Future Perfect Publishing

There is a lot of buzz these days about consumer generated marketing.  This term typically refers to marketing content created by consumers for other consumers.  Some highly publicized examples were ads created by consumers for this years Super Bowl game and Academy Awards ceremony.  But for book marketers there is a more interesting and accessible form of consumer generated marketing content - book reviews and tags.

Marketers have become more savvy in the past few years about crafting their web pages to use specific keywords that are targeted to attract consumers searching for their type of product or service.  Reviews offer an opportunity to see the not so popular keywords that consumers actually use to find your product.  In a recent post, “The Long Tail Opportunity of Consumer-Generated Content,” Jeff Watts points some of the interesting features of language that consumers use in reviews.

Consumers writing reviews, for example, are using their own words to describe their experiences with a product or service.  Their reviews do not go through a formal editorial process to correct misspellings or to remove personal words like “I”, “me”, and “my”.  The reviewers themselves are not employees who must adhere to the official company marketing message in what they write.  Further, a typical page of reviews is written by multiple, unrelated authors who have different perspectives on the product being reviewed, and these different perspectives result in a greater variance in the words used in the reviews.  This variance means that pages of reviews are more likely than homogenous product pages written by one or two authors to drive search terms from unanticipated combinations of words, that is, long tail search terms.

He outlines a process for extracting key words from these “long tail” search terms that lead to greater referrals and conversions. 

Tags represent another way to explore the language readers use to describe and categorize a title.  Amanda Wattington in her recent post “Tagging as Marketing: Are You Playing ‘Tag’ Yet?” on Web Marketing Today, gives a good overview on how marketers can use tags on sites like del.icio.us to help consumers find their products, as well as explore tags others are using to characterize them.   (Hint:  Just as with the language consumers use in reviews, expect surprizes.)

While evidence about the effectiveness of consumer generated content as a marketing tool is still sparse, some studies are showing that it has a higher ROI than traditional advertising.  Marketing Pilgrim reported a study by BlueLithium which showed significantly better returns.  While the actual number of conversions using consumer generated content was smaller, the mcuh lower cost of consumer generated content resulted in a lower cost per conversion and a better overall return on marketing investment. 

As book marketing becomes more sophisticated - e.g. book videos and podcast / book tie-ins - and a greater percentage of book marketing is focused on the web, the more likely it is that the audience will become a key part of the marketing team. 

Authors are discovering that podcasts can be used for serializing their work, and also as a marketing tool - e.g. to record and distribute interviews and readings.  Over the last several years, many podcast services have sprung up to make it easier to sample some of the delights of the writer “podspace.”  I’ve been exploring some of the podcasting resources lately to see what is on offer.  Here are a few sites I’ve found for your consideration.  Each represents a different use for an author podcast.

Authors on Tour - This site has been podcasting author readings from Denver’s fabled Tattered Cover Book Store locations for the pst couple of years. The topics and authors featured cover a wide range.  The site is a blog operated by Tattered Cover, but the podcasts are produced by BurstMarketing.  The structure of the site makes finding and listening to podcasts easy and enjoyable.  Each podcast entry features 

• Brief bio and picture of the author
• Cover, price and ISBN of the book
• Links to the publisher’s website and author site (if available)
• Link to buy the book

The listener has the choice of using an embedded MP3 player, an MP3 player in a popup, or downloading the file for later playback.  Because the podcasts are recordings of live readings, you get a strong sense of the author’s personality, as well as the audience’s reaction to him orher.

Written Voices Podcasts - This is a site run by Allan Hunkin, a self publishing consultant whose services include helping authors with podcast marketing.  The site features podcasts from authors in such categories as relationship, diet and nutrition, personal growth and fiction.  Hunkin conducts the interview in a relaxed, but professional style.  Each podcast is accompanied by an author bio, description of the book, reviews, prices and ISBN.  The playback is a little awkward.  Clicking the “Play” link brought up a picture of an iPod and required you to click it’s Play button.  This in turn lauched my Windows Media Player. 

Podiobooks.com - This site contains audio versions of books in development, generally read by their authors.  This is a place where authors can showcase their work and build an audience.  The entries generally feature a synopsis of the story, the book cover, whether the title is complete or in progress, and there is a an area to make donations if you choose via PayPal.  If you register with Podiobooks, you can arrange to have a customized feed for each title you’re following so that you start “reading” the book from the very first page.  When you subscribe to a book, chapters (or episodes containing multiple chapters) are delivered to you one at a time at the interval of your choosing. By default, your feed is updated once a week. You can change that to once a month, or once a day if you need to.  Registration also allows you to rate the book.  The site uses an embedded player which gives you one click listening. 

As more authors become familiar with the podcast medium and its ability to extend their readership, it will know doubt take its place as a standard tool in their marketing toolkit. 

