There are myriad ways to connect with readers nowadays, both directly and indirectly, but you can’t do it all, nor should you try. Whether you’re a novelist or journalist, poet or pundit, striking the right balance is critical to implementing and sustaining an effective marketing strategy. From websites to social media to live events, this presentation focuses on the value of owned channels, offline/analog engagement, and how to make sure you’re not wasting your time.
Tag: Community
You Can Go Home Again
I’ve noted often in the past that most of what I preach and practice when it comes to marketing and community-building, I learned during those four years of Mondays, and by the end of the night last Monday, I realized how big a hole I’d created when I walked away from that part of my life. So, I’m back.
The REAL Tools of Change? People
Yesterday’s announcement that O’Reilly is retiring TOC came as a bit of a surprise at first, but in retrospect, it makes sense. Its focus on tools was a strength in the early days of the digital transition, but as the new shiny wore off, self-proclaimed “disruptors” faded away quietly, and viable business models came to light, it became clear that the tools of change that counted most were the people in the trenches, not the provocative pundits with plenty of ideas and little or no skin in the game.
Don’t Stop Running
The feeling of running across the finish line, whether it’s a one-mile walk for charity or a local 10k, an Olympic sprint or the Boston Marathon, is supposed to be a special one. It’s personal accomplishment mixed with exuberant community connection; an emotional high laced with varying degrees of physical exhaustion. It’s not ever supposed to be a moment where death might lash out randomly. Where cowards make political statements. Where fear and suspicion take root.
Discovery is Publishers’ Problem; Readers are Doing Just Fine
Never mind the folly of dismissing Goodreads, a social network dedicated to books with 13m+ members and is steadily growing, or even Pinterest, where Random House has inexplicably attracted 1.5m followers, but the very idea that “something is really, chronically missing in online retail discovery” is arguably contradicted by Amazon’s 2012 results, suggesting that “online retail discovery” isn’t really a problem for readers. It’s a problem for publishers.
You Can’t Manage What You Don’t Measure: On Social Media & Publishing
For the third consecutive year, I had the pleasure of doing a presentation on social media for my friend Peter Costanzo’s M.S. in Publishing: Digital and Print Media class at NYU last night, and while preparing for it, I was surprised by how much has changed since the first time, and how much hasn’t. Pinterest and Tumblr are bigger deals now (or at least perceived as such), while Twitter is steadily maturing (from a business perspective), Facebook changes its approach every six months, and email is still the underrated king of the hill.
Penguin’s Modest Self-Publishing Gamble
Being sold for only slightly more than the revenue you brought in the prior year isn’t exactly a signal that anyone believes the company has a lot of growth potential, especially not one whose roster theoretically covers the full gamut of shiny author services so many seem to believe are publishing’s revenue streams of the future. Plus, ASI was apparently on the block for a while with no buyer, so I find Penguin’s CEO John Makinson’s claim odd, as reported by Publisher’s Lunch, that he expects there will be a “new and growing category of professional authors who are going to gravitate towards the ASI solution rather than the free model.” So then, what’s the real angle here?