What you need to know about off-site book sales
Yesterday I received an email from an author at 5:09 p.m. asking if I could arrange for his book to be sold. Today. In Hawaii. 200 copies of the book would be ideal, he said, although 100 would suffice.
I doubt very many bookstores have 100 copies of all the Harry Potter and Twilight books combined. The chances of a store carrying copies of a book — published nearly a year ago — in quantities larger than, well, one, are slim. While this is Book Publicity 101, I realize it may not be quite so obvious to others, so I thought it would be useful to compile some basic information about off-site book sales for authors and for publicists to pass on to authors. (Publicists, Agents and others — plagiarize these instructions at will although I would appreciate, of course, if you could credit The Book Publicity Blog.)
Arranging for books to be sold at off-site events:
– Allow time to arrange for a bookseller. Typically, bookstores need at least about three months notice to arrange for events on-site since they need time to promote them. Although they don’t need this long to arrange to sell books at off-site venues, they still do need time (a month is ideal) to arrange staffers’ schedules. Orders take about a day to be processed and books take at least a week to ship from coast to coast, so two weeks’ notice is pretty much the minimum.
– Publishing houses do not sell books on consignment, nor can our “representatives” sell books at an event. (We’re asked this all the time.) It may seem odd that a publishing house would balk at, well, selling books, but aside from a couple departments — customer service, the website — we’re not set up to sell books directly to consumers. (It’s like this with most commodities: you buy your toys or your Tylenol or your bananas from Toys ‘R Us or Duane Reade or Whole Foods, not from Hasbro, Johnson & Johnson and Chiquita.)
– It’s hard finding a bookseller for a small event. With some exceptions (like in smaller communities where bookseller and author are acquainted), booksellers ask for an expected audience of about 100 people at off-site events. It doesn’t make financial sense for a bookseller to send a staff member to an event for three or more hours — not including commuting time — to sell 10 books to 30 people. (Which doesn’t mean books can’t be sold, but you might consider selling them yourself, which many authors do.)
– Arranging for off-site book sales is time consuming. Of course, for large events, we’ll do whatever it takes to get books there (not to mention it’s pretty easy finding a bookseller to sell to a large crowd), but for small gatherings, we can spend an awful lot of time contacting an awful lot of booksellers only to sell awfully few books at the end of the day.
– Some venues do not allow book sales — some houses of worship, for example. Others, such as many universities, require you to use their bookstore. Keep this in mind when you are asked to speak.
– College students do not buy a lot of books. Particularly hardcover books. Probably because they’re too busy with their Wiis.
– Be realistic about the number of books you will sell. The most accurate way to determine the number of books you will sell is to take the average of the books you’ve sold at previous events. But if you don’t have previous events to go by — and many authors won’t — you can use the 1/3 rule for book sales: one out of three audience members will buy books (obviously this figure is higher sometimes; sometimes, lower). I’ve had authors insist that booksellers bring a large quantity of books, only to have them sit unsold at the end of the night — what authors don’t always realize is that this is a tremendous waste of money for the bookseller (they have to pay to ship back unsold books), it’s embarassing for the publicist, and all it does is make the bookseller wary of selling at the next event.
If you cannot find a bookseller to sell at an off-site event, consider:
– Handing out flyers with a picture of the book and your and / or the publisher’s website.
– Selling the book yourself. I have one author who speaks often at schools. He throws a box of books in the back of his car and off he goes. Depending on how often you speak (and depending on the size of the expected crowd), consider purchasing your book from the publishing house — with your author discount, of course — and selling them yourself.
– Working out an alternate arrangement with a local bookseller. This one needs to be considered on a case-by-case basis, but it is possible that a bookseller who can’t spare the staff to sell books at an event might be willing to order books for an author (sparing the author those logistical details), provided the author (or a media escort / friend / colleague / spouse) can actually sell the books. This can get complicated so some stores simply won’t consider it, but if you’re willing to help out on the sales end — and you’d like to support a local bookstore — it may be worth checking with your publicist or the store to explore how flexible the bookseller might be.
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Now, in some cities, there are nice people who arrange off-site events and book sales like Hooks Book Events in Washington, DC (and some other cities) and Kim Ricketts Book Events in Seattle and San Francisco. You can imagine the excitement.
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What else should authors know (or would you like to know, if you’re an author) about off-site book sales?