One of the best known examples of the blook is Belle de Jour, the weblog of a high-class London call girl. Belle, whose identity is a closely guarded secret.   (The name was taken from the 1967 movie which starred Catherine Deneuve playing a prostitute named Séverine Serizy.)  The secrecy around Belle’s true identity makes the story that much more interesting.  The Times Online reported on rumors that had surfaced in a blog, Belle de Hypothesis, that Belle is actually the creation of Lisa Hilton and a “coterie of young women who saw it as an appropriate vehicle to vent their frustrations with various aspects of their personal and professional lives.”  Ms. Hilton is an Oxford educated author living in the US.  A self professed sexual adventuress, she has written a very candid article exposing her own sexual exploits.

Sixteen months after starting the diary, Belle not only won herself a six-figure book deal (The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl UK - Phoenix and Belle de Jour: Diary of an Unlikely Call Girl US - Grand Central Publishing), but her story has also been adapted for television.  The television show is The Secret Diary of a London Call Girl and she will be played by Billie Piper (see left) on BBC’s Channel 4.  The book deal was carefully arranged so that the true name of Belle de Jour would not be revealed. 

The writing is written in true diary style.  Belle is detailed, frank and practical in her descriptions of her work and her clients.  The earlier works of Lisa Hilton lend credence to the idea that she is the true Belle.  Her book Athenais: The Life of Louis XIV Mistress-the Real Queen of France chronicles the life of Athenais de Montespan, the favorite mistress of the Sun King and documented “the incredible adventures of a woman who lived brazenly.” (Booklist review)

In this case, the story about the blook is as intriguing as the stories in the blook.  Perhaps we’ll soon hear that Hollywood is making a film about the making of the blook.  Stay tuned. 

Collaborative fiction has been floating around as an idea for quite awhile.  Numerous sites have sprouted to let would be novelists collaborate on stories.  Many of these try to duplicate Wikipedia’s approach to multi-author creations.  Anyone can contribute and the story grows organically in whatever direction the latest post takes it.  Wikipedia has been wildly successful as a public encyclopedia, but it’s not clear the same approach works for fiction. 

The rules of collaborative fiction sites vary.  Some, as with Ficlets - a collaborative fiction project run by AOL - limit each contribution to a set number of words or characters.   A contribution can be a prequel or sequel to a previous contribution, but there is no editing others’ work.  Some allow any kind of contribution which can then be edited by anyone. 

One of the most well known collaborative fiction experiments was A Million Penguins, a “wikinovel”sponsored by Penguin Books.  During the short time the site was open for contributions, nearly 1,500 individuals contributed over 11,000 edits to its writing and editing.  More than 75,000 people visited the site which garnered more than 280,000 page views.  Not bad.  Jeremy Ettinghaus, who ran the project, announced its closure on the Penguin blog with these words:

So what of the experiment - can a collective really write a novel? I guess the answer has to be a qualified maybe.  Watching the recent changes and the discussion pages and the user talk pages gives me hope - it is clear that some people have really worked well together, discussed each others contributions and have even made plans to collaborate further in the future which is really encouraging. But clearly opening this experiment up to ‘the whole world’ caused problems - we had vandals, pornographers, spammers and any number of people who had such differing ideas about what would make a good novel that a real sense of cohesiveness was always going to be hard to achieve.

But stories, to be effective, need structure and direction.  I don’t think the problem lies with the tool.  Wiki tools or their equivalents are excellent for collaboration and require only a minor learning curve for users.  The problem is more with having unrestricted public participation on the writing side.  Writing fiction requires specific skills.  Writing collaboratively requires the ability to work productively in a team. 

A format that might work better is to restrict the writing to a small team with (hopefully) the requisite talent, but allow the public to contribute feedback via tagging, voting, comments or suggestions that the writing team can potentially incorporate.  Divide the writing into key tasks such as:

• Storyline
• Scene development and sequencing
• Character development
• Backstory and research
• Dialogue

Have one primary author who would control the storyline, at least at a high level.  Others on the team would take on the remaining tasks.  Each task could have multiple contributors.  There might be other tasks such as producing podcasts of chapters as they are finalized.  This has proven to be an effective way to build an audience for a work in progress.  It would also stimulate more feedback.  Collaborative fiction could become an engaging spectator sport.

Keeping the distinction between writers and audience is beneficial.  Audiences know what they like and don’t like.  Their feedback can be used to “debug” the final product.  Crowdsource the feedback, not the writing.

Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press revolutionized book production and led to a universe of low cost, widely availalbe books.  This in turn set the stage for mass literacy.  But the process of writing books - turning thoughts and ideas into cohesive manuscripts - remained pretty much a slow, solitary craft.  Today, the web and a number of author power tools are poised to make writing a better book easier, faster and better than ever before. 

