Book Vid Lit

by Sheila Clover-English

Sheila Clover English, the CEO of Circle of Seven Productions, has been a pioneer in book video production, marketing and distribution for authors and publishers.

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Nielsen ratings systems did away with using view counts to measure website success and instead switched over to time spent as a way to rate. This way of measuring success is far more indicative of real life engagement by a viewer. You can have 100,000 hits, but if the viewer isn’t there long enough to at least absorb the message of the video those hits are meaningless.

Matt Cutler, Vice President of Visible Measures, a company that tracks online behavior, estimates that more than 30 per cent of consumers abandon an online video within the first 10 per cent of its stream. He goes on to give an example saying that for every 100 viewers you will have 30 that will click away within the first 10% of the video. This is called “Initial Attention Abandonment.”

Some of the reasons for Initial Attention Abandonment have to do with trust, transparency, engagement and entertainment.

Trust - This has more to do with branding. Is this a brand viewers know they will have a good experience with? Will they get the kind of content they’re promised by tags and titles?

Transparency - Is the video in a place where the person can tell what they’re going to get? Do they realize they’re getting an ad or are you trying to trick them into thinking it’s something else? Not only can you lose a viewer once they realize they’ve been tricked, but this is a quick way to damage your brand.

Engagement - Does the video give them something to do? Be it physical or mental or even emotional, does the first 10% of your video offer them a way to engage the video? Some videos can be a talking head that just delivers a message, but with every viewer sitting there with their finger on the mouse just waiting to go on to the next thing, there aren’t going to be a lot of videos that can be just an ad message delivery system that will be successful.

Entertainment - Give your most gripping, most powerful, most complete message about your story or product that conveys to viewers that they are being, or about to be, entertained within that first 10% of your video. People have so much to choose from to keep them entertained. Why should they watch YOUR video as a source of entertainment? You need to have something that conveys how entertaining your video is going to be for them right away or you will lose them. You can’t “build” your story or message to a climactic end unless that initial “building” is a sensational opening.

What should I include in the first 10% of my video?

You should have visuals or text that immediately convey all of the above elements. Not an easy task. Let’s take a look at a successful book video that includes all of these elements, Dark Possession by author Christine Feehan. You can watch the video yourself at Dark Possession - Christine Feehan - TV Version.  I chose the MySpace site specifically because MySpace requires a viewer to watch just over half the video before the view is counted. If you watch less than half, the view won’t count. This video has been viewed nearly 20,000 times.

Trust- The title and description let people know what the video is. It is a book video. It is about the novel by Christine Feehan.

Transparency- From the start we let people know it is a book video by stating it is from Bestselling Author Christine Feehan.

Engagement- The engagement here is emotional. You see the couple running for their lives. You’re told two worlds are colliding, the living and the dead. Now your viewer wants to know what’s happening to the couple. What are they running from? Who are they? What are they? You have engaged them by making them want to know more and by putting an attractive couple in a dangerous environment.

Entertainment- The viewer is given a sense of romance, danger and adventure within a short period of time. They get special effects and at the end, “the tease” that leaves them wondering what happened.

People are more likely to share a video like this. There are several elements that are worth having a conversation about. The video, through text and visuals, poses questions while bringing the viewer into the action.

How can you keep people from clicking away? Well, if I knew that I’d be making the big bucks! But, I can speculate just as well as any major media goliath can. Part of what keeps them from clicking away is the video itself. Part of it is where the video is located. Is it where people who like paranormal romance reside? Part of it is timing. Your video may end up having something in common with a current news topic. There may not be a whole lot of new content out at that time. Part of it is the topic of the storyline. There are so many factors that go into what will make people stay and watch the video that you really have to concentrate on the things you CAN control.

Make a great book video. Make sure the first 10% of your video offers enough to keep them watching. Give it a good title, tags and descriptions. Distribute it to the right online destinations. Instruct your client/author/publisher to utilize it. And then, just like CBS, HBO, NBC or any other media giant…hope it goes viral.

