Upcoming Gigs: Panel, Workshop, Evolution
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,
Time, Inc.’s “mine” fumbles kickoff
“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
Amazon Rank, #AmazonFail
I’m probably one of Amazon.com’s favorite types of customers, living and working in spitting distance of a Barnes & Noble, Borders and several good independent booksellers, browsing their shelves but doing most of my book buying via Amazon. Over the years, I’ve spent thousands of dollars with them, on books (and other products) for myself
Advertising is Failure
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.
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.
When the Internet Flapped its Wings
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
Building and Curating Your Community, Part I
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
Your Entitlement Slip is Showing
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
On Twitter: Always Add Value
I find it hard to believe that as recently as six months ago, I was dismissing Twitter as a pointless ripoff of Facebook’s status update, without any of the extras that make Facebook a “real” social network. From what I’d seen, it lived up to its negative reputation of mindless updates about eating lunch, waiting
Three Tips for Curating the Community #TOC
This week’s Tools of Change Conference ended yesterday and even though I wasn’t in attendance, thanks to the laudable efforts of several Tweeters (@thewritermama, in particular), I felt like I was there the whole time. As is typically the case after a good conference, I’m simultaneously mentally exhausted and recharged by the ideas and opinions