Jeff Rivera of JeffRivera.com asked me the following question yesterday: With the publishing industry undergoing the digital revolution, will there be literary agents in the next 5-10 years? And if so, how will their role be effected or changed in the near future because of devices such as the Kindle and the Nook?

Here is my answer:

I think there will always be a place for agents and mainstream publishers.

Even with Kindle and Nook, books still need to be promoted to sell. That means there will still be room for good book publishers. And good book publishers need agents to help them find the best authors.

I expect the best agents to continue to prosper for many, many years to come. As with any technological change, the less capable fall by the wayside while the best continue to do well.



For those of you looking for a good agent, you can order my Literary, Foreign Rights, and Subsidiary Rights Agents directory for only $30.00 at http://www.bookmarket.com/orderform.htm. When you order, you can immediately download this directory as a Word document.

The following article is excerpted from Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Social Media But Were Afraid to Ask by Hillary J.M. Topper



BusinessWeek Exchange is one of the most inventive, creative ideas to come along in a long time. It takes the idea of user in user-generated content and does something really interesting with it. It brings companies into the fold as users – presenting a unique and potentially controversial way of looking at contributed content. I believe we won’t see the full impact of what BusinessWeek Exchange - and others to come - will have for at least the next year and probably the next 2 to 3 years. I factor blog networks from Fast Company, Wired and the like into this, too.

They’re allowing CEOs (and other, usually C-level company people) to contribute to the dialogue as though they’re reporters under the guise of a blog. Again, authority and influence changes with the title of the person writing. That is, when and if the user - meaning reader - realizes it, which they inevitably will.

-- Jennifer Lindsay,
Director of Digital Services and Social Media Evangelist

BusinessWeek magazine has the right approach. Since they know the value of social networking, they created Business Exchange where business people can connect with one another. Interestingly, when logging into Business Exchange, visitors can also view the top news stories on BusinessWeek, the magazine. You can save news stories to your home page along with interesting relevant news articles. This makes the site quite useful and helps BusinessWeek build a loyal following.

Business Exchange is arranged by topics. Topics are sorted by functional areas such as Business Law, Small Business Marketing and Search Engine Optimization. There are also more specific or timely areas such as the fall of Lehman Brothers, the Federal Reserve bailout of Bear Stearns and even the latest business strategies of Starbucks.

Business Exchange lets you bookmark business news, blog articles, tools and additional online resources to share with others. You can bookmark just about any format of online content including videos, tools and white papers. Readers can also comment on news items submitted.

Upon registering Business Exchange you set up a profile. Those who belong to the social networking site, LinkedIn, can import their LinkedIn profile sparing duplicate efforts of filling out yet another profile.

My 2 Cents via the author

I like that this site suggests people that I may want to include in my network. Through this feature, I actually met a business owner in India, with whom I regularly correspond. My connections are networked to people who post interesting articles attached to their sites.

Business Exchange also has links to Twitter, which is very helpful, especially when I seek to connect with reporters or business development people to grow my business.

I like that the site offers news feeds to interesting articles and blog sites that prompt lively conversations. You can also post an article or a blog entry as well. There are only business people on this site and it is relatively easy to network with people who you may not otherwise meet.

The only problem I see with the site is that it doesn’t have many active participants. It would benefit the site to promote to business owners on Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn and Twitter.

John's Comments:

Business Exchange is a great place to connect with other business leaders. My guess is that this site will become more active as business people discover it AND BusinessWeek promotes it.

Join John Kremer, Jack Canfield, Arielle Ford, Mike Koenigs, Dan Poynter, Peggy McColl, Penny Sansevieri, Dan Hollings, Rick Frishman, Mari Smith, Joel Elad, Russell Bishop, Mallika Chopra, and many others at this incredible book marketing event.

I don't know how they're going to fit all the good info into 2 short days, but I know they will. Join us at the Catamaran Resort in San Diego on October 10th and October 11th. You'll be glad you did.



To sign up for the 21st Century Book Marketing Event at the beautiful Catamaran Resort in San Diego, go to http://www.mixiv.com/vp/60394/1917

(Save $200 by entering 200offspecial in the coupon code box.)