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Could our books be spying on us? 

While this might sound like the ravings of a paranoid delusional, marketers, supplied by willing service vendors, and armed with plenty of computing power, are able to extract a fair amount of information about our daily lives from the copious electronic records we leave behind in every transaction.   Consider some of the recent press (e.g. BusinessWeek) about “reality mining.”  Reality mining is the process of extracting information from the usage patterns from cell phones and other wireless devices.  This process is detailed in an article by two leading MIT reality mining researchers, entitled “Reality Mining: Sensing Complex Social Systems.”

Reality mining is a sophisticated new type of data mining that is enabled by copious bread crumbs of data generated when we use wireless devices.  When these devices are equipped with GPS chips, the data offers a geographical component to the behavior pattern being monitored.  Reality mining has been used for modeling how people might respond to terrorist attacks, help cities ease traffic congestion and help planners determine the best location for schools and hospitals.  In the future it might be used to track the spread of infectious diseases, according to an article in Technology Review.

Theis leads one to wonder whether - as we move more of our reading to portable electronic devices - someone might be combing through the electronic footprints we leave to try and tease our some information we might rather keep private.  As more book reading takes place online - whether as text on cell phones, e-book readers like Kindle, or simply as snippets delivered in your Blackberry’s e-mail - one can imagine that soon publishers and retailers might start collecting information about our e-reading habits such frequency, duration and even where / when (if the device is GPS enabled).  Combine this with the type of sales information already available and it provides a pretty powerful peek into what was once our private literary domain.

There are plenty of concerns about privacy.  Not only about the collection and sharing of data without consent, but also the interpretation of that data.  A year ago, the public was shocked by a story in the Washington Post and other newspapers about the existence and extent of a program of profiling of average Americans by the Department of Homeloand Security.  Concerns may shift now to the way in which commercial enterprises might attempt to use reality mining to tease out the nuances of our economic and social behavior.

Perhaps our best hope for defending our privacy in an “always on” society, is that human behavior is fickle and unpredictable.  Computer programs, however powerful, and data archive, however vast, represent past knowledge.  And, as every social scientist knows, the past does not necessarily predict the future.

But just in case, you may want to unplug your Kindle and simply curl up with your cozy - and silent - paper based book.

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In an earlier post (”Non-fiction Blook Mechanics Part 1: Blook by Design“), we discussed several ways to structure a blog to resemble the structure of a book.  For example, using category labels that could double as a table of contents.  Taking content from blog posts and turning it into a readable manuscript can be a challenging task.  Especially when you have a large inventory of blog posts from which to draw.  In this post, I want to propose two tools - the post outline and post sequencing - that can help you organize your posts into a manuscript in a logical manner, without massive rewriting.

Post Outline

First, use your manuscript outline as a tool for cataloging your posts.  An outline is good writing practice.  But it can also help you organize your blog posts.  Here’s one approach.  Use a numbering scheme for each levvel of your outline.  (Most word processor or other outlining software does this for you automatically.  The top most level correspond to chapters.  Lower levels correspond to sections of chapters and content within sections.  The outline forms the basis for a numbering schema to identify the part of the outline to which your posts will be associated. 

Let’s say you are writing a bog about raising dogs.  Part of your outline might look like:

1.  Dog breeds
1.1  Hounds
1.2  Terriers
1.3  Herding dogs
etc.

2.  Dog grooming
2.1  Coat
2.2  Teeth
2.3  Musculoskeletal
etc.

3.  Dog nutrition
3.1  Diets for puppies
3.2  Diets for adult dogs
3.3  Diets for older dogs
3.4  Organic dogfood
etc.

Post Sequencing

Next, use tags to indicate the specific intended location of a post within the manuscript outline.  One approach to doing this is to use the sequence numbers from the outline.  For example, using the outline above, if you had a post about talking about the different types of organic dogfood, it would appear in the category “Dog Nutrition” and might be tagged as “organic-dogfood-3-3-4.”  Sequence numbers would be as long as the number of levels in the outline.  Blogging platforms accomplish tagging differently, but it is a fairly universal feature.  Such sequence tagging allows you to later use the post search tools of your blog to find and organize posts corresponding to each part of your outline. 