Charles Li of Forrester documented some of the tools he has used for his book project in his recent post “Seven Ways the Web Makes Writing a Book Better and Faster.”   Some of the technologies that are in the forefront include:

• Blogs for reader engagement, audience building and testing ideas.   
• RSS, e-mail alerts and page monitors for research and informaiton gathering. 
• Wikis for collaboration - Suw Charman’s recent post “Open publishing - collaborative writing” on Stratnge Attractor provide some good examples of how wikis are being used for collaborative authorship of both fiction and non-fiction works.
• E-mail for interviews.  I have found this mature technology is still a great way to make introductions and conduct interviews across time and space. 
• Groups, forums and social networking sites for finding groups of interest to talk with and stories to share
• Bookmarking and other tools - e.g. Zotero, a Firefox plug-in - to help organize and classify information

These tools and technologies have the potential to accelerate and improve the book writing process.  And they make the collaborative writing process much more feasible.  The exchange of ideas lies at the foundation of our civilization.  The barriers to a rapid dissemination of knowledge, ideas and stories are steadily falling with the evolution of new technologies.  First in book production, then book marketing and distribution, and finally the writing process itself.   The next revolution that may be in devising ways that will help us absorb and process all this information.  These breakthroughs may come from discoveries in biology and neuroscience rather than innovations in computer or Internet technologies.

Social media has created quite a buzz in marketing circles.  Social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook are wildly popular and growing rapidly.  Blogs, podcasts and video sharing sites like YouTube have become part of the Internet mainstream.  Yet many authors and publishers are uncertain about how to leverage this new phenomenon for their marketing campaigns.  Paul Gillin, author of the bestselling book The New Influencers, agreed to share some of his thoughts about publishing and social media with us. 

Paul runs a consulting/freelance writing business specializing in new media..  He has been writing and speaking about information technology since the early ’80s.  Paul is an accomplished speaker and is known for his ability to demystify complex concepts and explain them in understandable terms.  His book combines historical perspective and the insight gained from 25 years of experience as a technology journalist.  As the many annecdotes and profiles in the book attest, he is an engaging storyteller with a briefcase full of fascinating accounts of the people and events that are shaping social media today.

FPP:  What does the term “social media” mean?

Paul:  I actually like Wikipedia’s definition: “Social media describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share content, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives, and media themselves.”  Or as Lawrence Lessig of Stanford University terms it, “the writable Web.”  It’s new technology that enables people to publish for themselves and to comment on each other’s published work.  This can be highly individual or highly networked. The key component is that individuals now have the potential to publish to a global audience.

FPP:  What are the factors driving the rise of social media?

Paul:  There’s a whole appendix of my book devoted to that topic, but I’ll try to summarize.  The two major factors are technology developments and innovations in search  People have been able to input data through Web browsers since the early days, but the capability to capture, store and publish that information was limited.  With the rapid decline in hardware costs, services like photo and video sharing are now affordable.  Open source software has also made it inexpensive for people to experiment with new kinds of services. You no longer have to invest tens of thousands of dollars to put together a web server and a software stack.  Broadband has also reached the tipping point, with over half of all US households now using it and considerably higher percentages in some other countries.

Google is a big part of the phenomenon. Until Google came along, there really was no good way to reliably find information that was important to you. The early search engines just paled in comparison. Because Google figured out a way to index information by the quality of content, it became much more attractive for people to publish and hope to be found. Google also pioneered advertising models that made it possible for businesses to provide very powerful services for free. Adsense was a true innovation in business and its impact on the development of social media can’t be underestimated.

FPP:  Is the use of social media limited to a younger demographic? Is it a global phenomenon?

Paul:  It’s very much a global phenomenon. In fact, the number one language in the blogosphere is Japanese, according to Technorati. While young people are very comfortable with these media, I think the most interesting innovation is being done by grownups. The new influencers I wrote about are all adults who are passionate about topics and who use social media to become shakers and movers in those markets. I think adults and kids both appreciate the value of social media for finding like-minded people, but I think the adults especially value the power to have their voice heard where previously they were silent.

FPP:  How can book publishers and authors leverage social media to generate more interest in and sales of their titles?

Paul:  There are many ways. Blogging is all about expertise and sharing your expertise with other people. Book authors must develop expertise in their subjects, and they can generate awareness and conversations with other interested parties by publishing their insights on a blog. Increasingly, authors are publishing their books in this way. I published my entire book on my blog for the three months prior to submission to the editor. This not only generated useful feedback, but the bloggers who commented on my work became excellent prospects for reviews after the book was released.

When the book is in the market, a blog is a good way to expand upon the topic, publicize reaction and find potential buyers. People who are searching on the topic that the book is about are more likely to find the author and the title. I think any author should have a blog related to his or her book, at least in the non-fiction realm.

