Marketing

Commentary and advice on marketing, mostly for publishers (traditional and brands) and writers, but sometimes from a broader perspective.

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

Upcoming Gigs: Panel, Workshop, Evolution

Upcoming Gigs

I don’t do many events these days beyond the random open mic appearance at louderARTS or Urbana, so I’m very excited about these two gigs this week, the NY Round Table Writers’ Conference and Acentos Poetry Workshop, as well as the Conversational Marketing Summit I’ll be attending in June.

NY Round Table Writers’ Conference

Friday, April 24th: 3:15 – 5pm

The Technofile: Online Writing and Blogging
Popular online literary website writers and bloggers come together to discuss the online writing outlet.

  • Guy LeCharles Gonzalez- Spindle Magazine
  • Pamela Skillings- About.com
  • Rebecca Fox- MediaBistro
  • Julie Trelstad- Plain White Press
  • Roy Sekoff- Huffington Post, moderator

Acentos Writers Workshop

Sunday, April 26th: Noon

Workshop – Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

The Acentos Writers Workshop was established with the purpose of nurturing the newer voices in the poetry community. With writers from across several genres donating their time, the workshop encourages newer writers to hone their craft, establish and create community, and perform their work in front of growing audiences. The workshop accepts writers of all backgrounds and skill level to foster growth and maximize their full potential and grow as writers.

The workshops are free. RSVP is required.

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

Time, Inc.’s “mine” fumbles kickoff

mine: Time, Inc's custom magazine
mine: Time, Inc.'s custom magazine

“Oh, I get it. It’s very clever. How’s that working out for you?”
–Tyler Durden, Fight Club

Well, it seemed like a good idea.

Magazine publishing executives are under a lot of pressure these days after the perfect storm of a wretched economy and the deflating of the emedia bubble have wreaked havoc on their already narrow profit margins as advertising declined precipitously in 2008 and isn’t looking much better so far in 2009. Many people have lost their jobs as a slew of magazines have folded, contracted, or moved to an online-only existence, and the most optimistic projections don’t predict a turnaround before 2010.

Which magazines will still be standing next year is anyone’s guess, but in the midst of much hand-wringing and speculation, Time, Inc. launched an interesting initiative that caught my attention: mine: My Magazine, My Way — a single-sponsored, customized publication, print and digital, featuring content from up to five of their eight most advertiser-friendly brands.

I got my first issue in the mail last night and, if it represents the best effort Time, Inc. can put forward, I’d suggest selling their stock quickly if you’re crazy enough to still own any, and considering a Plan B if you work for a print-centric media company.

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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.

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

When the Internet Flapped its Wings

Something disappeared into the ripple by tanakawho
Something disappeared into the ripple by tanakawho

While preparing for a series of meetings on emedia strategy over the weekend, one thought kept nagging at me: What the hell is emedia anyway?

Online and email advertising, webcasts, virtual trade shows, ebooks, ecommerce…oh, my! In the publishing world, it is the holy grail that will save us all thanks to high profit margins and easy scalability (relative to print media), but it seems like the goal posts that define it and its success are getting moved every year as the smoke gets thicker and the mirrors are repositioned.

Where does emedia really fit in the big picture of magazine publishing? Is it another revenue stream running off of Content Mountain — I still believe Content is King, though Context is now his equally powerful Queen — or is it something new and different altogether that calls for a brand new canvas and change of scenery?

If print media is the physical container that content and advertising is packaged into and delivered to the reader, and the subscription and advertising revenues it generates is offset by its related editorial, printing, production, circulation and fulfillment expenses, then shouldn’t emedia be budgeted and defined the same way? Would the profit margins for a website be as high if it had to bear even half of the burden of the expenses of the print container from where much of its content and most of its brand awareness comes from?

If there were no print host, could the electronic parasite survive?

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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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