Here are 21 amazing things you will learn at this event:

1. How to use email bestseller campaigns to sell tons of books.
2. How to design a powerful social media strategy.
3. How to get others to promote you even when you are completely unknown!
4. The biggest mistakes publishers find in book proposals.
5. The types of authors publishers are currently looking for.
6. Why you MUST be on YouTube.
7. The important and vital role blogs play in book promotion.
8. How to find bloggers and contact them (and why!).
9. The most effective ways to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry.
10. How to plan and promote speaking events outside bookstores.
11. How to network with bloggers, publicists, and Internet marketers.
12. How to get your target market to follow you on Twitter.
13. Ways to integrate Twitter into the pages of your book.
14. How to use quotations in your tweets - and why!
15. Getting top producers and editors to take your phone calls.
16. How to use Wikipedia to market yourself.
17. How to use the Huffington Post to grow your blog audience and platform (and meet one of their key editors!).
18. How to automate lead generation with social media.
19. How to get #1 rankings in the search engines.
20. How to set up a blog in less than 5 minutes.
21. The importance of platform in marketing books.

And those points don't even count the things John Kremer will be teaching during this 21st Century Book Marketing event.

To sign up, go to: http://www.mixiv.com/vp/60394/1917

(Save $200 by entering 200offspecial in the coupon code box.)

Here's a neat website where you can create your own church sign messages. Check out the one I created below:



To create your own church signs, go to http://www.says-it.com/churchsigns.

With a little adaptation, you could create other signs besides church signs. Perhaps something to advertise an upcoming seminar, teleseminar, or other event.

Here's an example I created:



And here's another sign I created to advertise my publishing company's address:

The following post is a reprint of an email newsletter I received from Mahesh Grossman of the Authors Team and author of Write a Book Without Lifting a Finger:



What do Elvira, The Food Network's Bobby Flay, and comedian Tom Green all have in common? They all started out on public access television.

PBS affiliate KTCA even picked up a program called Mental Engineering that started at SPNN, the public access channel of Saint Paul, Minnesota.

With more than 700 stations throughout the world, public access television is the easiest way for any author to get on the air virtually anywhere. (For a list, go here: http://budurl.com/nzx8). And if you create just one video, it will get multiple plays.

My local community television station, CTV of Santa Cruz (www.CommunityTV.org) will air a half hour or one hour show a minimum of ten times in the first month. If you create something short, they will air it even more often.

And they have three different channels: one for government related programs, one for educational material, and one for general material. So any work that can deemed educational in nature, which would include anything in the self-help or how-to categories, and probably even children’s books, will air on two stations.

The kicker is, they have to air anything of a non-commercial nature that any resident of Santa Cruz County brings to them. All you have to do is fill out a form and make sure your video meets their technical requirements.

And here’s the secret sauce: I can bring them ANY video—by anyone. So you could live in Zimbabwe, send me a video, and if I bring it to CTV, they will air it.

And if you bring my video to your station, at least in the U.S, they will put my show on your channel. So if you can get enough friends, relatives, clients and/or subscribers to bring your video to a community television station, you could literally have a national show.

You could easily create seven shows—or get one show to air in seven cities.

There’s another reason this is important. Video is already the future of the internet. According to Business Week, as far back as last November there were more video views than searches: 12.7 billion viewings as opposed to 12.3 billion searches.

So you should be making videos anyway. Why not use the same videos to air on your local TV station? Plus, your chance of getting a video on the front page of Google is 45 times greater than the odds of getting your text page on the first page of a search.

For this strategy to be fully effective, you need to have a reason for people to come to your Web site after they see your show. You could give away a special report, or fr/ee chapters of your book -- or if you are a children’s book author, you could give away some coloring book pages with images of your main character.

(By the way, this is a killer strategy for children’s book authors. Do a show reading your book, and get it to air everywhere. Or team up with two other children’s book authors for a show, and use everybody’s connections to get the
show on the air in as many locations as you possibly can!)

Once you know a show will air, call up the bookstores in the area and make sure they carry your book.

