Ch-Ch-Change…is good

I took a break from filling out online resumes yesterday to finally start making some of those blog changes I wanted. Thanks to Webtalks’ Ashwini Khare, I was able to upload the three column design after I made a few upgrades to my site. It took a lot longer than I thought it would, but I’m happy with the result. I’ll probably be changing the arrangement of the different topics in the sidebars later this week, so please let me know what you think about the set-up.

I had to remove the sidebar topics that held the “Blogs of Note,” Author Interviews/Guest Blogs, and the Doing My Homework/Book Sense 101 columns, but I was able to re-label all of those (with the exception of Blogs of Note—and I plan to do that soon) with the appropriate tag. Now if you want to look at any of these items, just click the appropriate tag and they should show up. If you find a column that you believe is mis-tagged, please let me know. I did this late into last night and started up again this morning. There are seven columns that I could not label because every time I tried the blog would erase, but I’ve got a few things I’m going to try to fix that.

In the coming days I will be updating my profile, posting new columns and continuing to update the look of Bookseller Chick. Now is the time to also let me know about any links that need updating, links that need removed, and links that need to be added. Also, any and all suggestions you have would be greatly appreciated. Part of good marketing is having a site that you can navigate well, and I’m interested to hear your thoughts.

The “Just the Links, Ma’am” Edition

I see that some of you are having fun with Google Analytics. Good for you. I’ll put up the information regarding the other programs on the column soon. In fact, renovations and redecorating sound like something to do in between sending out cover letters and resumes. While I’m focusing on that, and lining up more goodness for this blog, here’s something to keep you occupied.

The Smart Bitches have a very informative interview up with three authors on the subject of making and using book trailers to advertise your book. Though the authors are all represent the Romance genre the advice they pass along and their thoughts on the book trailer subject are applicable to all. I especially agree with Tony McGee Causey’s advice to make use of the lower cost options around you, such as using grad students in theatre and film programs or connections through friends. Within two degrees of my friend group I know several actors, graphic designers, directors and film editors and I also happen to live a little over ten blocks away from the Art Institute where many budding artists attend. We’re all trying to make a name for ourselves doing something, and I know many people are willing to do something for less money if it allows them to build their portfolio.

Speaking of book trailers, don’t forget about Marta Acosta’s contest for the Best and Worst Book Trailer of a Classic Novel, which now has a trailer all its own. The deadline has been extended to September 15^th. First prize is Adobe Creative Design Suite 3 Premium Pro.

Nephele Tempest of the Knight Agency breaks down Best-sellers vs. bestsellers.

Booksquare has a post up relating to book trailers, word of mouth and all other forms of reaching a reading public in, “Reaching Readers: The Door-to-Door Theory.”

Jessica at the Written Nerd posts her own thoughts on America’s reading habits.

Just a heads up to all you interested in the Bookselling World, the ABA (American Booksellers Association) has a blog called the ABA Omnibus, “a regular update on bookselling, retail, authors, culture, technology, and…”

Also of interest, Bookselling This Week has an article on Booksellers Who Blog highlighting the aforementioned Written Nerd among others.

In “Me, Me, It’s All About Me!” news, I’ve seen my name in print (and it is a glooooorious thing that will probably never happen again). I received my copy of The New Writer’s Handbook 2007 from Scarletta Press, in which my blog essay “Your Gateway Drug” appears. The book also contains essays from amazing folks like Neil Gaiman, Rosina Lippi, Jane Yolen, Erica Jong, Lynn Viehl, and Linda Sue Park (among others who are old hands at seeing their name in print). Now that all the visiting members of my family have left town, I’ll hopefully get a chance to sit down and read it.

My precioussssssssss.

Fun with Google Analytics

You might already be enjoying the information gathering capabilities of Google Analytics, but if you’re not, let me give you a heads up.

Google Analytics (from this point on to be referred to as GA), like many other site tracking programs, allows you to track visitors to your website. The free service also tracks where your visitors come from, how they arrived (referral or direct), and what keywords they may have used to visit your site. You can compare data and track trends as well as integrate Analytics with any AdWords you may have purchased from Google to see how they drive traffic to your site.

You can also waste a lot of time playing with the map function and figuring out where your readers come from. I, for example, have a group of lovely readers from Australia who visit the site regularly (It takes all my willpower to refrain from a wince-worthy “G’day” at this moment), the number of which remained unknown to me until I installed GA on my site.

