Entries tagged with “blogs” from Tools of Change for Publishing
Conversation is the New King
Mac Slocum
January 5, 2009
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Kate Eltham calls out publishers who blog through a PR lens and points the way to publisher blogs that fully embrace the medium:
It used to be common wisdom that content is king. But the popularity of social media has demonstrated that what internet users are really seeking is connection. A blog may be a cheap and easy way of publishing web content but its biggest strength is that it is a platform for conversation. [Emphasis included in original post.]
[TOC Webcast] Social Media for Publishers
Mac Slocum
December 12, 2008
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Tools of Change for Publishing will host "Social Media for Publishers," a free webcast with presenter Chris Brogan, on Tuesday, Dec. 16 at 1 p.m. eastern (10 a.m. pacific).
Webcast Overview
So much of what we hear about blogging, podcasting, social networks, and the rest of the social media toolkit seems to be arbitrary, overly time-consuming, pie-in-the-sky. We might hear the occasional good strategy, but rarely do we understand how to put it into action. And how much will any of this cost you in resources and money? Meet with Chris Brogan for a not-too-techy and not-too-light dive into the world of social media from the mindset of a publisher.
Publishers Need to Get In on the Conversation
Peter Brantley
November 19, 2008
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Kassia Krozser has a Cluetrain-like manifesto for publishers. From Booksquare:
It's time to get your hands dirty, to dig into the real-world conversation. It's a weird thing, and sometimes awkward and uncomfortable, especially if you're accustomed to public relations-speak and the cheerleader behavior that accompanies marketing messages. When you talk directly to real people who read and buy books, they tune you out when you try to stay on message. If they wanted to rehash cover copy, they'd read the back of the book.
Web Publicity Grows Up, Learns the Value of Conversation
Mac Slocum
October 20, 2008
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Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, co-authors of the upcoming book Trust Agents, share a few ideas for drumming up pre-publication interest in a title. Some of their suggestions are straight from the Web publicity playbook (ebook previews, blogging during the writing process), but they're also exploring engagement through online events and workshops -- two things that usually happen after publication.
I hadn't considered this until reading Brogan's blog post, but many social media publicity techniques aren't particularly social. Podcasts, blog posts and Facebook groups are technologically progressive, but there's a significant difference between a publicity update and an open invitation.
Twitter serves as an example here: The best Twitter users engage their audience through curated links, retweets, commentary and discussion. This stands in contrast to the auto-generated Twitter blasts employed by many media organizations (they're easy to spot -- look for the abrupt truncations).
Brogan's post -- and efforts from people like Seth Godin -- show that Web-based publicity is following the same developmental trajectory as blogging (and Twitter, although it hasn't reached puberty just yet). The top-down messaging that marks the early days of a Web effort eventually matures into a two-way conversation -- and that's when things get interesting.
TOC Recommended Reading
Mac Slocum
September 25, 2008
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Direct-To-Fan: Radiohead, Marillion And The End Of Labels (Robert Andrews, paidContent.org)
80s rock group Marillion, hardly a Top 10 draw nowadays, engages its fans so closely that they funded its latest album to the tune of £360,000. Erik Nielsen, who masterminded the strategy as MD of Marillion's Intact Records business arm, told our London EconMusic conference: "About a decade ago, we set out to release the bonds of the record companies over the artists. We worked out that we needed 5,000 fans to finance an album - when 12,000 did, we thought 'well, we can do this now'. We've continued to do that since 1999." By releasing the digital version of that album specifically on to P2P networks this month - "just to see what might happen, because we knew it was going to happen anyway" - the band has tripled its normal sales of physical deluxe copies.
State of the Blogosphere: The How of Blogging (Technorati)
One in four bloggers spends ten hours or more blogging each week. The most influential bloggers are even more prolific. Using Technorati Index data, we analyzed the posting and tagging behaviors of bloggers according to their Technorati Authority. Over half of the Technorati top authority bloggers post five or more times per day, and they are twice as likely to tag their blog posts compared to other bloggers.