You could even promote a bookstore appearance this way -- then tape your appearance at the bookstore and put that on television. Some of these shows air for years—which could mean continuous sales for your book anywhere your show is on.

And if you dream of getting your own TV show, community access could be a good beginning. If you make the leap to a major cable or broadcast show, you wouldn’t be the first.

As a publicist once said to me, “Things lead to things.”

=====

Check out Mahesh Grossman's blog at http://www.authorsmbablog.com. You can also sign up for his free e-newsletter there.

Save $300 by joining the Ten Million Eyeballs self-learning course now. This Ten Million Eyeballs course teaches anyone how to get millions of eyeballs (that's impressions) via the Internet in the next two years. Learn the four major ways to reach millions of people via the Internet. You'll learn:

* How, why, and when to give things away free on the Internet

* How to organize and run an Amazon bestseller campaign that actually sells books

* How to create a viral video that gets millions of views, not tens or hundreds of views (Note: the average book trailer is seen by 65 people)

* How to develop a viral website that people come back to again and again - and do all the work for you!

* How to create effective selling relationships with major websites

* 35 ways to profit from the Internet. Book sales are just one of those ways. You can multiply your income by turning your book into a variety of products and services.

Sign up now at http://www.TenMillionEyeballs.com red hot special. Don't waste another day. Do it now!

At the very beginning of this year, Jason Sadler started an interesting experiment: I Wear Your Shirt, a project where every day, Jason would wear one shirt from one company per day and post his image on YouTube, Twitter, Ustream, and more. In essence, he would be a walking, talking billboard.

He also had an intriguing price structure: He only charged $1 for a company to have him wear its apparel on January 1st, $2 on the 2nd, etc. until December 31st, where the price would be $365. While each amount isn't that big, it added up. So did the attention.

The result: He sold out every day and will make over $70,000 this year alone ($66,795 + other contests and deals). Jason just launched his 2010 calendar, and in less than 24 hours, he sold 115+ days.

Check him out at http://www.iwearyourshirt.com.

Video from August 17th:

Last week in my weekly newsletter I said that there are two ways you can get 5,000 more Twitter followers in the next four weeks.



1. Read my Twitter Mania Manual and do what it says. Download it for free at http://www.bookmarket.com/50Waysto Tweet.htm.

2. Pay me (John Kremer) $1,000 and provide me with access to your Twitter account, and I will add 5,000 new followers to your Twitter profile in the next four weeks. Note: This offer is only good for authors who have fewer than 5,000 current followers on Twitter. If you'd like to take advantage of this offer, email JohnKremer@BookMarket.com.

I am proud of all of you for taking the first choice above. I offered the second option because I was told that many people wanted hands-on help to follow my simply guidelines in the free Twitter Mania Manual.

Well, no one took me up on that offer. Note: It was a legitimate offer. I would have helped any author to get legitimate, targeted, interested, non-spamming followers -- 5,000 people who would have had a real and legitimate interest in the author's work.

I am glad that all of you took the first option, because Twitter is all about building real relationships. And those are always better to build yourself rather than pay someone money to do it for you.

If you would like my guidance and feedback while you do it yourself, I'd be happy to help. For that service -- one month of Twitter feedback -- the fee is only $200. But you can do it well for yourself simply by reading and following the advice in the free Twitter Mania Manual. Download for free at http://www.bookmarket.com/50WaystoTweet.htm

If you want my feedback, email JohnKremer@BookMarket.com or call 575-751-3398. Again, the fee is only $200. A bargain at that price.

My back-to-back seminars, the Book Marketing Blast-Off Seminar and the Ten Million Eyeballs Internet marketing seminar, were very successful. Below is a photo of me with two of the participants.

The following note was posted by Joely Black, author of Amnar: The Awakening, in a forum on the Book Marketing Network (http://bookmarket.ning.com).



When Amnar: The Awakening launched on Podiobooks.com, the only real promotion it received came from my blog and using Twitter (where I'm known as TheCharmQuark). Two days later, it was the top most downloaded audiobook, and today it's at No.2. This is very impressive as I'm going into negotiation with software and games developers and it presents a very good case.

