Entries tagged with “publicity” from Tools of Change for Publishing
Twitter Scorecard for Publishers
Mike Hendrickson
May 21, 2009
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Recently Publisher's Weekly published an article The Twitter Scorecard that showed which Publishers were using Twitter. I found the piece missing key elements that would provide more insight to their question "So who is twittering, and how effectively?" I believe that if you are asking how effectively we are using Twitter, there is considerable more data needed than was presented. In my opinion, the number of Followers is not a complete measure of effectiveness. In fairness, PW did not say they were attempting to be comprehensive or complete in their scorecard, so I thought I would provide the data that is available mixed with some of my own obtained by scraping. So, I'll attempt to fill-in the scorecard a bit more.
First a note on who is behind the publisher accounts. O'Reilly as a company has oodles of Tweeters who blog about work, life, interests, etc., including @timoreilly who is nearing the half-million followers threshold. I suspect other publishers have the same army of tweeters too, but the data below is is just for the publisher account only. Oftentimes, these sort of accounts are run by PR groups in a Publishing company.
Below, you will find the same list of publishers contained in the original article with the addition of the following column headers and data:
Pub_Twitter is the Publisher account on Twitter. This list was created by PW and am not sure what the criteria was. Followers is the number of people that are following the publisher. These numbers are already off as many of these publishers have added many new followers since the original writing. I kept the same number that PW reported. Following is how many users the publisher follows. Updates is how many tweets the publisher has posted since the account was created. Content is the most popular words the publisher uses in their tweets. Url is a link to a wordle that visualizes the corpus of tweets for the publisher. At the bottom of the table, you will see All Publishers which shows averages and the link includes all words in a visual wordle.
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Pub_Twitter |
Followers |
Following |
Updates |
Content |
URL |
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1,581 |
390 |
495 |
Book, New, Read, RT |
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1,809 |
1,813 |
257 |
Book, ChetTheDog , Dog, New |
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1,987 |
1,125 |
244 |
Blood, Page, Free, Literary |
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5,003 |
5,296 |
4185 |
Green, RT, Thanks, Book |
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2,176 |
0 |
0 |
--- |
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1,057 |
622 |
137 |
Lost, RT, Pygmy, New |
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516 |
387 |
16 |
Book, Check, Mason, tinyurl |
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3,726 |
3,004 |
671 |
Thanks, RT, Book, UR |
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268 |
59 |
297 |
Wetlands, Hely , Books, tinyurl |
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2,187 |
159 |
776 |
Harlequin, Romance, Author, Free |
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805 |
459 |
149 |
RT, Book, Story, Read |
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5,999 |
6,238 |
1359 |
RT, Author, Scarecrow, Book |
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7,340 |
3,640 |
2073 |
O'Reilly, RT, New, Book |
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678 |
834 |
182 |
Announced, List, Best, Times |
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892 |
162 |
58 |
Forgot, New, Tin, Books |
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3,995 |
2,056 |
1525 |
Post, Tor, Blog , New |
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1,643 |
1,278 |
237 |
RT, Tonight, Book, New |
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783 |
448 |
348 |
Vintage, Book, Read, Books |
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1,485 |
562 |
174 |
RT, Book, Great, Books |
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All Publishers(avg) |
2,312 |
1,502 |
694 |
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I am thinking of making this a quarterly scorecard for 2009. Before I do that, are there meaningful and obtainable measures you would like to see added to the scorecard? What are the real measures: Sales increases? Information disseminated more efficiently and targeted? Increasing the feeling of community? What elements do you think should be measured in a Twitter Scorecard? Finally, if you are a publisher using Twitter and want to be included in future scorecards, let me know. I am mikeh {at} oreilly {dot} com or @mikehatora on Twitter.
Why Blogging and Social Media Shouldn't be Ignored
Mac Slocum
November 19, 2008
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Consistent blogging and Web-based interaction often fall by the wayside when other projects demand attention, but venture capitalist Fred Wilson makes a compelling argument for keeping connectivity on the front burner. He charts the trajectory of a recent post focusing on Boxee, one of his investment companies: it went from a blog, to Techmeme, and then looped back into tangible interest for the company.
I know that one person out of the 100 I invited this morning will be incredibly impactful for boxee. It could be five people, it could be ten. Who knows?
But in the world of social media, word of mouth and word of link marketing, it is connectors and influencers like all of you that make the difference.
