloomberg's blogtalkradio show entitled Creating and Promoting Books with Social Media/Web 2.0. Toby's guests (she calls them rock stars) are book publicist Nettie Hartsock and our own Sybil Stershic, who blogs at Quality Service Marketing and wrote Taking Care of the People Who Matter Most: A Guide to Employee-Customer Care.

Just click the play button and get ready to learn.

Note: Because there is so much great information in the show covering both book- and blog-related topics, I'm going to cross-post this on A-ha! and WME Blogs, so please forgive. I think you'll want to listen to it more than once anyway ... and take notes!

Toby also blogged about the show and provided lists of tips from both Nettie and Sybil. Here's a taste:

Nettie: "Ask not what a blogger can do for you, ask how you, your book or your product can benefit the blogger and its readership ..."

Sybil: [on applying the "3 Rs" from her book to how authors should treat reviewers] "Reinforce their helping you with appropriate reciprocity (such as linking to their blog or website on your blog)."

There's more on Toby's blog and much more in the interview, so I'll get out of the way.

Note 2: In the interest of full disclosure (and maybe a little shameless self-promotion), Sybil is one our authors and her book is one of our best sellers since it's release last October. And she REALLY "gets" the whole blog to book to blog marketing concept.

We also have a connection to blogtalkradio, John Havens (VP of Business Development). John is co-authoring a book on business transparency with another of our clients, Shel Holtz, for Jossey-Bass and it's IABC book series. WME is acting as their agents.

What's your "author platform" made of?

A couple of news stories got me thinking (again) about the problem of selling your book after all the investment of time, emotion, and money to get it written and published. The message remains: the primary responsibility for marketing a book falls on the author.

This morning on the CBS Sunday Morning Show, Bill Geist did an amusing piece on his efforts to sell his new book, Way Off the Road. You can read the script here or click to watch the video.

But to me the story behind the story was Geist's enormous book marketing platform as a television journalist.

An author's platform is critical to the decision-making process in the world of big publishers, as described byWiley & Sons executive Joe Wickert in his blog:

Years ago, [platform] implied things like author visibility, speaking engagements, whether they're a regular columnist in a key magazine, etc.  These are still important pieces, but now you have to add in things like how popular their blog is, how large an e-mail list they have access to, etc.

The same point was made in a ForeWord magazine article by Patti Dickinson a few years earlier:

Simply stated, platform is what an author brings to the marketing table. ... today's authors need to demonstrate the desire and aptitude to make their name and book title known to the book-buying public. ... The truth is, the well-written book by an author who has marketing savvy and a willingness to use it, has a significant advantage over an equal book by an author who doesn't or won't. If the former is someone who can identify a core group of readers and will use the Internet to market the title, what you have is platform personified.

"Platform personified." When that was written in 2000, she likely did not have the term blog to apply to her concept of identifying a core group of readers and using the Internet to reach them.

And today our colleague Greg Bell sent me a link to a NY Times article on the use of podcasts to create audiobooks (I've seen them labeled "podiobooks") and use them to generate interest in the printed book even before it's published.

The technology to create blogs and podcasts is available to any author and can help level the playing field for small presses and independent authors. So what's your platform built from?

Seth Godin's Advice for Authors

What Seth calls a "short list" of advice for authors reads a lot like the chapter outline for another great book! Nearly every one of his 19 items could stand more elaboration. Maybe we'll get the chance to revisit the list items individually, but for now we especially recommend these excerpts:

2. ... build a blog ...

3. Pay for an editor ...

7. Think really hard before you spend a year trying to ... get your book published by a 'real' publisher ...

8. Your cover matters [i.e. pay for a professional cover designer] ...

12. Blog mentions ... matter a lot.

And the one that should crystalize the most important and valuable ROI a nonfiction author should be focused on (hint: it's not cash in the form of advances or royalties):

19. Writing a book is a tremendous experience. It pays off intellectually. It clarifies your thinking. It builds credibility. It is a living engine of marketing and idea spreading, working every day to deliver your message with authority. You should write one.

Read # 19 again, slowly, line-by-line, and let those benefits sink in:

Writing a book is a tremendous experience.

[Wtiting a book] pays off intellectually.

[Wtiting a book] clarifies your thinking.

[Publising a book] builds credibility.

[Your book] is a living engine of marketing and idea spreading, working every day to deliver your message with authority.

You should write one.

Now GO! Read the rest of Seth's tips . . . and follow some of the trackback links, too (some good ones here, here, and here, but the list keeps growing every time I go back, so explore).

Some Left-over Chicken Soup

Many authors we talk with struggle most with the realities of marketing their book after the long struggle and great achievement of writing it.

Here's some tough love style authors helping authors advice from Mark Victor Hansen:

"When you've finished writing the book, you're only 10 percent done. Then you're doing the other 90 percent — marketing, selling, hustling and promoting it."