Twitter has to be used in the right way to make it work, and I know it intimidates a lot of new users. If you're prepared to do the work to keep talking to your fanbase and build up a good reputation it can really work wonders for you.

John's comments: Online promotion can work. Even the minimal effort that Joely has done so far has resulted in sales.

You have to know what you are doing. Scattering effort over many sites, or not doing the right promotion won't produce the results you want. You have to create the right relationships -- with your partner websites as well as with your potential customers (or fanbase).

For more on that, check out the Ten Million Eyeballs Internet marketing course.

Here are two tips that Bob Sanchez shared at the Book Marketing Network (http://bookmarket.ning.com). I thought they were very good tips for helping you to sell some of your books locally.



One thing that's helped me is to always keep copies of my two books in the back of my car. Then when someone says "Where can I buy a copy of your book?" you can tell them they can get it from you right then and there.

Also it helps to have business cards with you advertising your book. One thing I have tried is tacking one up on any bulletin board that seems friendly to local businesses. Does it help sales? I have no idea, but it can't hurt, and the card costs me only a penny or so. Sometimes people will come up to me at a book signing and tell me they've heard of the book but can't remember where. Just getting your name and the book's title out there is helpful even when it doesn't result in an immediate sale.

The following post tells how one author sold 200 copies of a self-published novel in one venue in less than 8 months. Steve Miller, author of Enjoy Your Money! How to Make It, Save It, Invest It and Give It, posted this story in a forum on the Book Marketing Network (http://bookmarket.ning.com).

I have a friend who self-published his first novel and has sold, in the past 8 months, over 200 books in a local (not chain) restaurant. A check-out person said, "Here's how I see it working: people are waiting in line to check out. One starts thumbing through the book. The person behind him says, 'I read it. It's great!' The person buys it."

Outcome: Maybe we should take a harder look at local, non-bookstore possibilities for selling our books. After all, there's no competition with other books in that restaurant. If someone's just finished a book and is looking for the next read, voila!

I recommended that he try to place it in similar restaurants (locally owned, where lots of locals eat) in nearby towns. He can tell the owners, "It sold over 200 copies in this other restaurant, making them this much money." Businesses are looking for extra income these days. If he found 20 restaurants that could sell 300 per year, he'd sell 6,000 per year.

Steve's recommendation to his friend is on target. If something is working for you, expand in that direction. Offer the same deal to more restaurants. Start local, then go regional.

200 copies is more than most self-published novelists sell in 8 months in all venues. Congratulations to the novelist for finding a good place to sell his books. Now he should go out and replicate his success.

The following post was written by Earl Sewell in a forum at the Book Marketing Network (http://bookmarket.ning.com). His website is at http://www.earlsewell.com.



What’s working for me is setting up events where I have an audience. Also having an act when speaking to groups helps a great deal---for example, I write fiction, and instead of just reading the work, I turn it into a dramatization and get the audience to participate. The Call and Response method works great for me. This also helps me to sell myself as an entertainer.

Two weeks ago I did a book release party with a book club in DC. I ordered 100 copies of my book from my publisher and let the book club pre-sell Have Mercy. Since Have Mercy is an erotic thriller, part of the program included a lingerie fashion show. About 35 people showed up and when it was my turn, I put on a great show for my fans. The book club kept the remainder of the books and hand sold all of them for me.



During my book signing in Kalamazoo, Michigan, I asked a local book club there to join me at Waldenbooks. I asked them to wear their book club t-shirts and walk around the mall handing out my promo cards. They did this for me and for the first time, I got a crossover audience. The ladies, whom I’d known for three years, told every woman in the mall what a great writer I was and they came over. Some purchased books while others were just curious.

I also write Y.A. fiction. What’s working for me there is dealing directly with high school librarians. They’re always looking for great books to purchase for their students. I also do creative writing workshops and publishing workshops. I charge a nominal fee for doing this plus I get the schools to order the books at a discount from my publisher.

In addition I have a special website for my Y.A audience (http://keyshasdrama.ning.com). Staying in direct contact with them has helped because they tell their friends about the book and then get them to join my website. I have contests and prize giveaways for them.

