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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

6Qs: Maria Schneider, Editor Unleashed

Maria Schneider, Editor Unleashed
Maria Schneider, Editor Unleashed

“I don’t know if there’s any light at the end of the tunnel for publishers, but I think the future for writers is bright.”

–Maria Schneider, Editor Unleashed

I had the pleasure of working with the Editor Unleashed herself, Maria Schneider, for about 18 months, back when we were both with Writer’s Digest — as Editor (her) and Ad Director (me) — and am happy to still call her a friend despite no longer being corporate colleagues and with more than 600 miles separating us.

Maria is a smart, savvy writer AND editor, who understands the difference between the two, and who fully grasps the integrated world publishing has become, able to speak fluently in print and digital. Her ability to brainstorm new ideas that work from multiple angles without ever compromising her editorial integrity made my job much easier, and her outspoken, engaging personality has always been refreshing.

Her openness to new ideas and engaging personality allowed her to hit the ground running when she left Writer’s Digest last year, immediately launching her own website on October 8, 2008 with a post entitled, “So here’s how I got here…“, adding a forum two weeks later, and never looking back. Since then, she’s been offering near-daily content, featuring inspiring writing prompts and invaluable resources; interviews with successful agents, editors, and authors; and sharing her own hard-won insights with an appreciative and steadily growing community of aspiring and professional writers.

I’m delighted to have her as the first in a new series of interviews with insightful publishing and marketing professionals — 6Qs: Maria Schneider, Editor Unleashed.

It’s been just over six months since you were “unleashed” and went freelance. What’s surprised you, in a positive way, and what hasn’t quite gone according to plan?
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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Stop Interrupting; Listen, Engage, Earn Attention

Youre not listening anyway. by MadRussianPhotography
You're not listening anyway. by MadRussianPhotography

You know the stereotype of the guy on the first date who can’t stop talking about himself, only to wonder why he doesn’t get a kiss at the end of the night, never mind a second date?

That guy is like advertising.

In the latest flare-up of the “print is dead” debate, Michael Josefowicz’ provocative article for MediaShift entitled “The Fallacy of the ‘Print Is Dead’ Meme” has generated some interesting feedback, partly for daring to counter the meme, and partly for clinging to the ad-supported model that has pushed many newspapers and magazines onto the endangered list:

[T]o extrapolate from personal experience to a statement about what is going to happen in the world doesn’t work. But that’s exactly what many of the people foretelling the death of print are doing.

That’s because most of the public discourse tends to be dominated by information junkies and there is little doubt that if you’re an information junkie, the web is the way to go. But the reality is that info-junkies are only a small tribe. They consume the news at a prodigious rate and the web is the fastest way to satisfy their appetite. Thus, they’re also the most vocal tribe — so it’s easy to get the impression that theirs is the most widely held conclusion. But if you listen to some of the discourse, it soon becomes apparent that it’s only one way to look at it…

Because every business understands the value of print advertising, the trick is only to make the buy for a print/web ad combo easy and affordable.

Responding to MediaBistro’s highlighting of the article, I noted: “I agree with Josefowicz that print isn’t dead, but he’s wrong about advertising; that ship has sailed. Interruption IS dead.”

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Attack of the Social Media Gurus

Scream Duck at it again. by digicolleen
Scream Duck at it again. by digicolleen (permission granted)

Have you heard, yet? EVERYBODY is on Twitter!

It’s grown 1,382,000% since last year!

Even William Shatner is using it!

This may come as a surprise but I don’t have a degree in acting. http://tinyurl.com/ct6sut Please subscribe to my YouTube channel

1:54 PM Mar 21st from web

Also, Google is dead; Facebook is broken; and those dreadlocked guys with the funny dance moves are lip-synching!

Okay, fine, Rob and Fab really couldn’t sing, but if any of the 8 million people who bought their album back in 1989 did so because of their videos and dancing, they deserved to be duped. The rest is hyperbolic BS that’s been floating around the Twitterverse lately, mostly promoted by self-proclaimed social media gurus trying to make a quick buck, and websites like Mashable, which recently changed its tagline to “The Social Media Guide”, looking to capitalize on a trend and boost their ad impressions.