FPP:  What type of influencers should publishers tap into?

Paul:  People who care deeply about the topics addressed by their titles. These are the people who are most likely to read the book, write about it and generate word-of-mouth awareness.

FPP:  What practices should they avoid in their social media marketing campaigns?

Paul:  Never lie or deceive.  Don’t be overtly promotional.  Social media practitioners, whether they be bloggers, podcasters or online video producers, want substantive content to work with.  They want access to the author and the author’s sources.  If you just send them press releases, they will react negatively. You need to follow up and engage them with the author and the publisher.  Don’t treat them like second-class citizens.  Bloggers should be afforded the same courtesy as mainstream media.  If you excerpt and link to their work, you should publish the bad as well as the good. That shows that you are honest about the outreach effort.

FPP:  How does search marketing relate to social media marketing?

Paul:  Search marketing is about raising awareness for your content by making it easier for search engines to find it. That can be done through “organic” search optimization or through paid results placement.  Social media vehicles tend to do very well in search engines for a variety of reasons.  This is another reason why a blog is a good way to publicize a title. You have a higher probability of being found by a search engine if you are providing useful content than if you are simply listing the book on a catalog site.

FPP:  How can publishers and authors measure their influence in the world of social media?

Paul:  Use conventional analytical tools like Google Analytics and traffic logs to get a view of how many people are coming to your site.  Register on Technorati.  Its rankings of blogger popularity are controversial, but they are also the metric bloggers use most often.  Check referral reports to see how much traffic is coming to a book site or sales landing page from your blog or from mentions on other bloggers’ sites.  Look at how much commenting activity your own posts are generating.  There are other things you can do, but those are some of the most immediate opportunities.

FPP:  What trends do you see in social media marketing during the next few years?

Paul:  Experimentation. There is some panic about social media in the marketing world right now.  People think it’s the thing to do, and that you’re going to be left behind if you don’t get your plan together quickly.  In fact, no one has figured out social media marketing.  Everyone is just experimenting, and the successes still don’t fit any particular formula.  There are a few best practices emerging, but we are still in the first inning of this game. That said, I don’t advise waiting on the sidelines.  The earlier you get started, the faster you will realize the substantial benefits and low costs of social media marketing. The good news is that right now it’s a very forgiving environment.  People are making lots of mistakes but no one is particularly upset about it.  The costs are still low and the audience realizes that everyone is still feeling their way around.  So take advantage of that, take some chances and learn from your successes and your failures.  Few people are going to remember your failures five years from now, anyway.

Personal publishing in the form of blogs, podcast and online video is becoming fairly well established.  I think the most interesting developments right now are in the social networks like Facebook and Flickr.  This is where people gather around communities of interest and the power of recommendation and grass-roots organization take hold. It’s hard to organize people around a blog, but with a social network you can do some very interesting things.  I think it’s impossible to predict five years out at this point with any kind of certainty.  I do think that over the next two years you’ll see a lot of experimentation in social networks.
 

Marketing is always a challenge for self published authors and small publishers.   There are many channels and venues to consider and usually a very limited budget with which to address them.  We recently interviewed Sue Collier, one of the experts in this field, to get her thoughts and advice about how to tackle the book marketing maze. 

Sue has been working with authors and small presses for more than two decades. She is the current owner of Self-Publishing Resources, which was originally founded by self-publishing guru Marilyn Ross and provides authors and small presses with full-service book packaging and book marketing/consulting services.  

FPP:  There so many different ways to market a book. What factors should an author or publisher take into account when developing their marketing plan?

Sue:  Authors/publishers need to focus on nontraditional and niche markets. They should consider both before even starting work on the manuscript.

FPP:  What are the most important things an author publisher should do to promote a new book?

Sue:  The very first thing is choosing one’s subject matter carefully. This goes back to niche markets — there should be one, two, three, or even four specific niche markets for the book that can be targeted in marketing efforts. Also important is awareness of the whole issue of publication dates. In order for authors/publishers to take advantage of prepublication reviews and essentially making a “big splash” with prepublication publicity, publication dates should occur well after books are in hand. Additionally, authors/publishers should never quit marketing their books. For instance, The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing by Marilyn Ross (my partner at Self-Publishing Resources) originally came out in 1979. Subsequent revisions of the book ensure that marketing efforts continue to this day.

FPP:   What are some common mistakes self published authors make in their marketing efforts?

Sue:  Not choosing the proper publication date for their books (see above). Appearing “self-published” is another error many self-published authors make. In this day and age, there is simply no reason for this. Authors should do their research ahead of time, put out a quality product, and choose a professional-sounding publishing company name. They shouldn’t lie about being self-published, but they should present a product and business front as though they are a small press. Another mistake is not having a full arsenal of promotional/publicity pieces.  At Self-Publishing Resources, we provide authors/publishers with a news release (targeting specific niche markets), mock review, customer order flyer, pitch letter, spec sheet for the trade, and other pieces that can be used for a variety of PR/marketing purposes.