I know I sound like a commercial, but I’ve had GA on Bookseller Chick for several weeks now and the data I’ve collected is very interesting. The free Bravenet counter you can see at the bottom of the links in the right hand column is something I’ve had since a few months after I started Bookseller Chick, and it only tells me the last ten people to visit, providing very little information beyond that point. GA allows me to see what keywords people have used to visit, how many people are return visitors and how long visitors stay on my site. Andrew Beierle’s guest column has a number of incoming links that continues to bring in traffic and I’ve received many visitors using the keywords “Stephanie Gayle” and “My Summer of Southern Discomfort” (more so than people searching for the keywords “Bookseller Chick”). I can even track how many people have linked to “Online Publicity Kits: Do You Have One?” or have stopped by to visit it. (By the way, if you’re one of those people and you haven’t gone back and read La Gringa’s additional recommendations in the comments, then you should.)

What does this tell me? It lets me know where you are coming from and why. It makes me think that maybe I should invite Stephanie and Andrew back for another round of guest blogging as they seem to be popular.

Finally I can judge interest in different topics without relying on whether or not people comment or ask questions (although please don’t see that as a reason to not comment or ask questions because a girl could always use a little more guidance).

Over the next few weeks I want to focus on ways that you as an established author (or one who has yet to be published) can drive traffic to your site and increase your authority in the eyes of the Google algorithm. Google Analytics and other information gathering programs can help you track this information and see if it is actually affecting your audience’s size.

If you have an alternate program that you like better than GA that is also cost effective (free is very, very nice), let me know and I’ll add the link here along with a description of how to install and what it does. With GA all I had to have was a gmail account and know how to drop a line of code into the Blogger template.

As a promoter of your books, it is important to know what your audience is interested in. Do they keep coming to your site looking for a family tree of your characters that you don’t have? Maybe you should build one. Did you see an increase in traffic due to an interview at website X? Maybe you should make a note to visit them again when the next book is ready to drop.

Knowing your audience allows you to focus your book advertising and marketing that much more. Using an information tracking program like GA allows you to decode the mystery of that process.

Need your help

Hey y'all,

I'm looking for someone to help me add another column to this blog on the left hand side (so it will essentially be a three column blog), so that I can switch over some of the links. Also this would allow me to add some discreet ads so that I can continue to send out books to people who win them no matter where they are in the world. Postage to other countries is expensive.

So if one of you could help me out, please email me at the address in the right hand side bar.

Thanks,

Linsey

MySpace vs. Facebook: Something to Keep in Mind

I’ve tried to write this column three times and my computer keeps shutting down before I can finish. This would be fine if the Word document would save, but unfortunately my computer is in full rebellion. Here’s hoping today lucky number four.

Something to think about when you are using a social networking site to advertise your book and your writing is audience. While this seems obvious, recent articles have come out emphasizing that the differences between MySpace and Facebook aren’t just limited to design and platform, but fall along class lines as well.

In June danah boyd, a doctorial candidate in the School of Information at the University of California-Berkeley, wrote a blog essay entitled, “Viewing American divisions through Facebook and MySpace.” boyd’s studies have led her to her thesis that the previously reported on mass exodus from MySpace to Facebook is not quite what it appears, and instead it is the affluent children of college educated parents (and who are seeking college placement themselves) who are heading to Facebook while those with a working class background or feel disenfranchised prefer (and are drawn to) MySpace.

How does this affect how you market your book? That’s up to you. It all comes down to knowing your audience, whoever they might be.

Thoughts?

You can view a video of danah boyd discussing the evolution of social networking sites on the internet here.

Questions, Answers, Online, Directions, and Publicity Kits,

First things first, for the person who came to this site with the search phrase “i want to read tales of the otori for free” I have an answer for you, it’s called the library. You can find the Tales of the Otori series and many other fine, fabulous books for absolutely no money down…unless you have library fines. That I can’t help you with.

Secondly, I want this book, however I will probably have to follow the library advice I gave above for currently the funds are lacking. Ms. Kate Rothwell, add this one to your suggestions list.

Now on to the real business. On the “Online Publicity Kits: Do You Have One?” column Lynda Hilburn asked, “I have a question about the press kit. Everything you talked about is on my website, but I don't have a specific button called "press kit." Is it enough that all my materials are accessible?”

You do not need a specific button called press kit, no. Your site is laid out in such a way that if you wanted to create a downloadable PDF file on your bio page you could, but it is not necessary. Instead you should have all this information saved on your computer in a Word or PDF document that you can copy (the text and the hotlinks) into an email or just attach the document along with the pictures to your email. Save the jpegs for when you know you will be hosted on the other site so as to avoid getting sent directly to the trash folder. If you wanted your trailer included in a guest column or interview, you would send that link along with anything else you thought the writer might need. Given that most bloggers I know don’t reside in basements, but actually work full time jobs as well as blog, anything you can provide to make their job easier the better. So keep a file on hand on your desk top just in case.

Lynda’s question and my own column got me thinking about the role of Press Releases/Publicity Statements on the internet. For me they often seem to lose their impact when all I get from a subject line is “FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.” That’s good to know, but what is for immediate release? Why should I care?

