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

Peter Shankman on the Future of Social Media

When my CEO sent me a friend request on Facebook last year, I had to rethink how I was using the site.

When Facebook changed its Terms of Service earlier this month, before quickly backtracking in the face of a growing uproar, I started to rethink my approach to social media overall.

Last night, I had the pleasure of attending a presentation/Q&A with social networking guru Peter Shankman — who suffers from a self-described extreme case of ADOS (Attention Defici- Oh, Shiny!) and an abundance of eccentric charisma (one of his many claims to fame is as the original creator of the “It Sank. Get Over It!” t-shirts) — and while it was targeted to PR professionals and focused on his terrific Help a Reporter Out initiative, there were a lot of general marketing-related takeaways that I found interesting.

I wish I had taken notes, or live-Tweeted some of his comments, but I was so engaged in the moment that I didn’t want to be distracted by trying to share it with others!

PR is the most effective form of marketing and, these days, we’re all marketers at some level, no matter what our actual job title is or income bracket we’re in. We’re all influencers, and while our respective tribes might be small, through social networking we have exponentially more individual power than ever before. It’s something publishers are slowly realizing, though some might argue, much too late.

Shankman spoke a lot about Twitter, but went beyond the usual hype of it being the platform du jour, offering some excellent tips on communicating effectively that were just as applicable to email, telephone and in-person communication. We’re bombarded with an average of 17,000 separate demands on our attention every day — from family and co-workers to email to “don’t walk” signs —  so getting to the point quickly is crucial.

On Twitter (he’s @skydiver), brevity also happens to be a requirement: 140 characters to get your point across; always add value to the stream.

ie: don’t just Tweet “I’m eating yogurt.” Instead, Tweet “Pinkberry has 50% off coupons all day, today only.”

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

Rise of the Publetariat

If you're a self-published author or independent micro-press, these are very interesting times we're living in as Amazon officially announced the new Kindle, major publishing companies are in meltdown mode, and the entire industry is scrambling to figure out what's next. While following the Tools of Change Conference on Twitter, I came across an intriguing tweet from @indieauthor: #TOC Publetariat.com "outed" in Rise of Ebooks panel - can't stuff the genie back in the bottle, so I'm going w/ it: www.publetariat.com Cool name, and intrigued by the alleged "outing", I clicked through to find a website that aims to fill what, to my knowledge,…

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

Building Communities Around Content #TOC

Today kicked off the Tools of Change for Publishing Conference here in NY, and while I wasn’t able to attend, I was following it throughout the day on Twitter (#TOC), particularly via the Tweets of @annmichael, @RonHogan and @thewritermama, the latter of whom practically transcribed what appeared to be the highlight of the day: Building Communities Around Content.

It’s a topic that’s become Priority #1 for many publishers, books and magazines alike, as well as more marketing-savvy writers, and it’s one I have both a personal and professional interest in, too.

Touching on everything from defining one’s community, to determining ROI, to leveraging the natural inclination to form tribes, this session alone was probably worth the cost of admission for most attendees, and it would have been a great opportunity for someone from Portfolio to be standing outside selling copies of Seth Godin’s Tribes!

There were two particularly interesting points raised that piqued my interest enough to retweet, the first of which was right out of Tribes:

@annmichael the social infrastructure of the community is much more important than the technology infrastructure #TOC

@RonHogan #toc what kind of Return On Attention are you offering readers?

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

The Problem With Self-Publishing

Creative independence by nattu
Creative independence by nattu

HarperStudio — one of a handful of publishers who really seems to understand how to use the internet and social media — is running a web poll on their home page right now that asks: “Are you less likely to read a book if it is self published?”

As I write this, there have been 15 votes and “YES” is winning with 60% of them. Of course, it’s not the least bit scientific (and doesn’t claim to be), but I wouldn’t be going too far out on a limb to predict that, barring some targeted effort by Author Solutions, no matter how many responses they end up getting, “YES” will win, because the phrasing and context of the question favor that response.