FPP:  How has the web changed the strategies and tactics used in book publicity?

Sue:  It has expanded publicity options tremendously — this once again goes back to finding niche markets for your book. Websites, blogs, chat rooms, forums — all of those provide ways for the self-published author to penetrate niche markets effectively.

FPP:  Are blogs effective book marketing platforms, and if so, why?

Sue:  Not necessarily one’s own blog — unless the author/publisher has a tremendous amount of time or the staff to continually update and offer readers a lot of value. Otherwise, it might not be worth the time. But the blogs of other’s can be used selectively. There are many blogs out there that are very effective, given a good audience and timely information. Some are excellent and a source people look to daily for information in a particular subject area. Authors/publishers need to spend time researching what blogs might be appropriate. There can also be affordable advertising on some blogs; this is another possibility to consider.

FPP:  What are some other examples of cost effective online marketing publishers and authors can use?

Sue:  At Self-Publishing Resources, we put together a spreadsheet for our clients that identifies sites offering possibilities for selling books, reviewing books, listing articles/book exerpts, as well as interviews, podcasts, blogs, and so forth. This information can be worked in various ways, the majority of which cost nothing to the author/publisher.

FPP:  How can authors and publishers effectively blend their online and traditional book marketing?

Sue:  Put your URL everywhere — not just in the traditional places, such as your business card. For instance, it should be on your book and every other promotional piece, and you should mention it if you are giving a radio interview. And have a top-notch website.

FPP:  There has been a lot of buzz about social media sites lately - e.g. MySpace, Facebook, Digg, YouTube. How can authors and publishers use these new social media sites in their book marketing campaigns?

Sue:  In my opinion, these fall into the same category as blogs, and should be fairly low on the marketing priority list at this point.

FPP:  What emerging trends do you see in book marketing?

Sue:  Interactivity - communication between the author and readers - on the Internet will be huge. Amazon.com has started to utilize this tool to some extent. Authors/publishers will also want to come up with ways to use their websites as a tool for interactivity.  E-books is another area, that although it is still lagging, will likely continue to gain popularity. Authors/publishers should be sure to have their books available as an e-book, especially business books and others that might have obsolence.

You can reach Sue at sue@SelfPublishingResources.com.

While podcasting is still a relatively young medium, podcast listenership is growing steadily.  According to a recent forecast from e-Marketer, advertisers  will spend $240 million on embedded podcast advertising in 2008 and $400 million by 2011.  One of the hottest podcasts today is Grammar Girl, produced by Mignon Fogarty.

Mignon Fogarty is the founder of the Quick and Dirty Tips podcast network and the host of the award-winning Grammar Girl podcast.  Mignon earned a B.A. in English from the University of Washington and an M.S. in biology from Stanford University. She was the top editor at multiple websites in the late ’90s, and worked as a science and technical writer before becoming Grammar Girl in 2006.

Mignon took time out for an interview with Future Perfect Publishing recently to discuss what makes Grammar Girl such a strong franchise, how she produces and manages episdoes, and what’s ahead for her popular show. 

FPP:  Were you always interested in grammar?

Mignon:  I bought all the popular grammar books as they came out over the years, but I can’t say I was always a grammar fanatic. I do love working on it now though; it’s fascinating.

FPP:  What inspired you to start the Grammar Girl podcast?

Mignon:  I was working as a science and technical writer back in 2005 and ended up starting a weekly podcast about science. That show did well - it won the Best Science Show category of the Podcast Peer Awards - but it became a huge drain on my time.  Each show took at least 10 hours to produce, and although the traffic probably put the show in the top 20% of all podcasts, it clearly wasn’t ever going to become my main source of income.

So I began to think about other ways I could stay in podcasting without it being such a time sink.  I came up with six or seven ideas for short tip-based shows, and as I was editing technical documents one day at the coffee shop, looking at grammar error after grammar error, I was finally inspired to choose grammar as the theme.  I scribbled down about four possible episode topics, threw up a website, and recorded the first Grammar Girl podcast..

FPP:  Grammar Girl is one of the most popular podcasts now.  Grammar seems like an unlikely topic to have such wide appeal. To what do you attribute its popularity?

Mignon:  I know what you mean; I was surprised by the popularity too.

The messages I receive from listeners and the interactions I have with people in general have led me to a few conclusions. First, there is a bigger population of language lovers than you might imagine.

Second, everyone seems to have a language question they’ve always wondered about but never bothered to investigate. I get a lot of e-mail messages that start out “I’ve always wondered . . .”