NPR Books Watch — 1/23-1/29
Apparently some fellow named John Updike died this week, yes? Reported on in five separate stories. Neil Gaiman’s Newberry win garnered two stories (Morning Edition and Talk of the Nation last Tuesday) and Jimmy Carter nabbed three interviews with Morning Edition, Fresh Air and Diane Rehm last Tuesday / Wednesday.
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Here are the NPR interviews for this week. Anyone who emails me the imprints of all the books listed (or houses if no imprint is available) will win the NPR Books Grid for the prior week that includes, in addition to the information below, interviewer, pub date, imprint, post-interview Amazon ranking, pre-interview ranking (if the book was mentioned on Shelf Awareness and I was able to look up the number before the interview), and interview hyperlink.
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TOTAL book stories for the week: 26
All Things Considered: 4
Day to Day: 2
Diane Rehm: 4
Fresh Air: 2
Morning Edition: 4
News & Notes: 1
NPR.org: 5
Talk of the Nation: 3
Weekend Edition Sunday: 1
| NPR.org | Books We Like / Wolves at the Gate | Joss | Whedon | Graphic Novels |
| All Things Considered | Bright Young People | D. J. | Taylor | History |
| All Things Considered | Vile Bodies | Evelyn | Waugh | Literary Fiction |
| All Things Considered | Novelist John Updike Dies | |||
| All Things Considered | Clothes on their Backs, The | Linda | Grant | Literary Fiction |
| Day to Day | Noise: Fiction Inspired by Sonic Youth | Peter | Wild | Entertainment |
| Day to Day | Yankee Years, The | Joe | Torre | Sports |
| Diane Rehm | Big Rich, The | Bryan | Burrough | History |
| Diane Rehm | Snark | David | Denby | Popular Culture |
| Diane Rehm | We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land | Jimmy | Carter | Politics |
| Diane Rehm | Survivors Club, The | Ben | Sherwood | Health |
| Fresh Air | We Can Have Peace In The Holy Land | Jimmy | Carter | Politics |
| Fresh Air | S.: A Novel | John | Updike | Literary Fiction |
| Morning Edition | The Graveyard Book’ Wins Newbery Medal | |||
| Morning Edition | We Can Have Peace In The Holy Land | Jimmy | Carter | Politics |
| Morning Edition | Are readers tired of sports doping books? | |||
| Morning Edition | Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author John Updike Dies At 76 | |||
| News & Notes | Best African American Essays: 2009 | Gerald | Early | Anthology |
| News & Notes | Best African American Fiction: 2009 | Gerald | Early | Anthology |
| NPR.org | Novelist, Essayist John Updike Dead At 76 | |||
| NPR.org | Book Tour / 2666 | Robert | Bolano | Literary Fiction |
| NPR.org | From ‘Rabbit’ To Rain, John Updike Had It Covered | |||
| NPR.org | Books We Like / Paris Review Interviews, The Vol. III | Philip | Gourevitch | Biography |
| Talk of the Nation | Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novelist John Updike Dies | |||
| Talk of the Nation | Graveyard Book, The | Neil | Gaiman | Children’s |
| Talk of the Nation | Billion Dollar Game, The | Allen | St. John | Sports |
| Weekend Edition Sunday | Bitter Road to Freedom | William | Hitchcock | History |
The end of the Book World as we know it … or not
Many have bemoaned the end of the Washington Post’s stand-alone book section, and as a book publicist, my initial reaction was angst suitable for the approaching apocalypse. Bloggers, not surprisingly, reacted with rather more equanimity. Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind’s Sarah Weinman pointed out that the book section will continue to exist online (as well as split between the Outlook and Style sections in the print edition) with a large complement of editors, writers and freelancers. Terry Teachout of About Last Night said the lack of a print edition is insignificant since he reads all newspapers online anyway.
Mark Sarvas of The Elegant Variation declared that the future of book reviewing is on the web, and indeed, several book sections / book editors / former book editors maintain book blogs including Jerome Weeks (formerly of The Dallas Morning News), Frank Wilson (formerly of The Philadelphia Inquirer), The Boston Globe, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel and The Washington Post itself.
So then I came to my senses. Is this really the end of book reviewing or is it the start of something new? After all, virtually all online book reviews boast buy links for books — forget about having to remember or look up an author’s name or a book title. It’s true that listenership dropped for radio stations when the television was invented, but entertainment endured (as did radio stations, for that matter). Likewise, while the format of reviews (and books) may change, reading — and writing – will continue. Gutenberg was an innovator 500 years ago — we need to continue his tradition. Those professing sentimentality for their book pages trudging around with reviews clipped from book sections will lose out. The rest of us don’t have to miss this boat.