Of course, outlines are subject to change.  Chapters can be added, inserted or deleted and this can cause problems with post sequencing based on outline numbering.  An alternative approach might be to code tags with names that correspond to the outline labels.  Then, if the outline changes, the tags are still valid.  Again, using our dog manuscript oultine above, let’s say your organic dogfood post was about feeding your hound chicken flavored tofu .  Using this scheme, you might code the post as ”nutrition, organic, tofu chicken” where the tags are arranged in the descending order of the outline.  If you had multiple tags about chicken flavored tofu for your dog, you could assign a sequence number as the final tag, or find a label that distinguishes them further. 

The advantage of this approach to tagging is that should you decide to move dog nutrition to some other part of the outline, your post sequences remain valid.  If you make dog nutrition part of a chapter on dog health, you can simply add a tag “dog health” to the head of all your tag lists for dog nutrition. 

Creating an outline and using one of the post sequencing techniques above can greatly simplify the task of organizing your blog content into a manuscript.  Good organization is only the first step.  There are other editorial processes that must be applied to get a manuscript that doesn’t feel chopped up, but we shall save those for later posts. 

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Should we prepare for significantly higher book prices?  The signals from the commodities markets seem to be saying an emphatic “yes!”  Commodity prices are rising to new heights driven by a number of factors, including:  increased competition from rapidly industrializing economies like India and China; soaring energy costs; and, paradoxically from dislocations caused by the boom in biofuels.

Books require a host of input commodities for their production including:  paper, inks , chemicals used for coatings.  Here are a couple of examples. 

• As reported in PrintWeek, paper suppliers told printers earlier this year to expect price hikes of 8% or more.  In addition to increased manufacturing expenses, sky high energy costs are raising distributino costs. 
• Another commodity used in the production of paper is sulfuric acid.  This chemical is also used in the production of fertilizers.  The boom in corn planting, driven by the biofuels boom, is causing major shortages.  The price of the compound has shot a whopping 266% over the past 5 months according to a recent article in BusinessWeek. 

To date, producer price increases have been running ahead of price increases at the consumer level.  But as our current unpleasant experience with retail food and energy prices demonstrates, this won’t last long.  Unless there is a major cooling of economic growth, on a global scale, this commodities price surge may be longer lasting than previous cycles.  If real incomes continue to stagnate or decline, books may become a one of those discretionary expenditures that is the first to go when belts are tightened.

Many pundits have opined about the imminent demise of the printed book at the hands of technology - whether the Internet or e-books or books read on iPhones.  But, if, as author Richard Heinberg has suggested, we are witnessing “peak everything,” the real threat to the printed book might be ever increasing commodities prices, driven by scenarios outlined over three decades ago in Limits to Growth.

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Blooks - books based on a blog - are becoming more and more popular.  Authors, especially unpublished authors, can benefit from blogging their material first as a way to build an audience for their work.  There are enough blog to book success stories now to make this an attractive option.  Many of the early blook successes were more the result of serendippidity than plan.  In this post, I outline one approach for authors who are intentional about creating a book from a blog.

Title.  Use the same title and subtitle for your blog that you would like to use your book.  This has the advantage of allowing your blog to double as a book website after publication.  Also, it makes it easy for your blog readers to find your new book.

Table of Contents.  Layout out your blog categories to roughly corresond to the table of contents for your book.  Using exactly the same titles for categories and chapters may not always work.  Also, some standard table of content names won’t make any sense for a blog - e.g. Introduction or Epilogue.  The idea is to have a kind of one to one correspondence in mind so that when you go produce your manuscript, you’ll be able to map your blog content to the right places in your book.

Chapter content.  Your blog posts become the content for your chapters; content tagged for a particular category can go in the corresponding chapter.  If you have a post tagged for multiple categories, the flow of your content will probably dictate which chapter it lands in. 

