Archive for July, 2007
Friday, July 27th, 2007Want to read a good book? Watch TV.
CSPAN’s BookTV has several shows this weekend worth watching. I’ll recommend a few but you can get the entire schedule here. On Sunday at 7 AM, you can watch a panel discussion from BookExpo America on bestsellers and the American culture. Lots of insights into why we love the books we love (60 minutes). Also, The Cult [...]
Thursday, July 26th, 2007It’s Not Who You Know, It’s Where You Know
So says Ted Smith, Research Fellow at CNET Networks. Ted has posted three short video clips investigating how people influence others online. In a previous post, I talked about finding the story that causes others to talk about your book (or anything else for that matter.) Ted expands on this idea by looking at what [...]
Tuesday, July 24th, 2007What’s Your Story?
“It’s not the book, it’s the hook” is an old book marketing saying. It basically comes down to this: What story can you tell about your book that will get other people telling your story about your book? In a recent Seth Godin post, he talks about marketing in terms of maximizing what you can do with the [...]
Monday, July 23rd, 2007The Internet Is Falling! The Internet Is Falling!
You blew it, it’s too late. You should have started blogging five years ago. The Internet is going down because it’s too popular and populist. How do I know this to be true? Because Harvard Business Review’s IdeaCast interviewed Jonathan Zittrain about some of the ideas in his forthcoming book The Future of the Internet and How to Stop [...]
Thursday, July 19th, 2007Go Ahead, Spoiler Yourself
By now you know that some people claim they have photographed every pair of pages of “…and the Deathly Hallows” and placed everything up on the Net for all to download (gosh, I’ll just sit here all day and download these 350+ JPGs.) Others have just trumpeted key plot points (who dies when and where, etc.) Other than [...]
Wednesday, July 18th, 2007What every bride really wants to know
I’m sure there’s a sports book division that handles the over / under on celebrity weddings but for the rest of us, it’s more of a private matter. However, in our latest book, The Lace Reader, one of the characters has the ability to read the bride’s future by gazing at the bridal veil. It [...]
Tuesday, July 17th, 2007Dude, Get a MySpace page!
BookExpoCast has released the audio from last month’s seminar on MySpace for authors and publishers. With over 100 million users, you have to be aware of MySpace and what it offers for folks in the book industry. MySpace has a unit that specializes in books and you can check it out here. You can download the [...]
Friday, July 13th, 2007Catching the Buzz – Part 2 of 2
Why is Harry Potter so popular in Salt Lake City? Is that the first city that comes to mind when you think of Harry Potter? Me neither. But it has to be true because Google said it’s true. At least that’s what Google’s keyword trends software told me. You can check it out for yourself here. Go there and [...]
Monday, July 9th, 2007Catching the Buzz – Part 1 of 2
On the Internet, no one is looking for your book (unless you’re already an international bestseller.) But they are looking for something. What? And does it in anyway relate to your book? Here is one good free place to start looking for answers. Yahoo’s Buzz Index let’s you see the most popular keywords / phrases that are being [...]
Monday, July 2nd, 2007Viral Marketing for the Real World
Harvard Business Review recently did a piece on viral marketing that has some interesting ideas (and it’s currently their #1 subscriber recommended article.) In addition to covering some of the basic metrics involved, the article discusses the idea of a “big seed” which simply means you start with a large number of people and you expose them to [...]