Seriously, can we get a little perspective here?

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Advertising is Failure

Day 214 - White Noise by FadderUri
Day 214 - White Noise by FadderUri

Digital guru Steve Rubel interviews Jeff Jarvis, author of “What Would Google Do?“, who makes an interesting point that I suspect many marketers are going to have in the back of their minds when the economy ultimately turns around and they reassess their marketing strategies and measure the results of their responses to the meltdown.

Mr. Rubel: Are customer service and peer-to-peer advocacy the new advertising? And if so, how does that change the ad industry?

Mr. Jarvis: Advertising is failure.

If you have a great product or service customers sell for you and a great relationship with those customers, you don’t need to advertise.

OK, that’s going too far. There is still a need to advertise — because customers don’t know about your product or a change in it or because, in the case of Apple, you want to add a gloss to the product and its customers. But in the book, I suggest that marketers should imagine stopping all advertising and then ask where they would spend their first dollar.

In an age when competition and pricing are opened up online and when your product is your ad, you need to spend your first dollar on the quality of your product or service. If you’re Zappos, you spend the next dollar on customer service and call that marketing. If the next dollar goes to advertising, there has to be a reason — and if the product is good enough, that reason may fade away.

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Hitting the Reset Button on emedia

Ultimately, publishers' primary focus should be to curate great content that people are willing to pay for, and to organize and nuture a community around that content and the authors who create it. That community will exist in multiple places and spaces, physical and virtual, and it will flow into whatever container suits it best.

Continue ReadingHitting the Reset Button on emedia
An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Building and Curating Your Community, Part I

Solitary Drinker in the Revolution Lounge by Bill Gracey
Solitary Drinker in the Revolution Lounge by Bill Gracey

With all of the negative news of late about the collapse of the publishing industry and the “death of print”, combined with the report that Captain America, Chesley Sullenberger, “scored a $3.2 million two-book deal with HarperCollins’ William Morrow imprint” for a memoir and a book of inspirational poetry, one might understandably think that jumping into the publishing game right now would be like investing in Ruth Alpern’s new hedge fund based on the advice of Jim Cramer, no?

Actually, no; not at all.

While the major publishing houses continue their suicidal death spiral, and being a mid-list author or aspiring newbie at one of them is less appealing than it’s ever been, this is arguably the proverbial moment of opportunity in a time of crisis for indie authors and publishers.

As I’ve noted previously, self-publishing is becoming an increasingly viable option for non-fiction writers and poets, as well as for ambitious genre fiction writers who understand that, no matter who their publisher is, they’re going to have to bust their ass to market their book and hand-sell it to as many people as possible, one copy at a time, in person and online. These savvy authors know that they have to build a platform for themselves over time — something almost every major publisher requires these days — and know how to use it, attracting a loyal tribe and continually nurturing it.

This exact same opportunity exists for indie publishers who can identify an under-served genre or topic of interest, carve themselves a niche and build a platform around it, and produce quality content that attracts a following that they can then nurture into a passionate community, or tribe.

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An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Your Entitlement Slip is Showing

Stop Whining by ChrisB in SEA

Among the most tiresome memes dominating the publishing world right now — memes that I’ve admittedly contributed to at times — the worst are the self-righteous rants about self-publishing, Amazon, and the long-rumored death of print.

There are the writers who think their publishers should be doing more for them while smugly looking down their noses at the writers willing to do it all for themselves; and the passionate-to-a-fault DIYers who feel the need to answer every single ill-considered critique with defensive point-by-point rebuttals.

There’s the indie publishers and bookstores who complain about Amazon’s success while having no real online presence of their own to speak of, nor the good sense to leverage their respective strengths and develop their own niche communities around the two things Amazon will never be able to compete with: content and relationships.

And, of course, there’s the much belabored death of print, an arguably self-inflicted wound that’s far from lethal, unless whining and navel-gazing continue to be the priority.

Blame it on the state of the economy and the debatable bailouts of mismanaged, seemingly undeserving companies and/or homeowners, but underneath it all there is an overwhelming sense of entitlement, a belief that someone — publishers, writers, readers, the Internet itself — owes them something and their current plight is someone else’s fault.

My short response: STFU and GBTW.

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