Bibliography.  The links in your posts become your pointers to reference material that appears in a bibliography or set of end notes.

Visuals.  Pictures, illustrations and graphs may present a bit more of a challenge.  If the pictures you want to use in your book involve licensing or permissions, you may have to use substitues on your blog (or go without) while you are negotiating. 

Author bio.  Most blogs make it easy to share your bio, either as a blurb on your main blog page or as a separate page.  Include your picture, and both a short and long form bio for yourself which can be incorporated later into your book.

As you start to post, you’ll want to use blog statistis to rank content and track your word count to know when you have a book equivalent.  A good rule of thumb for a book equivalent is 50,000 - 75,000 words.  You should also track the word count by category.  Remember that your categories are acting as surrogates for chapters.  You will probably to be sure your content is relatively balanced as you go so you don’t wind up with too much or too little content in each chapter.

There are several ways to rank content.  Here are a few examples.

• Page views - the level of overall interest in a particular post.
• Comments - feedback from your readership.  A post with a high number of comments is a good indicator of blook-worthy content. 
• Longevity - the number of days since the original post.  This is useful to find topics that might be evergreen
• Concentration - the number of days since the original post for which there were page views.  Some posts may see all their activity concentrated in a few days (e.g. posts related to news stories) and thus may not be as “durable” as a post that continues to receive page views day after day. 
• Density - the number o page views for the post divided by the overall page views for the blog.  This shows the contribution of the post to overall blog activity. 

In subsequent posts, I plan to share more specifics on the blog to book process, including:

• Ideas for editing posts into a cohesive, engaging manuscript.
• Tools that make it easy ways to track and collect your references.
• Using tags as a surrogate indexing schema.
• Creating a compelling pitch card for publishers using your blog statistics.
• Blook techniques for fiction writers.
• Preparing a blog tour while crafting your blook.

I would welcome any thoughts or ideas that others like to share on this subject.

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Book Vid Lit

by Sheila Clover-English

Sheila Clover English, the CEO of Circle of Seven Productions, has been a pioneer
in book video production, marketing and distribution for authors and publishers.

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According to the Pew/Internet Project findings, 3 of 4 young adults (73%) on the internet watch or download video.  Half of young internet users say they watch YouTube.  Many post videos to blogs and even more will forward on a link in email. They’re online socializing, researching (school and education), playing games or getting news.Publishers know that teens are online and most have outstanding website offerings that are fun, interesting and interactive.  A great outreach to young people was a Blogfest that Simon & Schuster did and of course other publishers have similar offerings for young people of varied ages.

Lately, schools and libraries have looked to engage younger readers as well by using book trailers. Sara Kajder wrote in the Educational Leadership magazine for ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) an article entitled “The Book Trailer: Engaging Teens Through Technology.”  This article is amazing and outlines how using book trailers help students who are struggling readers and helps them to be more engaged in the stories they are reading.  The points the author brings up, viewed strictly from an educator’s perspective, was very enlightening.

Libraries are getting into it too!  The Tucson-Pima Library is just one of many that we discovered using book trailers.  You can see how involved they are and the wonderful outreach they extend to young people on their book trailer site.

Book trailers are more than just promotional tools for a book.  They have a greater outreach and greater potential to show young people that books are exciting.  The publishing industry as a whole have this incredible opportunity to build tomorrow’s readership.  Publishers should reach out to high schools and libraries and sponsor book trailer contests.  This can build the confidence level of students who are struggling.  It can create an atmosphere of acceptance where books are not just for book worms anymore.  Cool kids read and make book trailers!  Cool kids read.  Pass it on.

Reaching out to young people through a digital medium in order to encourage reading isn’t a new idea.  But, it is an ever-expanding idea with more and more opportunities to engage young people and create new readers using new media.

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Video games can now cost $20 million and up to produce.  Such high production costs raise the risk for bringing new games to market and have spawned a search for ways to extend a game’s IP via cross marketing in other media - notably books, merchandise and film.  Though long familiar to Hollywood moguls, this approach is now being pioneered by Electronic Arts in the gamer world. 