And that's one of the main reasons I keep writing, commenting, discussing, and participating in blogs, tumblr, twitter, disqus, and the social media world at large.
How Should Authors Promote Themselves Online?
Kate Eltham
October 23, 2008
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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?
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.
Twitter Tips for Publishers
Mac Slocum
September 4, 2008
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Mark Bertils makes the case for Twitter use and offers eight tips for tweeting publishers. From Index // mb:
For a minimal investment of time, you can ping a heap of people. Why wouldn't a book publisher want to do that? Truth is, most already do. Email newsletters blast-out to book readers from all over. Publishers' feeds and podcasts do the same. Twitter is yet another great way to keep people engaged.
BookTour and IndieBound Make Author Events Hyper-Local
Peter Brantley
August 26, 2008
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BookTour, which provides author-generated pages and a listing of author tour events, has integrated their database with IndieBound. This is an interesting model, which obviously could expand in its breadth. From the BookTour blog:
... the trouble is neighborhood bookstores are all different (that's what makes them great). That made it hard to dump all their data into our hoppers in one go ...
Now, throughout BookTour, events taking place at IndieBound-represented bookstores will be added automatically to our database. Equally important, on both author and venue pages, when an event is taking place at an IndieBound-repped store, you'll have the option to purchase the book directly from that store.
Author Paulo Coelho Illustrates the Upside of Openness
Mac Slocum
August 7, 2008
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Budding authors may not be able to duplicate the success of Paulo Coelho, but Coelho's willingness to experiment across mediums is certainly worth studying. From Jeff Jarvis' Guardian column:
Coelho is the thoroughly modern author. But he still believes in print. For him, this isn't a matter of print v digital. It's a question of what comes when you add digital to print. What does it bring him? "It gives me a lot of joy," he said, "because writing is something you do alone." He recalled the night in 2006 when he read that he had become the second best-selling author in the world. He was bursting. "My God, my wife is sleeping. How can I share this news with anybody?" Now he can shout it from the mountaintop of his blog.
Coelho's embrace of digital outlets is liberal, even by Web standards. In addition to his blogging and social media efforts, Coelho set up a site that aggregates P2P links to free (pirated) versions of his books. He briefly discusses his P2P moves in a New Statesman column:
... I knew from previous experience that the free-sharing of my book over the internet would increase its visibility, so I didn't hesitate to post it on peer-to-peer websites and on my blog.
The more I've ventured into the virtual world, the more I have realised that the internet has a logic of its own and its credo is: share everything freely.
News Roundup: Sony Reader Now Supports EPUB, Esquire Using E Ink on September Cover, What Authors Can Learn from Silicon Valley
Mac Slocum
July 25, 2008
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Sony Reader Now Supports EPUB and Digital Editions
The new firmware for the Sony Reader (model PRS-505) supports EPUB and Adobe Digital Editions. From MobileRead:
I can now confirm that this particular speculation seems to have proved out: the new firmware (available sometime today, July 24th) will include support for both epub and Adobe's Digital Editions. It will also include support for PDF reflow, which is something we've long been looking for. As an extra added bonus, the new firmware will support DE's DRM system for both epub and PDF. However you may feel about DRM, this support for it, along with PDF reflow, means that all those PDF e-books available from many public libraries are now in play on the Reader for the first time, so dust off those library cards, folks!
First E Ink Magazine Cover Coming in September
Esquire will use E Ink technology to declare "the 21st Century Begins Now" on 100,000 flashing copies of its September issue. David Granger, Esquire's editor in chief, discusses the first E Ink-driven magazine cover with the New York Times:
... on its own, the magazine will run out of juice after 90 days. Mr.Granger knows some will see the cover as a gimmick -- but he says he thinks the technology behind it, which has been used for supermarket displays but never embedded in a magazine, speaks to the possibilities of print. (Continue reading)
What Authors Can Learn from Silicon Valley
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.
Web Publicity + Free = A Fighting Chance
Mac Slocum
July 16, 2008
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Sci-fi author Scott Sigler uses podcasts, giveaways and grassroots Web marketing to build interest in his work. We've covered Sigler in the past, but his recent interview with The Independent illustrates the value lesser-known writers can derive from Web-based brand building and free distribution:
Sigler's thinking -- and this is the revolutionary bit -- is that it's worth making commercial sacrifices to secure a fan base, because fans will always want physical copies of the books, even if they've already heard an audio version for free.