However, even with all that I do, I still can’t get my sales numbers to sore the way I’d like them to. It’s a very very tough market out there and getting a name brand to stick without a large marketing budget is no easy task. However, this is my passion and no matter what, I’m going to keep moving forward.

John's Comments: Earl is clearly creative and working hard to promote his novels. Obviously some things are working. I love his go-to-it-tiveness.

The following post has been contributed by Caitlin Smith . . .

The internet has become a valuable marketplace for booksellers, a great community resource for readers, and an essential marketing tool for publishers. Successful ventures of all kinds have exploded on the web in recent years, from blogs to new formats for buying and selling media. Why not tap into some of these ideas for your own work? Here are some lessons that publishers can take from the success of the web and apply to their own practices.

Make reading a social experience. The internet creates the perfect environment to make reading more social. Online communities are great places to bring readers together and get them talking. One way to take advantage of this is to set up online book clubs and forums, letting these customers come together and enjoy reading as a group rather than just as individuals and letting them say what they loved about a particular book, basically selling it for you.

Use social networking for marketing plans. Want to know where the fans and potential audience for your author’s works are? Social media can help you create targeted marketing plans and organize book tours where turnouts will be significant. Whether you employ a social networking page or just track subscribers to an author’s blog, these tools can help you get a much better handle on where and how to market.

Find untapped talent. The Internet has turned out many celebrities in recent years that became successes from relative anonymity. Finding new talent for your publishing company may be a little easier if you monitor places like blogs, where humor, good writing and other important skills can come to light. Better yet, you can subscribe to blogs and follow your potential finds to see how they evolve.

Use electronic formats. These days keeping manuscripts in paper only format just doesn’t make sense. Using both print and electronic means to get your book out there can be smart and will allow you more flexibility in how you promote the material. Releasing small sections of the book to fan blogs and on your own site can be an excellent way to build up anticipation about an impending publication.

Make it to buy online. It’s estimated the Amazon’s Kindle format will sell millions of digital publications this year. As electronic books grow in popularity both in text and audio format it’s essential that you keep up and make your books easy to acquire through online means. Paper copies should be easy to buy from your site as well, increasing easy availability to whatever format your customers like best.

-- Caitlin Smith writes about the best online colleges: http://www.bestcollegesonline.com. She welcomes your feedback at CaitlinSmith1117@gmail.com.

Tonight (Thursday, July 2nd) at 9 pm Eastern time, Alex Mandossian will describe how he JV'd with Jack Canfield, Donald Trump, Stephen Covey, Harv Eker, and others to create real value and generate income: http://budurl.com/ny8a.

In just 90 minutes, you'll learn how to market like a pro.

This special teleconference is designed for authors, information marketers, and small business owners.

Note: This teleseminar will cost you $20.

Alex Mandossian also has a clever way to capture emails and provide real help at the same time: http://budurl.com/xz25. Check out his website. His Ask Alex website is an interesting way to start creating a real relationship with people via the web.

Chelsea Green has just launched a Library Gift Registry, which encourages librarians to select new books from the publisher's list and send their patrons to Chelsea Green's website to buy titles at a 40% discount and free shipping to designated libraries.

Peg O'Donnell, sales director for Chelsea Green, notes that "Libraries have been struggling in these challenging times, and this is one way we can help them stay competitive and current, especially with sustainability and green living titles."

Librarians who sign up for the program between July 9 to 15 will qualify for a raffle of $500 worth of Chelsea Green titles.

Check out their new registry at http://www.chelseagreen.com.

Barnes & Noble has just released a bookstore app for iPhone. This app allows users to "snap a photo to search millions of products. Using the iPhone camera, just snap a photo of the front cover and within seconds get product details, editorial reviews, and customer ratings--even find and reserve a copy in the store closest to you. The store locator will help you find the Barnes & Noble store nearest you, see upcoming events, and get directions."

For more details about the B&N Bookstore App, see http://www.barnesandnoble.com/iphone/index.asp?cds2Pid=27742.

Here are some great observations on life from Paulo Coelho's blog. Neat use of the flipping pages technology.



For a larger, more readable view of this short flipbook, see Paulo's blog: http://paulocoelhoblog.com/statutes-for-life.