One example where this is being used in a new game due out in Fall 2008 called Dead Space.  A series of 6 graphic novels (or comic books) will be used as a prequel to the game to provide users with background information.   They will be offered for sale at $2.99 each, though a premium edition of the first issue with special cover art will be sold at a higher price point.  As reported on Kotaku, the series will be created by Image Comics with Ben Templesmith and Antony Johnston.  There’s even a book trailer that’s been created for the series.

This is somewhat the reverse of the journey made by Marvel Comics a few years ago, as chronicled in the New York Times.  Marvel’s comic books sales had slowed and the company almost went out of business.  But, like one of the super heroes it markets, the struggling publisher morphed into a Hollywood entertainment power with its own studio and licensing business.  Marvel has combined making its own super hero movies (where it can reap more of the rewards) with innovative financing (using its comic book IP as collateral) to emerge as a successful, profitable moviemaker.

Book to movie deals are continuing at a brisk pace, as evidenced by the regular reports in Publishers Weekly and industry sites such as Freelance Writing.  Major book publishers are also getting into the movie game.  This past fall, HarperCollins, a division of News Corp., announced a partnership with Sharp Independent to develop movies based on HarperCollins books.  These new collaborations, according to an article by Rachael Donadio, give publishers greater participation in movie profits (if there are any) and allow authors to have more say in the selection of screenwriters, directors and actors.   The closer ties with Hollywood may eventually change the nature of literary fiction as writers realize they may need to structure their stories for multiple mediums. 

Entertainment IP in the hgh stakes world of big media wants to be everywhere.  Look for lots more cross media collaborations (some might say contamination); and look for tomorrow’s most successful artists among those who are able to cross media divides and become multiple media “multi-talents.”

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The bookstore chains are still a dominant force in book retail.  According to Para Publishing, in 2007, big chain retailers such as Barnes & Noble and Borders accounted for 33% of unit book purchases.  However, their dominance is steadily eroding.  The primary challengers are online booksellers, notably Amazon.com.  Purchases made through online retailers represent approximately 20% of book purchases.  In fact, books are the most popular product sold on the internet according to Nielsen Online which surveyed 26,312 people in 48 countries.  It found that 41% of internet users had bought books online.  In some countries the percentage was much higher - for example in Korea 58% of internet users had purchased books online.  And in the U.S., 57.5-million had purchased books online.  In all, the direct-to-consumer (Internet, book clubs, book fairs, catalog and other) channel accounted for 35% of book purchases.

More book publishers are also exploring non-traditional retail channels.  In some cases these channels can have a greater impact on book sales than the traditional bookstore channel.  Why?

The primary problem with the bookstore channel is returns.  These can cost a publisher and generally the cash flow timing with wholesalers, distributors and bookstores is not favorable.  Returns were implemented by publishers during the Great Depression as a way to help out the bookstores.  They have remained entrenched ever since and are a drag on publishers’ profits.  Sales are generally final in non-bookstore retail channels making them more attractive.  The downside is that access can be much more difficult or require a specialized salesforce.  The other problem is payment.  Publishers often don’t get paid for 60, 90 or (more usually) 120 days.  This can wreak havoc with cash flow.  In the non-traditional retail channel, publishers can avoid both of these problems.

Non-bookstore retail venues use different selling models.  For example, Starbucks sells only one book at a time in its stores, featuring a title for several months. Costco, Walmart and other big box retailers carry bestsellers as well as a selection of lesser known titles.   A recent New York Times article on non-reported that sales of consumer books sold through such nontraditional outlets grew by more than $260 million. 