What is Twitter all about? Part 142
I was having dinner the other night with a college roommate and her husband, a newspaper editor. He’s on Facebook, (although he doesn’t really use his account), but he asked me what Twitter “is all about.”
PR 2.0 gives us the textbook definition. I plagiarize part of the post here:
“Twitter has influenced how:
- Media connects with audiences
- Businesses listen to and respond with customers
- Communications professionals, marketers, and advertisers connect with the new world of influencers
- Journalists, bloggers, analysts, event organizers can get help and answers from the community, instantly
- Everyday people can create an in-demand personal brand to open new doors and create new destinies
- People are made aware of news and important information from all over the world”
Here are some real-world examples of how one book publicist at Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicists uses Twitter. And here are some examples of how I use Twitter:
– The other day I posted about what not to have on a book website. A couple colleagues tweeted about my post and traffic spiked.
– Prior to posting, I’d asked for some thoughts about what people like and don’t like in book websites. A number of people following my Twitter feed responded and I incorporated their feedback into the post.
– At this point my RSS feed is pretty full (I probably shouldn’t have added 300 blogs) so while I check it every now and then, sometimes Twitter is the easiest way to pick up on breaking news, like when the editor-in-chief of Publishers Weekly was let go, or when John Updike passed away.
– Sporadically I’ll “chat,” albeit in 140-character increments, with journalists, literary agents, authors and other book publicists, a good (and quick) way to “meet” people or keep in touch.
Of course, a lot of authors use Twitter to reach readers. And there you have it.
The book publicity timeline
I spent a goodly amount of time the other day copying 200 press releases and folding them because I’d missed my department’s deadline for sending the releases to the printing house to be copied. The book is a paperback reprint we’re publishing in April, but in publishing we work so far ahead of time that three months early can be late.
Although timing will differ slightly from house to house, here are some common deadlines. (This is the 30-second — actually, make that the 10-second – version of book publicity, since I don’t want to write a book now and you don’t want to read one. At least not here and now, at any rate.) If you do want to read an actual tome about publicity you can try books like Publicize Your Book, The Savvy Author’s Guide to Book Publicity or Publicity: 7 Steps to Publicize Just About Anything – none of which I’ve read, by the way, but I like the titles.
Four-six months before publication:
Publicists: Mail galleys to long-lead media outlets (including monthly magazines and trade publications).
If you’re not a publicist: Make sure to share your thoughts about the book’s promotion with the publicity department. For example, what do you think are the book’s key points? What would attract readers’ attention? (And the attention of journalists?) What’s the target demographic? (Is there a demographic we should be pitching that is not immediately obvious?) What ideas do you have to market and promote the book? In what media outlets would you like to see the book covered? (Yes, we’ve heard of Oprah. And The Today Show.)
If you would like galleys sent to your personal media contacts (some authors will have more than others depending on their profession), you should let the publicist know earlier rather than later. Although it may make sense to wait to send the finished book to certain people (rather than the galley), if the publicist has the names early, then s/he can make that determination. FYI, you cannot approach the same person to blurb and review the book for reasons that should be becoming obvious to you right now — if they didn’t already occur to you.
Also, a book’s web presence (website, blog and / or social networking profile) should be established so that journalists can find information online when they receive galleys.
Publicists: Schedule bookstore events (if an event is appropriate for the book).
If you’re not a publicist: Make sure the publicist knows about any significant markets and / or bookstores. Make sure your schedule is clear around the time of the book’s publication (and if it’s not because, say, you’ve won a trip to the moon, let the publicist know). Bookstores need time to organize and promote events (both online as well as in print newsletters) and they often won’t schedule events with less than two months notice. If friends have promised to organize events, get in touch with them and keep the publicist apprised of what’s going on — keep in mind that most bookstores don’t have the staff to sell books at offsite events (like your friends’ parties) if fewer than about 100 people attend.
Four-six weeks before publication:
Publicists: Mail finished books to the media.
If you’re not a publicist: Publishing houses receive finished books (called “bound books” four-six weeks before the publication date of the book). This gives us a head start to get finished books to the media before they appear on shelves. Basically, everything you should have done before *really* needs to be completed now.
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And that’s my 10-second spiel. Which can pretty much be summarized as: it’s never too early.
