Happy holidays
If I were more organized / had more time (and I could actually type because my hands weren’t so cold), this is what I would do with my blog.
***
Things are really winding down here. Lots of people are out this week and next although I’m in tomorrow — for half a day. (I can’t complain, though — the office is closed until Monday, January 5 which is when I’ll resume regular posting although I might post before then if something comes up and I just can’t contain myself.) Happy holidays to everyone.
Get in on the blogging action with guest blogs
Posts have been sporadic of late (I actually forgot my WordPress log-in name) but hopefully I’ll get in a few more posts before everyone decamps for the holidays.
***
Many authors these days are blogging (or thinking about blogging). For those who want to get involved without having to commit to setting up a blog, guest blogging on someone else’s site is an option. Buzz, Balls & Hype offers eight tips (and lots more dos and don’ts) for guest bloggers.
More blogging tips
Dark days in publishing. Must be the return of Voldemort …
***
Here are some basic blogging tips, courtesy of Copyblogger: the Ultimate Blogger Writing Guide and Everything I Know About Blogging I Learned in High School.
And 40 more blogging do’s and don’ts from social media guru Chris Brogan, including keep it short (both entire posts as well as paragraphs within posts). Don’t attempt to imitate a print piece — you’re working in an entirely different medium.
For more information about blogging, check out the the Blogs category on this site. One thing to keep in mind is that blogging requires a certain level of commitment — writing, linking, interacting with readers and other bloggers. As an author, don’t jump into blogging simply because it’s the latest darling of the publishing industry. If this isn’t your cup of tea, don’t feel guilty – a half-hearted attempt at blogging won’t do much for your book and your efforts can certainly be channeled elsewhere.
Pros and cons of social networking
Stop biting those nails. We’ll know soon enough.
***
Swivet lists the pros and cons of various social networking sites (in completely normal, non-techy language)including MySpace, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and more.
***
Scott Karp Publishing 2.0 talks about how to increase your followers on the microblogging site Twitter. Specifically, he talks about ”narcissisistic” Tweets — updates that only refer to yourself / your product — versus linking. This concept (referring only to yourself vs. linking to others) can also apply to blogs. While an author (or publishing house or freelance publicist) obviously wants to promote their book(s), if you only ever talk about your book(s), you risk losing the interest of readers. On the other hand, if you also link to similar blogs / sites, not only do you provide variety for your readers, but you reach out to other bloggers. (When you mention another blog on your site, the other blogger gets a “ping.” Obviously, popular blogs like Boing Boing or Gawker will get zillions of pings, most of which they will ignore by necessity, but many bloggers do keep track of who mentions them and will investigate those blogs.)
Blogs, microblogs and websites
A lot of authors debate whether it’s better to have a blog or a website. Men with Pens posts about the differences between the two (and points out that blogs today look pretty spiffy compared with blogs of yore).
For authors who want to delve into the world of social media, Mike Fruchter posts 35 step-by-step tips to establish a social media presence. Although you need a basic understanding of terms like “domain name” and “blogroll,” the instructions are pretty easy to follow for relative novices.
But why blog in the first place? To connect with readers, of course, but will that lead to increased sales? According to bub.blicio.us, yes — loyal blog readers are swayed by posts when it comes to purchasing decisions. (From personal experience, I can tell you I’ve bought many a product featured on Gizmodo, my favorite gadget blog, and the other day when Boing Boing featured one of my company’s backlist titles, the Amazon ranking shot up to about 500.)
And if you are thinking about a microblogging site like Twitter, GalleyCat points out that the keyword “book” is most frequently typed in between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m.
An explanation of RSS / feeds / online newsletters
Note: This post has been slightly modified / corrected from the original thanks to a few careful and knowledgeable readers.
***
I often get email requests asking to subscribe to my “feed” and the other day someone asked about distributing a podcast via RSS. This represents a somewhat discombobulated understanding of RSS and feeds, so I thought I’d try to explain these terms / concepts. (I should note that I really don’t know all that much about RSS — just enough to maintain my blog — but on the upside, “just enough” is probably good enough for many.)
What is RSS?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (and something else I can’t remember, but that doesn’t much matter). Think of it as electronic subscription service — instead of getting your newspaper delivered to your front door, RSS allows you to get your newspaper stories delivered to your RSS reader.
What is an RSS reader?