"The only way to get people's attention these days is to give them something for free," Sigler says. "If someone walks into a bookstore, why would they pick up a Scott Sigler when there's a Stephen King? They won't. So I give my content away, give readers a chance to try it for free. And if they like my stuff, then guess what: they'll go out and buy the book."
Mistake Shows Need for Clear Communication in Piracy Discussions
Mac Slocum
July 2, 2008
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BusinessWeek recently took a look at the new generation of Web content recognition systems, and right up front the article illustrates one of the essential problems with current piracy discussions: conclusions and misinterpretations fueled by emotion and ambiguity.
In this case, the incorrect conclusion was mine. It began with this passage:
For a media executive, the appeal of a content recognition system is clear. With a glance, a publisher or studio head can plainly see where, when, and how their content is being viewed. In a demonstration for BusinessWeek earlier this year, Attributor executives showed how many times scenes from "The Sopranos" had appeared on 20 leading video sites since they first aired on TV. In all, 1,500 scenes from 52 episodes had been viewed 32 million times. For Time Warner's (TWX) HBO, those viewings might have brought in more than $1 million, said Attributor Chief Executive Officer Jim Brock. [Emphasis added.]
The $1 million figure pushed my buttons. Brock was using piracy fears and unsubstantiated figures to further an agenda ... or so I thought. The author of the article, Peter Burrows, clarified the $1 million figure in a reply to an email I sent: It turns out that Brock was estimating revenue from advertising that did, or could have, run next to the "Sopranos" clips. I'm glad I asked, because there's a big difference between an overlooked opportunity and outright theft.
If we're talking about missed revenue from advertising rather than more inflammatory lost revenue from piracy, then we can further the discussion to advertising-based opportunities and solutions. But if a big figure is thrown out and there's no sense of where it comes from or how it applies, the discussion invariably turns emotional -- i.e. "we're losing money to pirates!", or in my case "more piracy doublespeak!" An exec informed of a $1 million missed opportunity tends to react differently than someone suffering from a $1 million theft (measured analysis vs. scorched-earth cease and desist campaigns).
This example, including the clarification, showcases the importance of clear communication when dealing with an inherently murky topic like piracy. As we've noted previously, piracy is not clear cut. It's natural to condemn the moral and financial violations of content pirates, but outright dismissal could obscure publicity or branding opportunities that yield better long-term results than Draconian countermeasures. Alternative perspectives should at least be considered before lawsuits are launched ... and you need reliable information to reach useful -- and correct -- conclusions.
"Ask a Ninja" Creators Use Web for Shot at Hollywood
Mac Slocum
May 22, 2008
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While we all wait for the digital domain to grow up and replace established revenue streams, there are lessons to be learned from the digital pioneers who have already cracked the sustainability issue.
Silicon Alley Insider breaks down the per-episode and annual revenue of the popular "Ask a Ninja" Web video series. According to the Alley Insider, "Ninja" founders Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine net $3,900 per spot. They produce 40 episodes a year, so their annual take-home is around $156,000.
"Ask a Ninja's" Web success is unusual. It consistently draws 2-3 million views per month (a huge audience in Web terms), and its ad inventory is managed by Federated Media, an outside firm that works with high-traffic Web sites [disclosure: Tim O'Reilly is an investor in FM]. The increased attention from the "Ninja" series has also led to burgeoning movie careers: Nichols and Sarine are working on an update of the B-movie classic, "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes." Nichols discussed the "Tomatoes" deal on his blog:
By going to straight to features, the entire showbiz world is still open to us. We'll be able to move freely up and down the aspirational chain without being pigeonholed as the web guys. And actually we'll be even more valuable since we have a deep understanding of the new media landscape.
We want to have careers that stretch into decades. That means diversifying and trying [to] succeed in larger, more established businesses.
The real lesson here lies in the two-pronged revenue approach Nichols and Sarine have employed: they've achieved a degree of short-term stability by monetizing their Web success, but they've also used the increased notoriety to create new opportunities in the old-school film industry. Similar motivations catalyze many of the innovations and experiments in the "free" meme we've discussed in recent months.