The following report on the most recent BookExpo America in New York City was written by syndicated columnist Michael J. Herman . . .



In an economic environment where everyone is consciously wondering where and when the next shoe will drop, it is refreshing to see that things are not as grim in Whoville as they seem. Predictions for this year’s Book Expo America (BEA), which took place at New York’s Jacob Javits Center several weeks ago, were dismal at best.

Rumors of the show's imminent demise seem surprisingly premature. Godfrey Harris of The Americas Group, a Los Ageles-based consulting firm said: “In today’s new publishing landscape, BEA is becoming increasingly irrelevant.”

However, rather than downtrodden and gloomy exhibitors, and listless and apathetic attendees, BEA '09 has proven instead a vibrant and excited group of reinvented individuals. Well, many of them, anyway.

While the industry as a whole continues to struggle with its own identity, figuring out why it's a different world out there, and how it can get its archaic paradigms to fit into the new business models, others are embracing the new trends with gusto. By and large, the old guard continues to reign supreme. Brands like Random House, Simon and Schuster, Wiley and Bertelsmann dominate and are the bullies on the block, but the cracks in the walls are apparent to nearly everyone at the show.

No matter to whom you speak, the buzz is about the now ubiquitous transformation of e-books and the even greater rise in popularity of the small press and greater influence of the independent publisher.

Once thought to be a shear aberration, the e-book now promises to serve as savior to an industry that could be witnessing its own rapid demise. The fall of broad appeal brands like Circuit City and Mervyns foreshadow a dismal hope for longevity of niche retailers like Barnes & Noble or Borders.

The question should now be plainly posed: Can the book industry rely on the good graces of Walmart, Costco, and Amazon to provide the effective and wide enough distribution for books, music, software, and other media? Or will the only 2½% of the publishing industry represented by e-books and downloads be able to save us all? Consider the following when answering this question:

-The 2010 BEA will be cut from three days to only two days.

-The Trade Publishing Industry as a whole is experiencing what much of the economy is feeling, a seizing spasmodic choking of revenue and profits from all sectors.

-With the rise in popularity offered by iPods and other downloadable book readers, is BEAs necessary? And,

-How can traditional publishing models continue to succeed, when to survive in the new paradigms they must shift their models and give up what they have known to be stable? Can the changes work?

The change in the length of the show is a mistake according to industry video blogger Kurt Aldag of www.ireadnet.com. He has been pressuring the ABA [Editor's note: BEA is produced by a sister company of Publishers Weekly] which produces the BEA to change its plan from two days in the middle of the week for only industry folks to attend, instead move the show to Thursday and Friday for trade and open it up to the book buying public Saturday and Sunday.

“After all” claims the web TV producer, “the exhibitors are already there with books to sell. The publishers are there with their authors and the media is there waiting for interview savvy dynamos like Ben Mizrich, author of The Accidental Billionaire: The Founding of Facebook to wow them.” Besides which, the Frankfurt Book Fair, (the world’s largest and most successful publishing expo has well proven that this formula works.

According to publishing magnet Mark Victor Hansen, co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, this expo is the answer to the industry’s woes. “This is where the most forward thinking thought leaders in the world come to convene for the single cause of publishing. There are no venues in the world containing more positive and motivated people fixated on creating a better world in one location than at BEA. These are the people and companies that know how to solve problems.”

Hansen’s optimism isn’t surprising. He’s built a virtual publishing empire based on the concept of things can always get better. The Chicken Soup brand alone has sold more than 800 million books worldwide. He’s even taken substantial steps to ensure the continued growth of the publishing industry and access to all by launching his own imprint Hansen House and the new web-based http://www.youpublish.com where even beginners can compete with Mark Victor Hansen.

But even with these new outlets designed to compete with Viacom’s massive financial brawn, or Bertelsmann’s global reach, consumers are tired of the old ways and things have changed.

Reid Tracey, with Hay House Publishing, sees the rise of devices like the iPod, iPhone, iTouch, and Sony’s new E-book Reader, are indicative of where the industry simply must go. “Readers are younger, more-savvy, more technical, more educated, more information-starved, and have shorter attention spans. They want it and they want it now.”