Why haven’t I received my review copies yet?
A little while back I put together a post with some tips for requesting review copies (and author interviews / events) from publishing houses. I am hereby begging all readers to use / forward those instructions to writers, editors, producers, reporters, bloggers, freelancers and their cousins. (I get a couple dozen review copy requests daily, the majority of which are erroneously sent to my department, so this is a situation that gets me pretty riled up.)
I understand that journalists sometimes have a difficult time getting review copies. I recognize that it’s frustrating wading through the websites of house after house and imprint after imprint. On the other hand, publicists are often on the receiving end of some requests so vague they border on the ridiculous. Not to mention that at large publishing houses that publish hundreds of books a month, such as mine, we often get requests for other imprints (departments). I can’t fault a journalist for failing to keep the imprints straight (I barely can), so when a writer includes the book’s complete title, author name, publication date and imprint or ISBN, I’m happy to (quickly) forward the request to the correct department. When I only get a title or an author’s name (or often, part of a title or part of an author’s name), that means I have to look up the book. Which in turn means I forward the request if / when I have the time to look it up. Which could be some time between a little while and never.
Here are a couple examples of what I spend (waste) my time on. (I reprint the subject lines and messages verbatim; I’ve only removed identifying information):
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Subject line: Darwin and Damien Hirst
Message: … I am working on a show about Darwin, and I’d like to talk with you about your new edition of his book, and about Damien Hirst.
My commentary: If you’re requesting an interview with an author or a review copy of a book, providing the book’s title is, well, essential. You may think it’s a big book of which I should be aware. Indeed, I’m sure everyone is aware of this book … in the UK office that published it.
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Subject Line: pls send review copy
Message: lords of finance by ahamed and include a spring cat
My commentary: First, I realize people use PDAs frequently, but you’re not texting your spouse asking him / her to bring home milk. Proper spelling, grammar and punctuation is not only professional; it’s a common courtesy. Second, an author’s full name is helpful (particularly when the book is not published by my department, which this one is not). Third, what in the world is a spring cat? Is that like a spring chicken? (Actually, I realize the reviewer is asking for a spring catalog, but if they can’t even be bothered to type out the full word — to avoid confusion — why should we bother sending one?) And fourth, I’m not listing the publication since I don’t want to publicly flay anyone, but the requesting publication has no obvious links to finance. In a situation like that, a sentence or two about why you need the review copy can really get your book on its way.
***
There are a couple quick ways for journalists to get publicists all the crucial information for a review copy or interview request:
1) send the link to the book you’re requesting
2) copy and paste the information from an online bookseller or from the publishing house’s own website into the message
Publicists need to do a better job of responding to review copy requests. But if journalists can take a few seconds to include a few extra details in a message, it can make matters a heck of a lot easier on our end.
NPR Books Watch — 1/16-1/22
Despite the expected onslaught of inauguration stories, there were still 19 book stories for the week. Several author interviews were rebroadcasts, though (marked with asterisks).
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Here are the NPR interviews for this week. Anyone who emails me the imprints of all the books listed (or houses if no imprint is available) will win the NPR Books Grid for the prior week that includes, in addition to the information below, interviewer, pub date, imprint, post-interview Amazon ranking, pre-interview ranking (if the book was mentioned on Shelf Awareness and I was able to look up the number before the interview), and interview hyperlink.