Profile of Hay House: "An Attitude is Not a Business Plan"
Andrew Savikas
May 19, 2008
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A recent New York Times article on self-help publisher Hay House is a glimpse into the fascinating life of founder Louise Hay. Whether you believe she really cured her own cancer is up to you, but beyond the human interest part of the profile are some great insights about publishing, including the importance of keeping practical business concerns in mind:
But an attitude is not a business plan. Hay House was not, in the beginning, very well run. The employees were mainly “people I knew,” Hay says, “a friend, or somebody who turned up, or somebody who wanted to work for Louise Hay. ... Meanwhile, large trade publishers, like HarperSanFrancisco and Tarcher/Putnam, were seeing the potential in New Age and investing heavily. Hay House would have failed quickly, or been bought out, but for the vision of Reid Tracy, who joined the company as an accountant in 1988 and became president in 1998. He invested his own money, too, and now owns 35 percent of the company; he is the sole shareholder besides Louise Hay herself, and everybody at Hay House, including its founder, considers Tracy the true leader.
That itself isn't terribly novel. But Reid Tracy's recognition that for authors (and savvy publishers) books are often just a means of enhancing their reputation in order to sell speaking engagements and ancillary products presaged the current buzz around using free content as a promotional tool:
[Tracy] realized more than 10 years ago that much of the money in New Age was to be made in items other than books: in card decks, audio tapes and page-a-day calendars. Major authors like Wayne Dyer and Marianne Williamson, who first came to Hay House just for ancillary products, later abandoned big trade houses to also do their books with Hay House.
And while the content Hay House published arguably couldn't be farther from what we publish, O'Reilly editor Andy Oram (who shared the original article link) pointed out some notable parallels to our eponymous brand:
- They realized that their authors had many channels for making sales besides conventional books, and they use all these channels to bolster one other.
- They recognize that their authors' work complements each other, and bring their authors together in group seminars.
- They play up the celebrity of their founder, who tends to choose trusted people based on intuition.
- They have a brand that goes far beyond the significance of any single offering, and fans accept what they think up next while staying true to the brand.
- They tend to follow their star authors wherever they take their ideas, and trust them.
- They're very self-consciously branching out into specialized products that also hold interest for children.
Studio Notes DVD Sales Increase Amidst Digital Distribution
Mac Slocum
May 2, 2008
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Recent developments in the movie world suggest that digital delivery and availability help the bottom line.
Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes announced during a recent investor call that Warner Brothers will soon release DVDs and video-on-demand (VOD) titles on the same day. The company -- like all Hollywood studios -- has long employed a multi-week delay between a film's DVD release and its availability through on-demand rental systems. However, interesting results from a Warner Brothers pilot program could mark the end of this staggered system. From The New York Times:
Warner Brothers has been experimenting with the new approach [simultaneous release] for the last few months. It has found that DVD rentals only fell by 3 percent to 5 percent and sales of DVDs actually increased, perhaps because of the increased promotion and fewer used rental discs available for sale.
Apple and other movie studios are already taking note.
A portion of Warners' increased DVD sales could plug in to the "souvenir" purchasing seen in other industries. At its core, this concept is driven by a simple chain of events: digital distribution boosts accessibility, which increases awareness and -- for a subset of the viewing population -- inspires customers to purchase physical copies of a film.
This line of thinking (digital distribution + accessibility + awareness = revenue) drives envelope-pushing initiatives, like intentional distribution through P2P networks. On the publishing side, it's also why the Kindle's killer app resides in the device's built-in Whispernet connectivity, which makes it easy for consumers to find, sample and purchase material. Some of these same people will likely convert into hard-copy customers as well.
BitTorrent as a Book Publicity Tool
Mac Slocum
March 21, 2008
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Free copies of The Cult of Mac and The Cult of iPod are available for download through the popular BitTorrent tracker, The Pirate Bay. Finding book downloads on BitTorrent isn't unusual, but this situation differs because the books were posted by the author and publisher.
Leander Kahney, author of both books, explains the move on his blog:
We came up with the idea after reading about the amazing success to bestselling author Paulo Coelho, who seeds his own books to file-sharing networks and then promotes them on his blog. Coelho claims great success with “pirating” his own books, saying it has had a slow but dramatic effect on sales.
Bill Pollock of No Starch Press, publisher of both Cult books, is taking a waiting-and-watching approach to the free dowloads:
I’ve been in publishing for just over 20 years and my training has not been to give books away. But I think there’s something to this and logic tells me that if we increase the visibility of our titles, we’ll sell more books.
The definitive connection between downloads and sales is hard to pin down, but O'Reilly's 2007 case study concluded that free digital copies do not harm book sales.
(Via TorrentFreak)
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