Marketing

As First World Problems go, the awfulness of the author’s book tour is hardly a novel one.  Yet a recent column in Salon by “Go The F*** To Sleep” writer Adam Mansbach on the horror that is the under-attended bookstore appearance provoked a notably strong response, both among those who sympathized with his plight, or at least found his description of it worth a chuckle, and among those who were less than amused.

To the latter, many of whom work in the book industry, Mansbach displayed a lack of graciousness…

Online book discovery doesn’t work very well. Random House is attempting to address that problem with a new Facebook app, BookScout, that gives users book recommendations from multiple publishers, not just Random House. Based on my extremely preliminary testing, the app’s recommendations leave something to be desired.

While you are planning your New Year’s Resolutions why not consider some that can help you sell more books? Here are a few that you might consider.

1) I will regularly plan my work before taking action, and then assess the results of my efforts. Book marketing can be as simple as PIE if you Prepare before Implementing your plan. Then Evaluate your progress and make necessary changes. If you missed my December webinar about planning, the recording of How to Create a Functional Marketing Plan for 2013 is at www.premiumbookcompany.com/private/Planningfor2013.wmv

The next library in San Antonio, Texas, may not have any paper books for its patrons.

Nelson Wolff, a judge in Bexar County, Texas, where San Antonio is located, and Sergio Rodriguez, commissioner for the county's first precinct, have proposed a plan to create a library called BiblioTech that offers electronic media exclusively.

Though there are bookless academic libraries, at the University of Texas at San Antonio for example, Wolff said in a phone interview that he believes that BiblioTech will be first public library without paper books.

On Dec. 31, 2012, Brad Flora resigned his position as the head of the Small Publishers Association of North America (SPAN). As of Jan. 1, 2013, I have assumed responsibilities and leadership as SPAN's Executive Director.

The current membership benefits will continue. The SPANnet online community and the premium educational content at SPANpro.org will develop and grow. The existing educational programs will be expanded to include more book-marketing webinars, articles, conferences, and blogs.

Leading up to the holiday season, Thunder Bay Press (an imprint of Baker & Taylor) thought they had a hit in "The Guitar & Amp Sourcebook," a pictorial guide to over a century of axes and amps and their place in the history of rock, folk, jazz, blues and country music.

Whenever I teach writers about blogging, my first challenge is to talk them off the ledge from panic. What do I TALK about? I have no IDEAAAAASSSS!

*breathes into paper bag*

And I truly understand this panic, because a lot of social media experts advise writers to blog in a way that is very left-brain.

Yet, here’s the thing, writers (especially fiction writers) are CREATIVE people. We are storytellers. When we blog merely on information, we engage the left-side of the brain, but our fiction engages the RIGHT side of the brain.

If you're like us, the week of New Year's is a bit of a fog. So when we saw these videos for Penguin English Library — one a promo for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; the second a plug for the series — our week got a heck of a lot better/more surreal. The videos feature the iconic Penguin logo, first as the star of Stevenson's classic and then in a trippy sequence that's a cross between Alice in Wonderland and Heinz Edelman's Yellow Submarine illustrations. Turn off your minds, relax and dig the penguin.

—Brian Howard

The digital revolution was a huge win for the act of publishing. Content is now everywhere and can be purchased anywhere. But how, in this sea of content, do publishers who invest in the time-honored processes that ensure quality content communicate that? There are many methods to boost content discoverability—many are technical, many are strategic, and all should be tailored to the content and audience in question. The most powerful—and most resilient—method for improving your content's discoverability, however, is to inspire your once-passive audience to actively seek you out.

Active discovery—where customers know to specifically seek out your content—requires branding.

It's no surprise that there's a lot of confusion around metadata for books. It's complicated. If only they hadn't used the "M" word—metadata. It reeks of digital complexity. And then you read the standard definition: "Metadata is data about data." Gee, thanks. As if your eyes hadn't already glazed over.