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TOTAL book stories for the week: 18
All Things Considered: 4
Day to Day: 1
Diane Rehm: 3
Fresh Air: 5
Morning Edition: 1
NPR.org: 2
Talk of the Nation: 1
Weekend Edition Saturday: 1
| All Things Considered | Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen | Grace | Young | Cooking |
| All Things Considered | Land of Marvels | Barry | Unsworth | Literary Fiction |
| All Things Considered | Experts Critique Obama The Writer | |||
| All Things Considered | Breakthrough, The | Gwen | Ifill | History |
| Day to Day | eBay Bidders Dreams About Obama Book Realized | |||
| Diane Rehm | Enchantress of Florence* | Salman | Rushdie | Literary Fiction |
| Diane Rehm | Inside Inside* | James | Lipton | Entertainment |
| Diane Rehm | Baptism by Fire | Mark K. | Updegrove | Politics |
| Fresh Air | Cancer on Five Dollars a Day* | Robert | Schimmel | Memoir |
| Fresh Air | Beautiful Struggle, The | Ta-Nehisi | Coates | Memoir |
| Fresh Air | Native Guard | Natasha | Trethewey | Poetry |
| Fresh Air | Wired for War | P.W. | Singer | Science |
| Fresh Air | Reborn | Susan | Sontag | Biography |
| Morning Edition | Food Matters | Mark | Bittman | Cooking |
| NPR.org | Book Tour / Invention of Air, The | Joseph | Priestley | History |
| NPR.org | Books We Like / Bright Young People | D.J. | Taylor | History |
| Talk of the Nation | Well-Dressed Ape, The | Hannah | Holmes | Science |
| Weekend Edition Saturday | Stand Tall, Abe Lincoln | Judith | St. John | Children’s |
What not to have on your book website
Yesterday I was asked for some information for a newsletter for an online book club with which I am affiliated. Which reminded me of the existence of said online book club. And now that I think of it, there’s a blog on the site, too. You’re probably sitting there aghast, wondering how a relatively tech-savvy person such as myself could so callously ignore a book club in which I’m involved. That I could not read a blog when I’m constantly extolling the virtues of online media. Here’s why:
– The flash takes forever to load. Flash (i.e., animation) is fun and catchy, but it takes a long time to load in the best of circumstances — and crashes your computer in the worst — so there had better be a good reason for it.
– There are no permalinks. A permalink is a unique address for a page. So, for example, the URL for this blog is http://yodiwan.wordpress.com, but the permalink for this particular post is http://yodiwan.wordpress.com/2009/01/21/what-not-to-do-on-your-book-website/ . Permalinks enable people do direct web users to a specific post / area of your website — to the author tour page, for example, or the author bio section. Without permalinks, you can only send someone to the home page and leave them to sift through mounds of information. (I’d actually complained about this earlier and in response, URLs were posted on the page itself. It looks weird, though — people expect URLs to appear in the browser above the menu bar, but on this site they appear on the page itself.)
– The blog lacks an RSS feed. I don’t know enough about programming to know why this is so, but I do know the site does not have an RSS feed, so reading the blog requires going to the website itself. Which is so 1999.
– The Search function verges on nonexistent. There’s no “Search” button. Let me repeat that, folks, because some of you probably don’t believe me: there’s no search button. Instead, you have to click on the “Bookshelf,” wait (for the flash to load), then click on a section of the alphabet, wait again (more flash), then mouse over the bookshelf and then individual book covers will appear before you. It looks great when (or rather, if) it finally loads, but all that to look up one book? There’s no place to, say, type in “Jane Austen” and simply pull up all of Austen’s titles. Essentially, the site is mimicking the feel of a “real” bookshelf in a bricks-and-mortar store or library. Which is novel for about a second until you remember it’s not a bookshelf.
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Readers (or journalists) looking up books online aren’t seeking entertainment. That’s why Wii and bungee jumping were invented. Readers are looking for information — background information about the book and author, articles about the book or interviews with the author, an author tour schedule (if there is one), photos, etc. – and fortunately for authors and publicists, this information can often be presented quite simply and inexpensively. More often than not (there are always exceptions), author / book websites should be functional above all else: easy to use, intuitive. Except when I’m sleeping or on the subway, I spend virtually every minute of my life connected, if not on my laptop, then on my Blackberry and / or phone. If a website loses me as a user because I find it difficult to navigate, that begs the question: exactly who is using it?
I took a quick Twitter poll yesterday and here are a few more Do Nots from friends and colleagues:
– Failure to include a contact email address. It’s the web — anyone who makes it to the website can find it in themselves to send an email (rather than call a publicist to shoot the breeze). If you don’t want to get spammed / spidered, spell out your email address, e.g. johndoe[at]gmail[dot]com or build a contact form into the page.
– Dark backgrounds and small / multiple fonts. Keep it simple.
– Unused features. If your site features a blog or discussion board, make sure you post / update regularly.
– Forgetting to post downloadable hi-resolution images of / from / about the book. For copyright purposes, it may not be possible to post a hi-res author photo or certain pictures from the book. Consider posting other pictures about the book — for example, one author of mine posts snapshots of her traveling on research trips for her books. At the very least, make sure to include contact information so journalists / booksellers can contact you or the publicist to get what they need.
– Book trailers that play automatically play. Rude and disruptive.
– Boring book trailers. Book trailers are like flash — do it if you have a purpose, i.e., it’s informative and / or amusing. Skip it and save the money if you don’t.
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For what you should have on a website (and for some examples), check today’s The 26th Story’s post about good author websites.