These can be broken down into:

• warehouse clubs - e.g. Costco, Sam’s Club
• mass market retail -  e.g. Walmart
• non-traditional accounts - big box retailers (e.g. Home Depot), drugstores and grocery stores, gift and specialty stores
• mass market wholesale

Non-traditional book channels can often offer a book greater exposure to its primary audience.  An interesting example was highlighted on the bNet Business Network.  A book titled “A Gentleman Gets Dressed Up” was picked up by Borders, and was placed in the Health and Diet section.  According to Nielsen BookScan, since 2003, the book has sold 4,000 copies in the retail bookstore channel.  By contrast, Jos. A. Bank Clothiers and Brooks Brothers have purchased 8,000 and 15,000 copies for their stores, respectively. 

Another instructive example comes from the world of children’s books.  In an article, Better Than Bookstores: Prime Channels for Selling Children’s Books, written for the PMA Independent, Florrie Binford Kichler examines innovative approaches to using non-bookstore venues for selling children’s books, including:

• Associations
• Children’s book clubs
• Museums/historic sites
• Schools

Potentially, the biggest threat to bookstore retailers could come from the new print at the point of purchase technologies which I have often discussed on this blog.   As the technology matures, it will allow virtually any organization to print and sell books without the need for wholesalers, distributors or inventory.  Publishers have many bookselling options today and may continue to migrate away from bookstore retailers as long as their outdated and onerous returns and payment policies remain in effect. 

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Book Vid Lit

by Sheila Clover-English

Sheila Clover English, the CEO of Circle of Seven Productions, has been a pioneer
in book video production, marketing and distribution for authors and publishers.

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There are two ways to get video promotion for your book.

1. You can create a book video that is meant to be entertaining and place it on user-generated video upload sites such as YouTube or MySpace. From there you hope others will see it and then share it with friends, thus making it viral.
2. You can create a book video ad and pay for placement.

Your video is going to look different, perform differently and be viewed differently according to where you place the video.

Viral videos, those that are made and uploaded for free to social media sites have to have an element of entertainment to them. Social media sites are meant to be “social”, they are not meant to be advertisement platforms. The argument can be, and has been, made that all book video are ads.  Keep in mind that all music videos are ads as well.  Yet, it is easy to forget that and look at music videos as an entertainment or art form.  Book videos should have an element of entertainment to them if you want them to go viral.

How do you make an ad entertaining? First of all you want it to NOT look like a commercial. If you make it 15 or 30 seconds long it is going to look like and acts like a commercial. People on social media sites are becoming more and more savvy. They will look at that and know that you just can’t afford proper placement of your commercial so you’re trying to fool them into thinking it’s entertainment, or that you don’t care that you just tricked them into watching a commercial.

Like a music video, you need to have a story. People want to know what the story is. You can’t make general statements or claims such as, “This is the greatest story ever told” or “An epic love story unfolds within a mystery” and think that’s going to impress people. You can say those things in your video, but you had best follow it up with telling people what the story is actually about. Include exciting and/or appropriate elements such as music, narration or text, enticing visuals, etc. Make it worth the viewer’s time to watch it.

Viral videos = entertainment = appropriate to place on social media sites

Book video ads are meant to be more informative and factual. People know it is an ad. People know that ads try to sell you something. People are used to seeing ads. Your ad still should be exciting or enticing, but it is going to be brief. The briefer, the better. Most ads are 15 or 30 seconds long.

Book video ads are placed in areas where people know they are ads. You can pay for placement on sites like VideoEgg, YouTube (if you can afford it), Viddler or anywhere that allows video ads. They can also play on television or out-of-home advertising. Book video ads should get to the point right away.

A book video ad should concentrate efforts toward a single message. The message can focus on who the author is, which is an advantage if the author is already well known. The message can focus on the storyline if the author is not well known, but the story has a good hook, or current, relative message.

Monitoring the effectiveness of a book video.

Many people are under the impression that the number of views are the greatest measurement of effectiveness for video. That is not true. But, CPM is a well-known, accepted way of charging for ad placement with the number of views being a focal point. The shift for online marketing needs to, and is in many areas, move away from impressions to engagement. It is the engagement of an ad that is most likely to result in an actual sale.