Third, because of e-mail and instant messaging, I believe people are writing more now than in previous years.  Whereas 20 years ago people would pick up a phone and call a business contact, today it’s more common to write an e-mail message. Schools don’t spend a lot of time on language rules, so people feel insecure about their writing.  When they see that there is an easy, fun way to learn the practical little rules, they get excited.

FPP:  What’s the makeup of your audience and why are they so interested in grammar?

Mignon:  Based on surveys I’ve done, my audience is about half male and half female. Listeners tend to be highly educated, have good incomes, and range in age from 25 to 45.

In general, the people I hear from say the show helps them do better at work or at school.

FPP:  Before you began podcasting, you were a writer.  What things did you have to learn when you made the transition to audio and first began podcasting?

Mignon:  I didn’t know anything about audio production or writing for audio when I first started, so I had a lot of learning to do. I had to learn what kind of equipment and software to use and then how to use it. I picked up everything I know from reading websites and forums and from experimenting. That’s probably why it took me so long to produce the science podcast!

FPP:  What made you choose audio vs. print as your format to teach people about grammar?

Mignon:  I was already committed to doing an audio show, so it was really more a matter of choosing grammar as a topic than choosing a format for teaching grammar.

FPP:  You’ve created a new audiobook “Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips.” Are you considering a print version as well?

Mignon:  I’m working on a print book that should come out in time for the back-to-school season next year.

FPP:  What is involved in putting an episode together and what is your time commitment on a weekly basis to the show?

Mignon:  First I choose a topic. The topics almost always come from listener questions, and when it’s possible I like to tie the show to a current event.  For example, when Hillary Clinton picked “You and I” for her campaign song, I used that as a jumping off point to talk about the phrase “between you and I,” which a lot of listeners had asked about.

Once I have the topic I do a lot of research. I have about 20 reference books and I also do Internet searches. Even if I think I know the answer, I check as many references as I can to make sure I’m not missing something.  Depending on how complicated the topic is, research can go quickly or it can take many hours. More than once I’ve abandoned a topic after hours of research because it ends up feeling too complicated to cover in a five-minute podcast.

Once I’m comfortable with what I want to say, I write my script and then send it to a copy editor for review. Sometimes when I get the script back there is some back-and-forth with the copy editor about minor points of grammar. And when the script is done I record the show.

I’d like to get ahead, but I’m not; so right now I tend to work right up to the Thursday night deadline. So depending on how late it is, I either send my audio file to my sound guy for editing or (if it is too late) I edit it and post it myself.

I’d say the whole process takes 8 hours for a very easy show and 20 hours for a very complicated show or when I have to abandon a topic and start over.

FPP:  What has worked well and what things have you had to change during the life of Grammar Girl?

Mignon:  When I was just starting out I didn’t always put references on the website. I put up references now because I found that doing so heads off criticism from people who think they know the rules but are misinformed.  I found that if I didn’t post my references, I would often end up going back and citing them anyway to defend my position.

FPP:  How do you measure the success of your podcast?

Mignon:  I track audio file downloads, web page views, rankings, and listener questions, and all of those metrics would support the idea that the podcast is successful, but for me personally it’s the listener feedback that makes me feel as if the show is successful.  For example, Grammar Girl is one of the most reviewed podcasts at iTunes; people seem to like the show so much that they spontaneously take the time to write reviews, and I’m very moved by that.

FPP:  How does Grammar Girl earn money?  Has it become easier to attract advertisers?

Mignon:  I make money primarily by having advertising in the podcast, and it has definitely been easier over time to attract advertisers. Not only has Grammar Girl become more well known over the last year, but advertisers are also becoming more comfortable with podcasting.

I also released an audiobook in March that’s done very well. It was originally available as a download from iTunes and Audible, and it came out on CD in July. The title is Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips to Clean Up Your Writing.

FPP:  Has the rapid growth in your listening population changed the way you do your podcast and handle your interactions with your audience?

Mignon:  The rapid growth was overwhelming at first because I was still working as a technical writer.  At first I tried to personally answer every listener question, but I get a lot of long, complicated grammar questions and answering them all quickly became impossible.

I started keeping a handwritten list of questions, which became a Word document with questions, which finally became a spreadsheet that I use to organize questions in a way that makes it easy to find topics I want to use for the show.

I was able to quit working as a technical writer in January to focus on podcasting full time, and it became more manageable after that. I still can’t answer every question personally, but I do try to answer as many as I can.

FPP:  What’s in store for the future of Grammar Girl?

Mignon:  My top priority is still putting out a new Grammar Girl episode every week. I’m just plugging through listener questions.

You might recall that I said I just threw up the original Grammar Girl website, so it’s not a surprise that it isn’t very pretty or user-friendly.  So I’m working on redesigning the website to make it easier to use and search. That should be done in September.  As I said, there is the print book that will come out next year, and of course, I’m always working on growing the Quick and Dirty Tips podcast network.