The quote comes from an article in our local Gannett paper, the Rochester [NY] Democrat & Chronicle. You can (and, we suggest, should) read the entire article here.

Podcasting Book Deal

We're excited to be involved in the forthcoming book on podcasting announced yesterday by our friends Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz. Yvonne acted as their agent (how's that for Authors Helping Authors?) and she's blushing over the nice things they wrote about her in their blog announcements.

The book will be called “How to Do Everything with Podcasting” and published by McGraw-Hill as part of its “How to Do Everything” series.

You'll be able to follow the progress of their work in their podcasts at For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, as well as a new blog devoted to the book (coming soon at www.podcastingbook.net). You can start by listening to their podcast recorded Thursday on location at the New Communications Forum in Palo Alto, California.

(Neville and Shel podcasting from New Comm; photo by Phillip Young)

A-ha! Cramer rates books a "Buy"

Today's USA Weekend features an interview with investment guru Jim Cramer offering his "other predictions" for 2006 -- i.e., other than Wall Street's performance. Responding to whether movies will make a comeback this year, he yelled (if you've seen him on CNBC, you can only assume he yelled it), "NO!" The short version of his explanation and conclusion:

"Movies stink these days. Sell!
Books are a buy."

Here's a taste of why he likes books for the long term: "Is it by coincidence that they've had amazing staying power over the years?! I don't think so."

Now in the interest of full disclosure, Cramer is an author himself, with titles like Real Money, Confessions of a Street Addict, and You Got Screwed!

But hey, authors helping authors is what this blog is all about! Right?

Lunch with a Book PR Expert

Yvonne and I had lunch today with Sandy Beckwith, a fellow author and self-described "recovering publicist" (among her many writing and speaking related former and current career activities). Since figuring out how to promote and sell books is the challenge we hear about most from authors, Sandy's experience and her willingness to share are a wonderful combination.

Yvonne will likely treat you to a more in-depth interview of Sandy soon, but we didn't want to hold back on encouraging authors to find out more about her on your own. Her website is filled with full text articles and links to lots more. With titles like "12 ways to keep your nonfiction book in the news" and "Get paid to promote your book!" -- well, she got our attention.

Not surprisingly, one of Sandy's books is Streetwise Complete Publicity Plans, which focuses on how small businesses can develop effective PR campaigns. (Note: if you're an author with a book for sale, you're a small business.) She also teaches an online 4-week course specifically for authors who want to learn how to create buzz for their books: "Book Publicity 101: How to Create Book Buzz" (note: the correct dates for the next course are listed on her website as April 3 - 28; the registration form has the wrong dates, but should still work).

As most authors quickly discover, even with a traditional publisher, much of the responsiblity for promoting and selling books falls on the author. Even if you have a publisher that's willing to work with you, it pays to be an effective partner in the book marketing effort. Sandy Beckwith is a great resource for learning how!

Can Self-Published Authors Get Noticed?

We're asked this question a lot. Most authors want their work to be noticed. It's the first step toward selling, of course, but in some cases getting the author noticed may be a major goal in itself.

Usually, we respond with examples down through history, from William Blake to Mark Twain to John Grisham, sending people to Dan Poynter's extensive list.

But today we can't help but point to one of our own: Dr. Stephanie Siegrist. She's quoted and her book, Know Your Bones: Making Sense of Athritis Medicine, is mentioned in the holiday issue of Woman's Day magazine (Dec. 6, 2005; pg. 54).

It's also worth noting that the connections that lead to Stephanie being interviewed for this article came through her and Yvonne's blogs.

So yes, self-published authors and their books can get noticed. The trick is in

1. Producing a book worth noticing (Know Your Bones qualifies; check the sample chapters for yourself); and then

2. Using the available tools to help promote it (do we need to say it again? Blogs work! Check the Wall Street Journal article "Book Publishers Build Buzz Early, Hollywood Style," online version, or print version, WSJ, 12/1/05, p. B1, col. 5).

Wiping out illiteracy - one book at a time

Post by Tom Collins.

One girl.

Thousands of books.

Making a difference.

If one 11-year-old girl can distribute thousands of books, establish libraries, establish an international literacy foundation, what should the rest of us be doing to support her effort?

Meet Natascha Yogachandra. Learn about her projects from Rochester, NY, to Africa, to Sri Lanka, and more.

Her main attack on illiteracy is called Project Book Angels. With lots of help from other kids and adults, Natascha has collected and distributed:

1,000 books to an inner-city school in Rochester, NY.

1,500 books for a school in Kenya.

Over 3,000 books in Sri Lanka.

The foundation created to support Natascha's work is called Hope is Life. At the website you can learn how you can help by collecting or donating books, buying Hope is Life wristbands, or getting involved.

We've been following Natascha's efforts for a while now, since her father is our friend Nat Yogachandra, author of several books, including Beauty, Bureaucrats and Breaking the Silence: The Status of Women in Asia.

Authors helping authors.

Lots of us helping Natascha wipe out illiteracy, one book at a time.