I voted “NO” because I know better.

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

Free Chapbook: Crazy White Devil

Download a free copy of Crazy White DevilIt’s been years since I created a chapbook.

Six, to be exact.

I released Selected Squares of Concrete — a de facto “best of” poetry collection of new, revised, never-before-released and old favorites — back in March of 2003, smack in the middle of the razor-thin slice of time between my return to the NYC poetry scene after living down in Virginia for a year, and my walking away from it again about three months later, more or less permanently.

I’ve wanted to create a new chapbook for a little while now, just for myself, to collect in one place the handful of newer poems I’d written over the past few years, for those random times I end up at a poetry reading and want to get on the mic. Like last night, for example, when I decided to check out my local poetry reading and had to dig through a pile of random poems, several of which were 2-3 edits old, to find something I liked.

It was interesting reading in a totally unfamiliar setting with only one other person I knew in the small audience, and there were a couple of poets there I would have liked to have had something to give, partly to promote Spindle, but also to establish myself in the scene since I’m a terrible self-promoter.

That’s when the idea hit me; an experiment in social networking: offer a free chapbook and see how big my platform, and what my social “reach” is!

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

Is the Future of Publishing…GOOD?

Don't Believe Everything You ReadThe bad news in the publishing industry didn’t let up last week as reports of cutbacks and layoffs and dramatically decreased revenues continued to pour in, and TheMediaIsDying tweeted every depressing bit of it, from major publications to small local radio stations, the rare bit of positive news they offered up paling in comparison.

One tweet in particular caught my eye because the issue in question had just arrived in the mail, one of several unsolicited “trial subscriptions” that have come my way recently, presumably to shore up increasingly problematic rate bases for ad-supported magazines:

themediaisdying The February WIRED is only 113 pages, of which only 31.5 are ad pages, per alleyinsider.com – not the usual 1:1 ratio. (@woodenhorsepub) 10:55 AM Jan 23rd from TweetDeck

Interestingly, there’s a letter to the editor in that issue that tweaks Wired about the amount of advertising they usually run, with a surprisingly defensive (and five times as long) reply that concludes with: “P.S.: Advertisers, please do not read this note.”

About an hour before that depressing tweet, GOOD magazine’s blog ran an interesting, if somewhat self-serving post, “Don’t Be (Quite As) Evil“, that posed the question, more or less, What if companies stopped advertising completely and, instead, put that money towards doing good things and getting PR for it?

These are scary days if you’re in the ad business, and not because the economy has bolted out from under us and off into a canyon. No, it’s scary because on the other side, there’s more terror still, because even when consumers begin to buy again, it’ll be harder to reach them. They don’t buy print media; they skip past television ads using their DVRs; they ignore pop-ups and banner ads online. And even if they’ve noticed your ads and go shopping for your gizmo, your $300 million ad-spend might be undone by a single, anonymous reviewer on Amazon: “This product sucks.”

Against that background of flailing ad effectiveness, companies are shifting their ad budgets, one tiny step at a time, towards meaningful P.R., dedicated to noble causes. But what’s stopping a massive company from working at a grander scale, to really do something?

The unavoidable answer: It’s because of you. It’s because you’re too uninformed, too indifferent, and too cynical. I’ll explain. Consumers haven’t quite yet proven that they put money where they’re morals are—or that they’re willing to spend the time and effort to figure out what’s moral to begin with. Too often, cynicism yields to blanket indictments of “corporate America,” which leaves businesses with few incentives to try harder. What really prevents big companies from investing more is the nagging fear that you, the consumer, won’t notice. Or what’s worse, that even if you do, you’ll never reward them for it.

Despite being marred by a gross over-simplification of how advertising works and an unfortunate “blame the reader” angle, it’s worth reading as its underlying premise is sound: companies should do good things and tell people about their efforts.

In the context of advertising vs. PR, though, and the currently precarious state of publishing, as the cover of their second issue (above) noted: “Don’t Believe Everything You Read”.

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