Why the Financial Times can charge for metered content (Jason Preston, Eat Sleep Publish)
Those people who are just passing through and "joining the conversation" can be given free access, while those people who are your actual customers will be asked to pay for their content. By metering their content instead of simply throttling it like the New York Times did, FT is able to keep their content out from behind a wall while still charging for it. [Emphasis included in original post.]
Boston Globe Spins Off Weekly Sports Tabloid
Mac Slocum
September 25, 2008
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Newspapers are turning to niches these days. The latest example is "OT," a new weekly sports tabloid from the Boston Globe:
The 24-page, full-color, oversize tabloid - called OT, which stands for "Our Town/Our Teams" ... costs 50 cents and will be published every Thursday ... The publication's goal is to provide coverage of professional sports teams that goes beyond daily news ...
... OT joins a growing roster of niche publications created by the Globe in the past two years. They include Lola, a monthly magazine targeted at young women; FB, a monthly with a name that stands for "Fashion Boston"; and Design New England, a bimonthly magazine about home and garden design.
The shifting media landscape has turned the Boston sports journalism market into a game of musical chairs in the last year. Reporters and columnists are bouncing between national outlets, the Globe, the Boston Herald, local television and radio stations, and upstart publications. Boston-based sports reporters used to be closely associated with their media organizations, but in recent years a handful have boosted their individual brands through simultaneous relationships with newspapers, broadcast stations, Web sites and personal blogs.
TOC Recommended Reading
Mac Slocum
August 14, 2008
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Could the iPhone be a Kindle Killer? (Bill Trippe, Gilbane Publishing Practice Blog)
Here's a project I would love to do if I had the time--a face-off between Kindle, the iPhone, the Sony Reader, an eBook Technologies ETI-1, and a few other devices. Take a few book types--novel, textbook, graphical book, business document to begin with--and create a feature matrix and evaluation criteria.
Random Ebook Thoughts From A Jetlagged Mind (Kassia Krozser, Booksquare)
Here's a truth: ebooks sell far better than numbers from traditional publishers indicate. This is because there's a huge market for erotica out there. Women buy erotic ebooks instead of purchasing physical books because, well, if you're female and over thirty, you've been taught that good girls don't go there. Actually, good girls do. They just do it under the radar.
Why blog publishing 'failed' in the UK (Ashley Norris, TechCrunch UK)
... many brands and their agency planers have chosen to play it safe and will work with established media brands or mega portals like MSN, even when the ads themselves will be seen by a less focussed and often an inappropriate audience
Photo Blog Shows Innovation Still Alive in Media Orgs
Mac Slocum
August 6, 2008
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Alan Taylor, a Web developer at the Boston Globe, hit the sweet spot between immersive storytelling and simple technology with his photo blog, The Big Picture. Taylor discussed the genesis of the blog with Waxy.org in a June interview. Here's a few notable excerpts relevant to publishers:
I have an advantage in that my main role is as a developer here, so I could build all my own templates, format my own style, and so on. I sort of bulldozed some things through though, like extra width, few ads, and I made it simple internally by doing it mostly on my own, no requests for development time, marketing or promotion.
Taylor's photo selection process combines technology and editorial curation. He selects photos from Web searches, photography sites, and wire services. Then he uses custom scripts to extract meta data and resize images for the blog.
When I find an image I like, I save it to a local folder until I get about 25 or so good ones to choose from. Then I open all 25 in Photoshop, arrange the windows in a horizontal tile and drag them around to get a rough ordering that makes sense. Then I start to edit out images that don't make the cut, run a couple of recorded Photoshop Actions to size the images, and do some hand-cropping if necessary.
On his personal site, Taylor explains the simple ideas that brought The Big Picture together:
When I see quality photography consigned to the archives, or when I see bandwidth readily given up to video streams of dubious quality, or when I see photo galleries that act as ad farms, punishing viewers into a click-click-click experience just to drive page views - those times are the times I'm glad I was able to get this project off the ground (many thanks to my friends within boston.com)
The Big Picture brought in 1.5 million page views in its first 20 days; phenomenal numbers for any upstart blog. More importantly, the site shows how tech skillsets and big media resources (those wire services aren't cheap) can catalyze innovation within a large publishing organization.