He’s right if you consider that the most profitable brands like Harry Potter, Lord of The rings, Twilight, and Jonas Brothers all target young readers.

More than 65 million Kindle e-book downloads have been sold in under two-years and the brands with e-book readers on the way, are betting big that this trend toward portability of content, and cheap accessibility will continue as far as the third eye can see.

The prediction by publishing industry guru Dan Poynter, author of The Self Publishing Manual suggests that the e-book will experience its next tipping point when big names, celebrities, politicians, and tent pole marquis authors choose to publish their big stories by e-format, and forego the prestige commonly associated with printed books.

This opinion is shared by tech publishing guru Yanik Silver of Surefiremarketing.com, who contends that at this point there is no reason to publish traditionally, unless your objective is to be at the mercy of someone with little imagination and an even smaller vision of what is possible. “Publishing electronically is the future and you simply can’t escape that fact.”

Observations Worth Noting at This Year’s BEA:

>> There was a marked shift in exhibitors to more book and publishing related booths and a clear decrease in the number of non-book exhibitors like toys, games, music, consumer products, devices, and personalities.

>> Exhibitors consistently reported fewer qualified leads, but bigger orders and higher priced orders than last year. This is consistent with some other recent tradeshow studies.

>> The quality of titles of all kinds, small press, or by the major houses is the highest they’ve ever been. This made possible by the advent and popularity of digital printing.

If you really want to get the pulse of the book selling industry, buy a new book and read it. Do your part. Take a good book to bed.

Proving that the book publishing and book selling businesses are no laughing matter, even CBS late night talk show wise cracker Craig Fergusson has a new book chronicling his journey to American citizenship. When I asked Fergusson what the secret to his success in so many creative areas is, he chided and said, “I really don’t know.” When pressed a little more, he confessed, “I think I finally got comfortable with who I really am. When I let the world see it, the world wasn’t such a bad place.”



-- Michael J. Herman is a syndicated columnist and author of the bestselling Becoming The Complete Champion: One Motivational Minute at a Time (2003 Motivational Minute Press). Mike coaches authors, speakers, and entrepreneurs in the effective and systematic ways to build profitable enterprises. Mike can be reached at http://www.themotivationalminute.com.

This 17-minute video from Clay Shirky speaking at TED explains why Twitter, Facebook and other social media can change the face of politics in the work. Case in point today: the Iran elections.



While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics.

This is a guest post from Joanna Penn, author and blogger at The Creative Penn: Writing, publishing options, internet sales and promotion...for your book.



It is an exciting time to be an author! New technologies in digital printing and distribution are enabling authors to publish online with print-on-demand and ebooks. Technology is also changing the way you can market your book.

Book marketing used to involve sending out physical copies to reviewers and journalists. You were generally marketing only to a local or country wide audience. You used a publicist because they had the relationships with people. The author was quite removed from the reviewer, the journalist or the reader.

Web 2.0 changes that. It enables relationships with people through social networking, blogging and instant messaging. You can now talk to journalists, reviewers and your readers directly.

If you build a relationship with someone, they are more likely to promote you, buy your book or want to interview you for a story. You can now promote to a global audience and sell globally through ebook retailers and online bookstores. Book marketing is still about relationships – but those relationships can now be online, and global.

Here are some Web 2.0 tools that you can use to promote your book (and the bonus is they are free!):

1. Use Twitter to find a journalist to target for your book/niche. Search for journalists on WeFollow and search.twitter.com. Listen to what they are tweeting about, Retweet them and get noticed. Build a relationship and then pitch. You can also set up a Twilert for your niche topic and you will receive a daily email with who is talking about it. Join the conversation and get noticed.

2. Pitch a targeted blogger for a book review. Don't just use book review sites as they are overcrowded. Pick a blogger in your genre who doesn't review books normally. Comment on their blog and get noticed. Get them some traffic by promoting them somehow. Build the relationship and then introduce your book.