The impact of the title line is lost because I’m not even tempted to open the email.

Of course, I’m an odd duck, so I want to hear your opinion. Have any of you received emailed Press Release/Publicity Statements that worked? How’d they do it? Have any of you written one that has received a good response?

As always, interested in what you have to say.

Links in no particular order of social significance

Bottom Shelf Books, a site that looks at “picture books from a somewhat grown-up perspective,” has a really amusing two-part interview up with the characters from Punk Farm by Jarrett J. Krosoczka.

Chronicle Books has a blog, and I know I’m probably the last to hear about it, but I thought I’d pass the information along to the rest of you. Go over and see pictures of their new offices, get recipes from upcoming cookbooks, and giggle at their customer letters.

This is old news from July 30^th, but it bears rereading: Jean Marie Pierson talks “Getting Published: Insights from a Book Contracts Insider.”

If you didn’t make it to ComicCon you can read, watch and hear all about it from this collection of bloggers, podcasters, videos and message boards.

Bookselling This Week talks book displays with the good people of BookPeople.

Oh, Amazon rankings, it appears like any system you can be manipulated. Not surprisingly you were spoken over and over again at DPI as a way to gage interest in a book after a big interview or article has hit the public.

Chick Lit Review has their new online issue out.

The Man Booker Longlist is out too.

And proof the Oregon Trail game continues to live on in people’s hearts and minds.

Online Publicity Kits: Do You Have One?

The speakers at the Denver Publishing Institute ranged over a wide variety of topics from copy-editing to magazine publishing to college publishing to marketing and more(all of which I hope to touch on in the next few weeks), but today I’m going to focus on the world of publicity. Our faculty member for this presentation was Scott Manning (of Scott Manning & Associates) who gave a wonderful presentation complete with examples of publicity work he’s done in the past.*

While Scott had a lot to say on the state of publicity**—the who you know aspect, the importance of targeting your audience, and using the combination of new media and old to find success for your book—I’m going to focus on something that occurred to me during his presentation: getting inside the head of journalists.

What he meant was, to get your book covered by the press you need to give the reporters everything they could possibly need. How does your book relate to news they are covering or what is going on today? How is it relevant? What do you need to provide for a story to be spun from the platform your book provides?

Once you know these answers, you build your publicity statement and kit accordingly.

I’m not telling you anything that you haven’t heard before. Obviously this is easier to do for nonfiction since not many fiction authors can claim to be an expert in the field of study they write about or one that can get them on the news, but that does not mean that you can’t take the concept and apply it to your own book.

Specifically I want to apply it to how you represent yourself and your book online.

Why online? The future of a successful will become more and more dependent on the successful mix of New and Old Media. With the shrinking of review sections, etc, New Media (the internet) allows the author and publicist to find other forums to better target their audience, and enough coverage can gain Old Media attention. In the reverse, massive Old Media attention often triggers New Media’s interest.

New and Old Media work on different schedules though. A successful Old Media campaign means having all reviews and mentions of the book coincide with the release date. If the review or interview drops too early, the people who go into the store and are told your book is not out yet will be just as likely to forget about it as they are to try again, something every publisher wishes to avoid.

Unlike with Old Media, you do not want to hold off until publication day to get people online talking about your book. A well-placed Amazon link means that a reader can easily add it to their wish list or pre-order the title. An early review can generate buzz with each person who comments mentioning how much they want this book, or how they’ve already pre-ordered (and you want this, you want this bad. Readers like reassurance they are spending their money on something they will love, and they get this by seeing others excited about the upcoming release).

Also, to successfully manipulate the Google algorithm you and your book need to have created some sort of backlog of information. You need to have a website that is coded correctly so that it comes up on the first page. You need to start getting your name out there pre-publication.

Which brings me to why you need an online publicity kit.

(Eventually I do get to my point.)

Say you see a call go up for guest bloggers here on Bookseller Chick. Knowing that I’m interested on the changes in the publishing industry, the bookseller/author relationship, the writing process, and the world of your book (and how you came up with it), you would ideally email me with something on one of these topics. Since we’re working in an ideal world here, let’s assume that I got back to you immediately with a date and time for column publication.

Excellent, but what do you want to go with your column? What does this blogger know about you?

I mean, we would all like to assume (me included) that I’m going to have enough time to do my homework on your background to come up with some sort of intro, but the truth is that I often get these posts ready in the morning when I don’t have a ton of time to go searching for links and definitive information.

Enter your online publicity kit.

