News & Publishing Juno Editor/Paula Guran on 22 Aug 2008 10:30 am
Publishers Using the Web?
In an article in BussinessWeek, Sarah Lacy makes some good points, she also seems less than well informed about publishing reality. What is upsetting about this sort of article is that it is in a highly reputable magazine that would never publish advice from anyone so under-informed in almost any other industry. Only publishing.
Read the entire article, but here are her basic points and some brief comment:
Make it social: “There has to be a way … to meet the ongoing need for building community around books. Every publisher should at a minimum build a Facebook app. around its titles. The limitation with book clubs is time- and space-related. Not everyone can get their schedules (and geography) to mesh, and not everyone can read a book in the same time frame. But social networking could do for book clubs what Scrabulous did for fans of Scrabble—it let them play games together online, whenever they want”
Me: There already are numerous initiatives in this direction from forums to discussion groups to networking sites.
Take book tours out of the stores…
Me: Hasn’t she heard of blog tours and newsletters?
Create stars—don’t just exploit existing ones: “Require as part of the contract that the author blog, speak on panels, attend events. Give them incentives for delivering—say, though Web traffic of the number of followers they amass on Twitter.
“Sure, publishers would have to spend more on promotion. But because they’re spending less on an advance—say, $50,000 for a lesser-known writer than the hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) they’d spend on a star—they can afford the bigger promotional budget….
“Even better: Tie that rising star to a multi-book deal from the beginning. Then any promotion is an investment in those next two books. It’s basically the record-label model, made cheaper and easier via the branding-power of the social Web.”
Me: This is where she needs to take the reality pill. I have way too much to say on this one.
Go electronic from the get-go.
“You might be stunned to learn that in book publishing, once you get to the final manuscript stages, there is no electronic version… Many publishing houses just don’t think about digital versions…”
Me: Yeah, I would be stunned — because it isn’t true. Dose #2 of previously prescribed medication, please.
Make e-commerce even easier.
“…through one-click widgets appended to blogs, Facebook pages, and other sites across the Web. Link these tools directly to PayPal and Google Checkout (GOOG). Think: one-click purchase, not one click takes you to Amazon.”
Me: Hello? What publisher doesn’t do something similar to this at least with direct sales (which sometimes are actually fulfilled by someone else)? Although many are careful to link to everyone in order to be “fair”. Some people are offended if you don’t link to Amazon, BookSense, B&N, WorldCat, Alibris BookFinder, AbeBooks…etc.
on 22 Aug 2008 at 6:43 pm 1.Stacia Kane said …
I always love when they start talking about MySpace and Facebook. “Friends” do not translate to “sales”, not at all. It’s equivalent to PublishAmerica authors talking about how many hits their websites get. Very little online promo actually works.
I know my blog has brought me some sales. SOME. I think blogs can be a decent promo tool if your content is interesting enough to attract readers (I’m not saying mine is, just that I have “blogfriends” I met through blogging who have bought my work–it’s expanded my social network because there’s actual real content, not some horrible slow-to-load clunky MySpace thing.) But I do think blogs can make a small difference. Blog tours can work out well. But Myspace and Friendster and Facebook and all that? Taking out ads on websites? No, no, no, and no. The amount of sales that stuff brings isn’t worth the amount of time it takes to keep up to date, at least not in my experience or the experience of anyone I know.
And please, tell us what the way too much to say is on the topic of promo!