A reader is a website that allows you to read the stories (or posts) for websites and blogs to which you choose to subscribe. Readers include Bloglines, Google Reader, NewsGator and others.
What is a feed?
A feed allows an online publication or blog to distribute their stories to readers via RSS.
How does this all differ from an online newsletter?
An online newsletter is simply a message that is emailed to a distribution list. There is no feed involved. (In the case of The Book Publicity Blog, I maintain an email distribution list for people who prefer not to check the blog online / in an RSS reader — after I post online, I simply copy and paste the information into an email message and send it out.) So when you ask if you can subscribe to The Book Publicity Blog, you’re asking if you can subscribe to the email newsletter, not to the blog’s feed (since you woud subscribe to the feed yourself). Apparently, I could also have Feedburner send out my blog posts via email automatically … although that would mean I wouldn’t have time to correct posts after publishing them!
Why set up an RSS reader?
A reader is an efficient way to consolidate all your websites and blogs. You can quickly scroll through all headlines and click through only to those stories in which you are interested — instead of visiting many websites a day, you can simply look in your reader and view the content on all of them.
Exactly how efficient is a reader? I subscribe to almost 300 websites and blogs and I whip through all these headlines every day or every couple days when I’m busy. Before I had an RSS reader, well, let’s just say I sure wasn’t following almost 300 websites daily. Sarah Palin obviously doesn’t have an RSS reader. (Granted, following all these sites is far more important for a publicist making their living working with the media than for someone who following the news for fun.)
Here, the blog Men With Pens weighs in on why they like their readers.
How do I set up an RSS reader?
Click here for instructions about how to set up a reader and here for some publishing websites you may want to put in your reader.
Why is it important for a blog to have a feed?
You know the story of the tree that falls in the woods? (If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around, does it make a noise?) A blog without a feed is like the tree falling with no one around — it doesn’t make a “noise.” Unless someone is so beholden to you that they will check your website every single day, you can assume that they won’t check your site. In other words, there’s no way to build a regular audience for your blog without a feed (since most of us have a limited number of blood relatives and best friends).
I initially thought feeds had to be established by the site / blogger using a tool like Feedburner, but as you can see from the Comments, feeds are usually built in to standard blogging platforms like Blogger, Typepad, WordPress. (I have occasionally encountered blogs without feeds, though, so if you are blogging, it’s worthwhile testing out your feed.)
If you do use Feedburner, there are other cool things you can do (again, see Comments).
I think that covers the basics …
How I cheat
A number of readers have expressed surprise about how I manage to blog in addition to holding down a full-time book publicity job. So I thought it might be interesting to post about how I “cheat.” And now you can too!
– Set up an RSS reader: anyone in public relations / publicity needs to know what’s going on not just in the industry, but in the world. While it’s useful reading one’s daily hometown paper, there’s so much else out there, that you really miss a lot simply by reading just The New York Timesor just CNN.com (or just Gawker). So I use Bloglines to keep track of headlines from numerous newspapers, websites, radio stations and blogs — others use readers like Google Reader or NewsGator or the RSS button on their browser — and that allows me to skim thousands of headlines daily fairly quickly. Plus, I hate getting newsprint on my hands.
Check here for instructions about how to set up an RSS reader.
– Send email blasts: Not the best option all the time, but, let’s face it, inescapable, not to mention useful, every now and then.
– Learn your publicity database: Backwards and forwards. When you’ve quit complaining about it (I know, I do it too) take some time to really figure it out. Ask people for their tips and shortcuts. I’ve used several programs in my time — Media Map, Publicity Assistant, Bacon’s Online — and none were easy to pick up immediately, although, ultimately, they all proved immensely helpful. I’ve seen people spend hours using Bacon’s Online, for example, which is unfortunate, because the majority of searches take about a minute to execute (particularly when you’ve saved your search parameters). And I’ve seen publicists create media lists that already exist. Or painstakingly update records individually because they didn’t know about the “Update” function. Or use a program solely to look up names because they didn’t realize they could also be using it to pull media lists. It’s impossible to list every shortcut for every program, but use this rule of thumb: if you ever feel like something is taking a long time, like you’re really slogging through something, ask someone who’s been around for a while if there is a shortcut — sometimes there is an “easy button.”
