Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Staying on Message: It’s all about Community

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:August 3, 2009
Post category:Media
Post comments:10 Comments

There’s a hand-painted sign that hangs over my desk at work, that my wife picked out years ago at a crafts fair in Virginia, that says:

“I’m not bossy, I just have better ideas.”

Anyone that’s worked with me, reads this blog, or follows me on Twitter, probably isn’t the least bit surprised by that. Publishing and marketing have been twin passions of mine forever — in high school, I published a newsletter for my fantasy football league, using my Commodore 64 and The Newsroom software — and I’ve been fortunate to have a day job related to them, in one form or another, for over 15 years now. I’m generally a laid-back guy, but when it comes to certain topics, I can be quite outspoken; that’s partly where the “loudpoet” moniker came from, a riff on the influential Aloud: Voices From the Nuyorican Poets Café.

At the beginning of this year, I shifted the focus of this blog firmly in the direction of those particular passions, with the goal of establishing loudpoet.com as an outlet to voice my opinions on things in the industry that had previously been limited to backchannel emails and happy hour debates with friends and colleagues. Poking back through the archives, the combination of Twitter and the Tools of Change Conference really got me going, with the discussion on the former about the latter’s “Building Communities Around Content” session leading to the first notable wave of connections being made there and traffic being driven here.

Since then, I’ve written several posts that I consider to be must-reads, including the four noted as “Features” over in the right-hand column, but the word cloud above, generated via the blog’s RSS feed at Wordle.net, highlights two prominent words that best represent what this blog is really all about: community and people.

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Is Social Publishing simply Vanity Publishing 2.0?

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:July 30, 2009
Post category:Media
Post comments:20 Comments

“Yes, Sir, there are many happy people here. There are many people here who are watching hundreds, and who think hundreds are watching them.”

Samuel Johnson, Quotes on Vanity

“Digital publishing”, “ePublishing” and “social publishing” are the buzzwords du jour; Web 2.0 business models based on the idea that eBooks are the next big thing and social media platforms and tools are the best way to sell them.

There’s seemingly a new “publisher” putting up a digital shingle every day, and while the description and details vary somewhat among them, the usual common denominators are a savvy marketer’s dream combination of truth, opinion, hype, and a dash of old-fashioned “snake oil” opportunism:

Print is dead.
The distribution system is broken.
eBooks are teh future.
Social media has made us all publishers and journalists.
Writers will do anything to get published.

That last point typically represents the digital start-ups’ primary source of income, monetizing a community of aspiring writers by selling their work back into the community, or by offering them fee-based services that allow them to do it themselves. In their ideal scenario, they double-dip.

While generally offering legitimate contracts and something resembling a distribution and marketing program — the latter of which will still fall primarily in the author’s lap — there’s a vague whiff of old-school vanity underlying the whole thing that’s bothered me from the beginning.

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The Bookstore of the Future is… a Tree Museum?

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:July 27, 2009
Post category:Media
Post comments:7 Comments

“I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.”
—Anna Quindlen

GalleyCat had a provocative post last week, “Is This the Bookstore of Tomorrow?“, spotlighting novelist Moriah Jovan’s anti-septic floorplan anchored by two Espresso machines (POD, not coffee) surrounded by workstations for searching and ordering books, with a corner kiosk for demoing eReaders, and a cash register.

Most notably, there’s not a single printed book in sight.

In her original post, “The Perfect Bookstore“, Jovan cheekily notes that her concept is going to “help [publishers and booksellers] solve all [their] problems”, derisively adding that the 2nd floor of this revolutionary bookstore “could house a coffee shop or used books or books that you wanted to order to keep in stock…”

Never mind the technophiliac focus on the Espresso (a large and expensive piece of machinery), or that eBooks currently represent only 1-2% of total annual book sales; Jovan’s approach completely misses the underlying appeal, and most sustainable premise, of a bookstore: it’s a real-life gathering place for a community.
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Keep it Simple, Stupid

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:July 21, 2009
Post category:Media Personal
Post comments:0 Comments

This fervid desire for the Web bespeaks a longing so intense that it can only be understood as spiritual. A longing indicates that something is missing in our lives. What is missing is the sound of the human voice. The spiritual lure of the Web is the promise of the return of voice. "The Longing", by David Weinberger, from The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual My wife and I celebrated our 11th anniversary this past weekend with a little family getaway to Lancaster County, PA, and had the wonderful kind of physically exhausting, mentally stimulating time that…

Three Rules for the National Poetry Slam

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:July 15, 2009
Post category:Personal
Post comments:4 Comments

Eleven years ago next month, in Austin, TX, I took one of the most life-changing thrill rides ever when I attended my first National Poetry Slam, as a member of the 1998 team representing the Nuyorican Poets Café that would go on to become their first (and still only) team to win the Championship. The victory itself was amazing, but what really struck me and lasted much, much longer was the diverse community of poets in attendance, and their passion for the event that brought them together every Summer.

The competition was fierce, and there were some who took it way too seriously (myself included!), but late at night, after all of the bouts were done and people gathered in groups of old and new friends to talk, drink and trade poems, the true spirit of the slam always shone through: “It’s not about the points, it’s about the poetry.”

I came back from that first NPS inspired and on a mission, and in September of 1998 added a regular slam series to my fledgling reading series, a little bit louder, and the rest is history.

Literally.

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Platform 201 for Busy Writers: 1,000 True Fans

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:July 14, 2009
Post category:Media
Post comments:8 Comments

Mets Fan at Shea Stadium (Queens, New York) by Luke Redmond

A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author – in other words, anyone producing works of art – needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.
—Kevin Kelly, 1,000 True Fans

The “1,000 True Fans” theory states, effectively, that 1,000 literal fanatics each spending $100/year on your stuff is all you need for a sustainable career. It’s a model for which Trent Reznor is often used as an example, and much like the discredited “Long Tail Theory” it’s based on (Kelly and Chris Anderson are colleagues at Wired), it is overly simplistic and doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny.

It does, however, offer a reference point for the next step in building an author’s platform.

Platform 101 was about laying the foundation, physically and virtually. Once you have your foundation in place, you will slowly begin to attract an audience, some of whom might one day become enthusiastic fans who will not only buy your books (and short stories, and CDs, and t-shirts, etc.) but, perhaps more importantly, will also mobilize and spread the word far and wide on your behalf, sometimes without your even having to ask.

Platform 201 is about attracting, engaging and energizing that community, and these are three fundamental points to keep in mind while doing so:

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Review: GROUNDSWELL, by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:July 11, 2009
Post category:Media Reviews
Post comments:2 Comments

Solid info and insights, coupled with clear (if sometimes incomplete) case studies make GROUNDSWELL: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies (Harvard Business School Press; 2008) ideal for the C-Suite skeptic and those trying to influence their embrace of socialization. Published last year, and working primarily from data collected in 2007, it holds up reasonably well as a “proof of concept” vehicle, and as such, is a perfect companion to Geoff Livingston’s NOW IS GONE: A Primer on New Media for Executives and Entrepreneurs.

Basically, the “groundswell” is Water Cooler 2.0 — people using technology to share their thoughts and opinions about products and services they love and loathe — and GROUNDSWELL makes a smart, practical case for listening, tapping, embracing and empowering that groundswell for the best competitive advantage of all: a passionate customer.

Co-authors Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, both analysts with Forrester Research, take pains to keep things simple, writing in a style that’s one step above “Social Media for Dummies”, presenting a step-by-step strategic approach to understanding and leveraging their “groundswell” premise which wisely focuses on PEOPLE and OBJECTIVES before technology.

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