Entries tagged with “promotion” from Tools of Change for Publishing

How Should Authors Promote Themselves Online?

Kate Eltham
October 23, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (5) | Listen

As the director of an organisation for writers I was curious about the announcement of Random House's new Web toolkit to assist RH authors to set up and maintain their own Web pages.

booktrade.info reports:

... the toolkit allows authors to customise their pages with a choice of backgrounds, fonts and colours. Authors can then select different types of content to add to their pages, such as profile or biography information, links to favourite sites, audio and video clips, book reviews, bibliographies, photo galleries, blogs and newsletters.

The web pages will be hosted on a community-based website called AuthorsPlace and once authors have created their web pages they can choose whether to interact with other authors on the site, or whether to use their pages as a standalone website.

There's a couple of things worth discussing here. Firstly, a system that allows users to set up their own page and add content such as audio, video, images, etc. sounds awfully like a blog platform. If the goal is to put this power in the hands of your authors, why bother to build your own, possibly expensive, proprietary Web architecture instead of educating your authors to use Wordpress, Movable Type or Blogger for themselves?

The obvious answer would be to control the platform. No matter how much customisation users can achieve with colours, fonts, images, etc., the pages will ultimately be constrained by the limitations of the platform. This could have both advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, if Random House wants to drive attention to their authors' Web sites they only have to concentrate on doing it for the one online community instead of dividing their efforts among titles or writers. If Random House gets good at SEO this could be a powerful benefit to RH authors. On the minus side, it would presumably be very costly to keep a platform like that up to date with relevant features. Why bother to invest in the software development cycle when other companies are doing it as their core business and a lot faster? Some, like The Lazarus Corporation, are even offering artist-tailored solutions free and open source.

Secondly, I'm interested in the idea of the AuthorsPlace, because alongside Authonomy, this is another example of a community where writers talk to other writers. I question the value of this to Random House and to its authors, at least in terms of book sales. Obviously there are a lot of benefits to writers who can be supported by professional communities of interest. But I think publishers' efforts are best spent on assisting authors to connect with readers. That's a much harder task. It means you have to understand and be good at search. You have to to stick with the conversation long after the book is launched. You have to be open about, and even encourage, sharing and spreadability of digital content, even when that content is the book. (See what Paulo Coelho thinks about that.)

Finally, all this raises the much broader question of how authors should be promoted online for best outcomes. I'm a firm believer that nobody can do this better than the author themselves, but what is the role of the publisher in online promotion of their authors and titles? How long can they realistically commit resources and energy to any one particular title or writer? Who controls the message? Given that, as Mac suggested in this post earlier this week, the shift is towards two-way conversation, it would seem that the best results will be achieved by authors who are genuinely prepared to put in the time to engage in that conversation.

What do you think authors should do to promote themselves online? How much should publishers get involved?

Related Stories:

• Kate Eltham: "Publisher as brand?"
• Web Publicity Grows Up, Learns the Value of Conversation
• Web Publicity + Free = A Fighting Chance
• What Authors Can Learn from Silicon Valley
• Responsibly Assuaging Author Concerns about File Sharing and "Piracy"

What Authors Can Learn from Silicon Valley

Mac Slocum
July 21, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

Sramana Mitra of Forbes.com sees parallels between author Elle Newmark's grassroots audience development and Silicon Valley's software process:

In Silicon Valley, we do alpha and beta products -- small prototypes of our vision -- and recruit a small number of customers to gain early validation of the products' viability. These alpha and beta products, along with early customer validation, help us sell our ventures to investors and raise millions of dollars in venture money.

In Newmark's case, she spent less than $10,000 of her own money to "bootstrap" her self-publishing effort, she found customers online, and then she recruited William Morris agent Dorian Karchmar as her "investment banker," who then got her Simon & Schuster as a "venture investor." Newmark's deal with Simon & Schuster is widely rumored to include a seven-figure advance.

Related Stories:

• Web Publicity + Free = A Fighting Chance
• Artist Brand Building: An Idea Born from Free Debate's Middle Ground
• Piracy is Progressive Taxation ...
• How Do Publishers and Authors Get Paid in a "Free" World?

Trent Reznor Continues to "Get" the Value of Free Content

Andrew Savikas
May 7, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Radiohead may have gotten more of the press for their "name your price" album, but Trent Reznor continues to demonstrate that he understands the value of free content as a promotional tool, and perhaps more importantly that what he's promoting can be quite far from free. Content Nation has a nice post on the ultimate goal of free-as-promotional:

In other words, this group of artists is recognizing that content's primary value in media formats is to help people build valuable relationships. While there's money to be had in mass-produced intellectual property, the high-margin business in content is in person-to-person relationship building that results in both executed business and a more multi-dimensional relationship that can be leveraged in many more ways than mass manufacturing can manage.

Related Stories:

• Lessons for Publishers in IDG's Digital Success
  
• That Was Fast: $300 "Free" Album Sold Out
• The Price of an Album (approaching zero) and the Price of a Souvenir (sky's the limit)

Podcasts and Web Promotion Boost Authors

Mac Slocum
April 9, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

The San Francisco Chronicle profiles Scott Sigler and Seth Harwood, two authors who have used podcasting, free downloads, blogs and social media to develop audiences and attract attention from publishers. Sigler sees a connection between his efforts and public broadcasting:

Sigler ... likens his distribution method to that of public broadcasting, adding that giving away content pays off even if fewer than 10 percent of the samplers ultimately make a pledge.