Probably every industry has to periodically rethink its conventional wisdom and rewrite its rulebook.  Book publishing is no exception.  About a year ago, Rohit Bhargava wrote an insightful post highlighting 5 case studies that demonstrated how book marketing was being reivented.  The experiments continue.  During the past several years, the book publishing industry has been adapting to a steady stream of innovations, a number of which have been discussed on this blog.  What start as experiments become accepted wisdom.  Much of this new wisdom may turn out to be transitional and ephemeral.  Nevertheless, presented here for your consideration (and comment!) is my forecast about what shape the new rules might take.

1. The printed book will endure - The demise of the printed book has long been predicted.  But the book has proved to be one of the most durable creations in human history.  Many believe  the Internet spells the end of the printed book.  Instead, it seems to be driving the creation of an immense and vibrant long tail of book sales.  Advances in digital ink and e-paper could enhance the reading process by while preserving the print book format.  The e-book, like the audio book, will complement print book sales, not supplant them.
2. Everything is measured and tested - Blog to book authoring strategies offers the possibility of testing all content before publicaiton and sampling the prsopective audience.  Tools are available to help identify, quantifiy, aggregate and stimulate audiences.  Buzz around any title or topic can be tracked and marketing programs adjusted accordingly.  BookScan tabulates actual sales and shows what’s really selling.  Analytics will inform title acquisitions and marketing decisions.
3. Books become another form of consumer generated media - This may seem odd.  Books have always been the personal creations of their authors.  As more books emerge from blogs and / or podcasts, they will take on the characteristics of their ambient medium and become more like the creation of a community.  
4. Social networks become the new word of mouth - Social networks are becoming the new places to learn about and share cultural items.  The membership of social media are becoming more mainstream and the tools for members to share their likes / dislikes, insights and experiences are becoming more sophisticated.
5. Book trailers become the new book cover - Book videos can now be our first conceptualization of a book.  A book trailer quickly gives a sense of the author and the content.  There is increasing evidence that they help drive sales.  And book videos can travel to sites, through e-mail and now to video enabled portable devices like the iPhone.
6. Books become viral - How?  Widgets.  The first round of book widgets seem relatively modest in scope.  They are essentially like Amazon’s Search Inside the Book, escept they can reside on other sites.  But the real power is in the web services that supports the widget.  They can expose other kinds of information related to a title - press releases, book videos - and can become a kind of viral PR machine.
7. Inventory is replaced by production at the point of purchase - New technologies like the Espresso Book Machine will make book distribution completely digital and bring a more “just in time” flavor to book production.  Better, it will open a whole new set of venues where books can be sold, including the self serve variety.  For all practical purposes, returns are zero.

I would like to hear other predictions / new rules and comments. 

Book videos have generated a lot of excitement among authors, publishers and booksellers.  They represent a  powerful new way to visualize and conceptualize a title - much as the book cover did in the last century.  The aesthetics of book videos are still the subject of experimentation.  One of the pioneers in producing book videos is Circle of Seven Productions, which trademarked the term”book trailers.”  We contacted the company to find out more about how book videos are produced, what they cost and how authors, publishers and booksellers are using them. 

We interviewed Sheila Clover English, a publicist and the CEO of Circle of Seven Productions.  A five-year veteran as an Executive Producer of award winning book commercials,  she is best known for bringing book commercial distribution to movie theaters, television, cable and an online network of approximately 150 sites.  An author herself, Sheila strives to provide budget-conscious, high-profile marketing strategies to other authors and publishers.  She lives in Kentucky with her husband, daughter, son, and three dogs.

FPP:  Are there different types of book videos?  How is each type of book video used?

Sheila:  Circle of Seven (COS) offers several types of book video that can accommodate different budgets.  For example, below is a brief synopsis of our current products from least expensive to most expensive.  (Click on the links to see a sample of each type of book video.)

COS also offers format and book media for both television and movie theaters.

FPP:  Are there certain genres or types of books that lend themselves better to book videos than others?

Sheila:  We recently asked that question in a survey. The majority of people felt that any genre would work, but many felt that romance and fantasy were the top genres that did well. I think that has to do with the incredible number of those genres making or having book trailers made.

FPP:  Many authors and small publishers have the perception that book videos are too expensive for them to consider. What is the cost range for Book videos and what are the tradeoffs a publisher has to consider when determining how much to spend on a book video?

Sheila:  The range, as listed above, is from $250 to $50,000+. You need to ask yourself who your target audience is. What will they want to see?  Will it play on television or in movie theaters?  Also you need to consider distribution. Booksellers prefer to see action in the videos, movement.

FPP:  How long does it typically take to produce a book video?