One of the most respected companies that deals in online video, both with ads and viral video, is VideoEgg. YouTube often follows their lead, as do many other video companies. Here you will find a link to a valuable bit of information discussed by VideoEgg CMO, Troy Young. 

Be sure to read the description next to the video.  This is very helpful in understanding where the future of video ads is going.

Impressions to Engagement- Troy Young, CMO VideoEgg

The great thing about VideoEgg’s idea with the rollover/expand option is that the video will still play, but the expanding information would allow graphics and text. Here you could have a picture of the book cover and/or author photo or even photos to represent the storyline of the book. You can also have the back cover copy of something similar, which appeals to traditional readers. The drawback to this is that it is an ad and you have to pay for it. The up-side is that it is pay-per-engagement and not impressions. So, you only pay when someone is motivated enough to click on the ad and activate it.

If you are going to go the route of a rollover/expand ad I strongly suggest not using the author’s name as the primary enticement to engage. If it is a well known author then you’re going to get clicks from fans. You don’t need to advertise to fans. You can get to that target audience through easier, less expensive ways. My recommendation is to have the storyline itself be the enticement.

Whether you decide to try a viral video or a book ad it is important to know the difference. It is important to realize that you can’t mix those medias and expect a successful campaign. You need to know what your goal is when you have a video created.  Let that goal guide you in whether or not you’re going to go with a viral video or an ad.

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First consider the size and structure of the blogosphere.  The popularity of blogs has soared in the last few years.  There are now over 100 million blogs tracked by Technorati, which doesn’t even include the more than 70 million Chinese blogs.  According to recent demographic surveys by the Pew Internet Study and the New York Times / CBS News, blogs have become mainstream and represent virtually every audience and topic area. 

Blogs focused on a given topic tend to link to similar blogs.  What this means is you can use blogs to:

• Develop an audience for your work while you write
• Promote your book effectively and at low cost once it is written

A blog bears many resemblances to a book. Both have a title and subtitle that reflect the content of a book. Blog posts can be organized into categories which serve as a kind of table of contents to classify and group related material. Blog posts, typically 300-500 words in length, represent the raw content of a book. Links within posts or on the blog roll serve as a bibliography, showing references to source material.

How do you attract people to your blog? Initially, through searches individuals make on popular search engine sites like Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN. By using popular keywords in your blog title, subtitle, categories and posts, your blog will begin to turn up in these searches. You can discover these keywords using keyword discovery tools or simply checking out popular blogs in your topic area. The more you blog, the more others discover and link to your blog content, the higher will be the ranking of your blog site in search results, and the greater the traffic you will receive.

Blog software usually provides a basic set of statistics that allow you to track important information such as number of visitors, page views, referring sites and average time spent by each visitor. Page views and comments left by visitors for specific blog posts provide an indicator of popular content. This makes blogs an excellent way for you to field test and select material to be included in your book.

Once you have cultivated an audience, you can transform your blog into a great marketing platform. For example, you can:

• Feature your book on a special blog page, with your bio, a book description, excerpts, press releases and testimonials; thus your blog can double as a book website.
• Promote your book to a wider audience by arranging a blog tour.  A blog tour is a series of scheduled guest appearances on related blogs, where you have the opportunity to talk about your book. This is a low cost, high impact method to discover new readers for your work. 

The blogosphere is not the only place to market your work, but it can one of the best. 

Whether you are publishing independently or trying to sign on with a traditional publisher, blogging can be key to your success. More publishers are now starting to view the blogosphere as a fertile ground to find promising writers. Why? As an author who blogs, you can quantify your audience and this is attractive to risk averse publishers.  This is, in essence, the new author book pitch.

Blogging is a low risk, low cost way to build your audience while you are developing your work, and then promote your finished book to that same audience. Give it a try!

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Related Posts

• Blog Touring 101: Around the Blogosphere in 80 Days
• Virtual Book Tours: An Interview with Steve Weber
• Emerging Blook Motifs
• Vive le Permalink! - the Humble Source of Readership 
• Finding a Few of Your Favorite Keywords
• The New Author Book Pitch

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