– Use Microsoft Excel: Just because we work in creative industry and have a way with words doesn’t mean we don’t need to know our way around a database. In publicity, we often send out copies of books to reviewers. Often, we send out many books at a time. Some of these contacts come from our publicity databases; sometimes the names may come from an editor or author or agent. I always ask for names in Excel so that the information can quickly be imported into our publicity database and turned into labels; otherwise, I’m stuck retyping or copying and pasting all the information. FYI, contacts stored in Outlook can easily be exported to Excel. (Check the Help function if you don’t know how this works.) And fon’t forget that contact information stored in Excel can also be used to personalize letters using that handy dandy Mail Merge function.
– Lose the paper: Whenever possible, I work on the computer, not on a printout. Rather than printing out a schedule, writing notes on it, and then typing those notes into the schedule, I type them into the schedule from the get go. If I’m looking over someone’s media list, again, rather than scribbling notes on the list, I make the changes to the list in the database (and then I verbally walk through the changes with the person so they know what’s going on). And if I’m looking over press material and need to make edits, you know where this is going — yes, say, it with me, track changes. My goal is always to have the fewest number of people spending the least amount of time doing (redoing) the same work.
– Guess: I check the general publicity email addresses for my department and somehow, reviewers manage to find their way to our media page, ignore all the instructions / suggestions posted there, and email the wrong department (although, in their defense, a lot of publishing house websites are pretty hard to navigate). So I field a couple dozen requests daily meant for other departments. Since I don’t always have time / get really tired of looking up the book or author, and since I know the imprints at my publishing house very well and know what each is likely to publish, I often play guess the imprint. Usually I’m right. Sometimes, not. Oh well.
Book review roundups
Once upon a time, I used to go through 50+ book sections every weekend to see which of our books were being reviewed. Then my company got a subscription to Nexis. Then Google Alerts got invented. And then I set up an RSS reader. So now I pretty much know — times three — when any of the books which I’m publicizing are mentioned.
Still, it’s nice to be able to see what else out there is being reviewed (which is where the RSS reader comes in handy). But also, several blogs publish regular review roundups, including:
- Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind: lit blogger Sarah Weinman’s posts her roundup of the Sunday book sections by that evening
- Critical Mass: the NBCC blog lists reviews written by members. Haven’t quite figured out how frequently or exactly when …
- Omnivoracious: Amazon.com posts their roundup on Tuesdays
Very handy.
Morning Brief — Monday, September 15
The Swivet, via slunch, offers an explanation of the book publicity process. It’s a great guide for authors (and publicists) because it offers a handy publicity timeline. One thing that I would add is that when authors provide the names and addresses of contacts to whom they would like galleys / books sent, it’s ideal if these names are provided in an Excel document. This way the information can instantly be imported into our publicity systems / mail merged into labels. If the contact information comes in any other format (in a Word document or in an email) we have to either copy and paste or retype all the information and that’s a waste of time. (And by “waste of time,” I do, of course, mean “probably gets passed to the intern.”) Lest anyone kick up a fuss about this, I’d like to ask, when was the last time someone wrote a book in Excel? Sounds pretty ridiculous, right? So why is it any less ridiculous to be submitting data in Word?
***
The Washington Post’s book blog, Short Stack, will now feature daily posts including author Q&As and publishing trends.
***
For authors who might be considering blogging, social media guru Chris Brogan offers some tips on starting and maintaining a blog. For those who prefer Facebook or Twitter, Marketinghackz posts A Quick Guide for Newbies.
***
On Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, Sarah Weinman posts her sixth and final entry of the Publishing Imprint Report Card that explores the Random House imprints.
Morning Brief — Wednesday, September 10
Sarah Weinman from Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind checks in on The Penguin Group (Berkley, Penguin Books, The Penguin Press, Putnam, Viking, etc.) on yesterday’s Publisher Imprint Report Card, Part V.
***
TVNewser reports on The Rachel Maddow Show, which premiered Monday night on MSNBC (although the only producer listed on Bacon’s Online is “not a PR contact.”)
***
I’ve been surprised at what gets caught in my spam filter — “Lolita” did in one release — so I was interested in see this post by Catching Flack’s Jon Greer about how to spam check press releases. I haven’t yet tried it out (and it may be more trouble than it’s worth — common sense probably does the trick most of the time) but I might give it a gander if I have some spare time.
***
Are bloggers “media”? PR Squared says no … but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay attention.