TOC Recommended Reading
Mac Slocum
July 24, 2008
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Lessons Learned from myebook and LinkedIn (Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 Blog)
Where are the "view comments" and "send to a friend" buttons on my Kindle? They don't exist, at least not with Kindle 1.0. But why shouldn't I be able to take pieces of the book I'm reading and send them along to my friends with Kindles for their review? And all those notes and comments I've already embedded in some of my Kindle books/newspapers/magazines...why can't I share those with my Kindle friends as well?
Why Abundance Should Breed Optimism: A Second Reply to Nick Carr (Clay Shirky - Britannica Blog)
Every past technology I know of that has increased the number of producers and consumers of written material, from the alphabet and papyrus to the telegraph and the paperback, has been good for humanity.
The founder of ArtsJournal talks about arts and new media (Crosscut Seattle)
As users have more access to more information on the Web, the sheer amount becomes overwhelming. So increasingly you have to depend on curators -- other people -- to find the good stuff that you want to see over time. So you find the curator whom you trust.
Guardian Blazes New Media Trail with paidContent.org Acquisition
Mac Slocum
July 12, 2008
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According to Kara Swisher, The Guardian Media Group has purchased ContentNext, publisher of paidContent.org, for more than $30 million. ReadWriteWeb says this acquisition and separate open-data initiatives have pushed The Guardian to the head of the media pack:
What do you get when you combine cutting edge tech openness with some of the leading new media publishers online? A kick ass publisher ready for the 21st century, hopefully. Meanwhile the rest of the newspaper industry struggles to survive attacks from Craigslist.
The Upside of Publisher Blogs
Mac Slocum
June 27, 2008
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Booksquare's Kassia Krozser explains the benefits of publisher blogs:
Just as authors need to better market themselves and their books, so do publishers. While the audience for a publisher website is diverse -- authors, booksellers, journalists, agents, readers, and more -- talking about books on your website the same way you talk about books in your catalog simply isn't cutting it. In printed material, you have various constraints. On the web, you have the ability to do something special: tell the world what excites you, the publisher, about a particular book.
The Rise of "Found" Media
Peter Brantley
May 20, 2008
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Alissa Quart's editorial in the Columbia Journalism Review compares "Lost Media" (magazines, newspapers) with "Found Media" (blogs, Web efforts, etc.), and how different generations interpret journalism's current standing:
Right now, journalism is more or less divided into two camps, which I will call Lost Media and Found Media. I went to the Nieman conference partially because I wanted to see how the forces creating this new division are affecting and afflicting the Lost Media world that I love best, not on the institutional level, but for reporters and writers themselves.
To be a Found Media journalist or pundit, one need not be elite, expert, or trained; one must simply produce punchy intellectual property that is in conversation with groups of other citizens. Found Media-ites don't tend to go to editors for approval, but rather to their readers and to their blog community. In many cases, they disdain the old models, particularly newspapers, which they see as having calcified over the decades, and, according to generally youthful Found Media logic, in deep need of a re-think, using all of youth's advantages: time and the ability to instantly summon a crowd. For Found Media's young journalists and bloggers, the attitude toward our craft tends not to be one of mourning for the ashram gone. Rather, it is of not needing a guru at all.
Roundup: Borders Mulling Sale, Blogs to Books
Mac Slocum
March 20, 2008
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Borders Considers Sale
The Wall Street Journal says Borders is exploring business options, including a partial or full sale. Barnes & Noble is considered a top suitor, notes DealBook.
Fractal Press Taps Blogosphere for Anthologies
Fractal Press is working with personal finance bloggers to develop a print anthology. The final product, expected in April, will be a print-on-demand book that aggregates best-of-the-blogosphere posts. Fractal Press co-founder Navanit Arakeri says authors will receive a percentage of book sales.
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