Sheila:  It depends on the complexity of the video.  A Cover Story Video can be done in 48 to 73 hours. A full production book trailer needs at least 2 or 3 months to put together as a rule. Other variables have to do with producer availability. We have a production partner network so that we can do several projects at a time.

It is best to book your spot on our production calendar as far in advance as possible. We have people booking for 2008 and 2009 already. If we know if advance that we’re going to be busy, we can bring in new team members to assist us in creating the videos and keeping to our timelines.

FPP:  How are publishers and authors using book videos to market their titles?

Sheila:  Book videos are tools like any other tool.  If it just sits on your website it’s a waste of money. You need to utilize it. Authors are putting it on websites, blogs and their MySpace pages. Their publishers are showing it to their sales team, sending it to booksellers or their marketing departments.  COS Productions uploads it to the internet, then does a big campaign on our MySpace during the first week the book is out.  We often format them and put them on television or in movie theaters.

COS Productions is constantly identifying new ways to utilize the videos so you get the use of this entertaining tool.  Usually, when an ARC goes out to booksellers and reviewers they list the marketing and promotion that will done with a book. It lets the bookseller know how much information about the book is getting to readers so they can order accordingly. It’s great to put “Extensive Online Marketing” and “Book Video” or even “Television Ads”. We can get TV ads with good spots for less than $2000. Sometimes just being able to say that it is playing on television will encourage someone to check out your book.

FPP:  How have booksellers responded to book videos? How are they using them to sell more books?

Sheila:  Yes, booksellers have responded to book video. Borders has been using COS videos since 2002. They currently take a large percentage of our videos as content for their site. They play it in their newsletter or on their Borders Media site.

Recently we were contacted by Barnes and Noble and we now supply them with our book video as well.  We’ve been thrilled with the number of independent booksellers who have contacted us to ask for video.  In addition many specialty sites ask for the videos as content because they are entertaining and readers like to watch them.

I see a trend toward having them on blogs to allow people to talk about the videos and be more interactive with them.  Douglas Clegg’s new book video is a wonderful example.  We did a campaign for him that included publicity and we did a big blog campaign. Within 24 hours of posting the video and instructions for bloggers on how to use the video and what to do with it we had over 20 people blogging about his video. Which means that over 20 people within 24 hours were promoting his book for him. We expect to see approximately 100 bloggers talking about this video by Saturday (5 days time).  We’re in touch with Amazon.com right now and they are also working on their technology so that they can easily offer book video.

FPP:  Do booksellers have any specific requirements for book videos submitted to them?

Sheila:  Yes. They don’t want them to be overly long.  They need to be tasteful (no nudity or overt violence).  We have a program in place for booksellers who use COS video that works very well. We actually send out book video in batches each week. Booksellers get a preview. We do accept feedback and have made changes to some videos if the booksellers ask for it and the client agrees to the changes. We supply the booksellers the videos in the format they require. We try to make it very easy for booksellers to take the videos so that more of them are utilized.

FPP:  Where should authors or publishers distribute and promote their book videos?

Sheila:  What good is a tool left in the shed?  Having the video created is only half the work. You need people to see it. You need a lot of people to see it. More importantly, you need the right people to see it.  We have a distribution department that not only distributes our videos, but they also do research on the various online social networks, specialty sites and other online opportunity sites out there.

The landscape of any social site can change. We make sure we monitor what’s going on, who is there and what they like on each site.  You can do that yourself. It just takes time. There are over 240 social sites on the internet that take user-generated video. That’s a lot of opportunity.

FPP:  Is there evidence to show that book videos lead to greater awareness of titles and more book sales? Are there ways for publishers to test the sales effectiveness of their book videos?

Sheila:  How are publishers testing the effectiveness of a print ad? And of course a print ad is gone in a week or a month. Book video is around until you take it off the internet.

We have worked with individuals who track their sales through the Amazon affiliate program. They put the Amazon “buy” button next their video to see how many people are buying after watching the video. Even this isn’t an exact science since some people will go to another vendor, or they don’t have the money to buy that day, etc. Two of our sources reported an average of 10% click through to buy after watching the video. That number continues to grow.

Over 75% of those polled in a recent survey of readers said that book video influenced their purchase of a book. The number of people being influenced to buy a book because of video continues to grow as more and more people turn to the internet for entertainment and information.

FPP:  How do you see the book video evolving over the next few years?

Sheila:  What did the music video do for CD sales?  More and more people will turn to book video because it is easier and more entertaining than going to a bookstore and looking at the intimidating number of books there that they will have to read the back cover copy of in order to make their buying decisions. Perhaps traditional readers will continue to shop this way, but the readers of the future are looking to video, just as they have learned to do for television, music, movies and games. We are now cultivating tomorrow’s readers today. We are now competing, not with each other, but with those other entertainment venues.