A new era
That’s right — Gossip Girl just announced their new spin-off series. Battlestar Galactica is in its final season, again. And we have a new president.
For those of you glued to your television sets for the Inauguration, you may be interested to know that the online world is encroaching on not just the print but also on the broadcast world. Today, the New York Times reports record online viewership of the inauguration. Of course, traffic was so high that viewing live video footage on sites like CNN and MSNBC was difficult (or for yours truly, impossible), although the Timessays that might be the fault of individual offices’ Internet services rather than the bandwidths of the media companies. (At any rate, having decided to boycott my office viewing of the Inauguration — which utilized the Civil War technology known as the “teevee” — I was stuck listening to it live streamed on NPR and then catching the video on YouTube later in the afternoon.)
I find it encouraging that a lot of people in the publishing business are coming around and realizing the influence of online media (helped by posts like this one at Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicists about the increasing influence of online media. Phenix & Phenix notes that online coverage means not just online book reviews, but also commenting, links, blogs and more).
For many, now, the question is not “Is online promotion worthwhile?” but rather, “Which site(s) are important?” given that there are now dozens of social networks and hundreds (or thousands, more likely) of publishing blogs and websites. Which makes the social networking numbers GalleyCat posted last week particularly handy. Also of note: according to TechCrunch, Twitter surpassed Digg in traffic last week. (Twitter is a micro-blogging site that allows a user to tell followers what they’re doing 24/7. Because you really want to know what I had for dinner last night. Digg is an aggregator that posts the most popular online stories according to readers in various categories.)
If you are pretty handy with social networking sites, you might consider heading over to Booksquare’s social media survey if you haven’t already done so. You could win a free pass to the O’Reilly Tools of Change Conference (sort of the BEA of the social media world). Deadline is tomorrow, January 22, so step on it if you’re interested.
The moral of the story is that we need to view the online world with a new appreciation. Although most of us do indeed have at least some understanding of online and social media, we all need to take the next step and follow through on that with acceptance if we are indeed going to usher in a new era.
The Answer’s on the Internets!
We’ve all been there: someone asks you a question so inane that the only adequate reaction — after the jaw drop — is “Let me Google that for you.”
So what kind of question am I talking about? It’s not necessarily one whose answer *you* think is obvious. Nor is it one whose answer can be found online. At the end of the day, the answer to pretty much everything can be found somewhere on the Internet and no one can be expected to spend hours (or even minutes, in some cases) trawling site after site.
But sometimes a question has an answer so immediately and completely available online that it practically takes longer to ask the question than it does to find the answer on the Internet. You know what I’m talking about.
When I wrote about these questions in my New Years Resolution post – and whenever I bring up the topic with friends and colleagues — people react with eye rolls and indignation, so clearly this situation is so pervasive that it demands a collective effort to rectify it. I bring you … “The Answer’s on the Internets!” (Yes — the plural is intentional. No, I’m not going to [sic] it.) For more information about this feature in the future, you can check this page, but for now, ground rules herewith:
– The purpose of this feature is not to make fun of people, but first, to underscore the fact that we are all independent and knowledgeable and that sometimes it’s far more efficient to look up something yourself rather than ask someone else. Second, I will try to make this feature useful in addition to entertaining by tagging and categorizing questions.
– Since this is The Book Publicity Blog, questions need to somehow pertain to book publicity / promotion / marketing. (I may relax standards for questions that relate to book publishing in general depending on the utility of the question.)
– Email the question you were asked and also the link you found that answers the question to bookpublicityblog[at]gmail[dot]com. Put “The Answer’s on the Internets” in the subject line of your message. Note: I will not look up links myself because, you got it, the answer’s on the Internets!
– All questions will be posted anonymously. Your entire submission will be anonymous unless you specifically request that all or part of your name / company be used. All identifying details will be removed / changed (unless your question is dependent on those details in which case it will not be posted).
– I will attempt to post questions (and answers) on a regular basis — hopefully once a week — depending on how many submissions I receive.
– Lastly, “The Answer’s on the Internets!” should not make anyone afraid to ask questions. I myself like to ask lots of them. I also happily answer lots of them. I’m simply encouraging people to first take just a second to check whether a satisfactory answer might be quickly and easily found online.
You know the story about giving a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach him how to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime? Rather than simply providing the answer to a question, send the person the link to the answer so maybe the next time they’ll be able to find the answer on their own.