When you send back your column you should also include:

• An author’s bio

• A (small) jpeg of your cover

• An author photo if you want one included

• A link to your website

• Links to any other places you’ll be doing interviews/columns (as well as dates if you are doing a virtual tour)

• Links to any reviews you may have received

• Links to your book on Amazon, B&N, Borders, Powells or any other place you want your readers to shop

• Jpegs of past book covers if you want those included

Seems like a lot, doesn’t it? Kinda feels like you are doing all the work for this other person (me), but the truth is that this is the only way you can guarantee that everything you want is included and shows up correctly. I automatically default to Amazon when I’m linking books, but maybe you would rather have people shop at Powells or your local Independent. I don’t always have the time to pull together all the information I want to on an author, and I don’t have any idea what you are doing or writing next.

You should also keep all this stuff fresh on your site. Doing an interview or guest blog does no good if you don’t link to it in a place where people can find it. Receiving an excellent online review means nothing if it gets mentioned once and disappears into the archives of your blog. These things need to be easy for your readers to find. With most newspapers making their articles accessible online, this gives you a chance to place New and Old Media side by side. People can read your book’s review in the LA Times online as well as check out what different readers had to say. People can check out articles and op-ed pieces you’ve written, and then check out your online interviews and opinion pieces.

The internet (and your standing on Technorati, Ice Rocket, and all the search engines) is based on how many people link back to you, so you need to get out there and you need to do it early. You need to become the online authority on you and your book so that when little ol’ me comes along, totally in love with your last novel and wanting to interview you (or ask you to write a column), I have all the information I need available directly from your site.

Questions? Thoughts?

I realize that I’ve rambled on, and I’m willing to focus in on any one point and expand if asked (or follow you off on an unrelated tangent).

Tell me what you think.

*(Scott gets double points because past publicity work meant getting Mark Bowden on the Colbert Report, and that meant we got to watch a clip.)

**For those of you who might be unclear on the subject, publicity differs from marketing in that it is the act of getting something for “nothing.” “Nothing” gets quotations marks because really what you are trading on connects and information instead of money, unlike with marketing where you are spending funds on tchochkes and advertising and co-op space.

Back in Portlandia

The coffee has yet to kick in and I’m a little weirded out by how affected I am by the humidity after the glorious Denver dryness, but, all in all, I’m happy to be back in Portland. The program was fabulous and the people wonderful, but I needed to get back to my own stuff. Dorm rooms don’t really promote a warm environment, you know?

I’m still mulling over the best way to sum up the program because the topics ranged widely over the whole publishing field and I’m not sure that all of it will be that interesting to you. Not to mention if there was a PowerPoint presentation involved and the lights were turned off, I got a serious case of the nods, which is not very conducive to note taking.

I’ve set aside today to get serious with my three-hole-punch to organize my notes into one cohesive whole, so that tomorrow we can launch into the Denver Publishing recap (as well as off-topic discussions on what occurred to me while I was listening to speakers). If you have any questions about the subjects I bring up, or on the program as a whole, please let me know.

Until later then, I must unpack all the stuff I managed to collect in a month’s time. Thank goodness I drove because I hate to think what I would have been charged for trying to get this all on a plane.

This Just In: A Contest For Those Who Might Be Interested

Second Annual Warren Adler Short Story Contest

NEW YORK CITY theme

Submissions now being accepted

July 13, 2007 through January 15, 2008

New York, July 13^th --Warren Adler, the prolific writer who has penned some twenty-nine novels, among them the movie adaptations THE WAR OF THE ROSES with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner and RANDOM HEARTS with Harrison Ford, has announced that submissions are now being accepted for the Second Annual Warren Adler Short Story Contest.

“I’ve always been a fan of the short story, both as a reader and writer.” says Adler. “Although the form has been with us, one might say from the beginning of time, it has for many years declined in popularity. Thanks to the internet it is coming back in vogue stronger than ever. My goal in sponsoring the contest is to encourage and promote the art of the fictionalized short story, to restore its place as a prime literary format, and to cultivate and foster an interest in imaginative writing.”

The rules are as follows: all stories must be based on a New York City theme; submissions July 13, 2007 to January 15, 2008; entry fee $15.00; maximum length 2500 words in English; previously unpublished stories only.

The first prize story will be chosen by Adler, and announced in March 2008. The winner will receive $1000 cash, and a six month exclusive contract to publish the story on Amazon Shorts. The winner will also receive a personalized first edition copy of New York Echoes, a collection of Alder’s short stories, which will be published in March 2008.

Five stories will be chosen by Adler for the People’s Choice, and in February 2008, will be posted on http://www.warrenadler.com/ for the public to vote on their favorite. Adler will have secretly picked his number one choice from amongst the five. The People’s Choice winner will also be published and available for purchase on Amazon Shorts. The finalists will do a “live” reading at Amazon’s Theatre at Second Life, where Adler will reveal his favorite of the People’s Choice, and the winner will be announced in March 2008. All five finalists will receive a personalized first edition of New York Echoes.

Further information can be found on http://www.warrenadler.com/.