3. Use your press release in multiple ways. Send it to the targeted journalist, but also post it on your blog/website media page. Then turn it into a .PDF and post it on Scribd and Docstoc, both of which are great for document search traffic. Put your website and free offer details on the bottom of the page and include keywords in the search terms. Then turn it into an article and post it on EzineArticles.com with your resource box for more traffic.

4. Use HARO to get notified of journalists looking for a story. This “Help a Reporter Out” service will sent you an email daily with all the stories that journalists are looking for. Have your press release ready to go. Research the journalist and story online as soon as you receive the email. Tweak the press release so it fits the requirements and you have a direct line to that journalist.

5. Record your book and submit it on Podiobooks.com. You can record your book with a basic plug-in microphone and free software Audacity. At the beginning and end of every podcast you can mention your website and where people can buy the print book. You can use the audio on your blog as a giveaway and network with other podcasters in your niche to get segments on their shows. If you can get people's attention for the hours it will take to listen your book, then you have definitely built a fan base!

These are just some of the tools available to you online for book marketing. Web 2.0 gives the power to the author, but you have to actually use the tools to get the exposure.

You have your book – now let people know about it!

There are many more ideas in the Author 2.0 Blueprint: How to use Web 2.0 tools to write, publish, sell and promote your book: http://budurl.com/tzz8.

Here is a story of author persistence I was sent by Claudine Wolk, author of It Gets Easier ... and Other Lies We Tell New Mothers . . .



While trying to get my book published through traditional routes, I developed a relationship with an agent. She liked the book but she wasn’t willing to take me on as a client. I asked why. She told me that my platform wasn’t big enough.

(I was pretty psyched that she was returning my emails at this point because her correspondence was more that I had received from any of the others in the publishing industry outside of form rejection letters)

I asked what an author platform was.

“Become an expert,” she said, “Get published in newspapers and magazines, create a blog following, and do some speaking engagements.”

After her response, I pushed my luck with one last question and asked, “If I do all of these things, would you consider me as a client?”

“You bet,” was her answer.

I took this little bit of encouragement and decided that I could wait no longer for my message to get out there. I decided to create a publishing company and self-publish the book. Throughout the process, however, I took the agent’s advice. I wrote. I connected on the Internet. I booked speaking gigs. I became an expert. As my book came into being, I did one more thing, I stayed in touch with the agent.

When my book cover was done, I sent her an email with the cover attached, “What do you think?” I asked.

When my title was decided upon, I sent another email, “How do you like the title?”

When my book was completed, I sent her a copy of the book.

Finally, after I sent her an email showing my Amazon sales ranking, she finally said the words I had longed to hear, “Are you looking for representation to have this booked picked up by a publisher?”

The rest is history. I’ve been with Verna Dreisbach with Dreisbach Literary Management ever since. Six months into our relationship and Ms. Dreisbach and I were signing a bona fide publishing contract with AMACOM books!

My book, It Gets Easier! and Other Lies We Tell New Mothers, will be released by AMACOM in June 2009.

After I had signed with her agency, I asked Verna why she had finally decided to take me on as a client.

“You did everything I asked you to do,” she said. “You would be surprised how rarely that happens with authors.”

This sounds like something I’ve read before by a famous book marketing guru. What’s that guy’s name?

-- Besides being the author of It Gets Easier ... and Other Lies We Tell New Mothers, Claudine Wolk is also the website owner of http://www.Help4NewMoms.com and a blogger at http://help4newmoms.blogspot.com.

CNN interviewed Gary Vaynerchuk about his upcoming book as well as the ten-book deal he got from Harper:



Thanks to @JonathanGunson of TrafficTV.com for point this video out to me. Check out his latest video here: http://trafficcafe.tv/recent-episodes/twitter-tv-special-how-to-succeed-online.

Here's an interesting slide show on why libraries could play an increasing role in social networks. Wish the slide show had sound. So quiet. But interesting stuff here:

The following article was provided to me by Hobie Hobart, Partner, Dunn+Associates Design for Authors, Speakers and Experts (more details at the end of this article).



As an author or self-publisher, you already know what a book can do for you:

• Position you as the leading industry expert
• Establish your credibility
• Effortlessly attract your target audience
• Set you apart with an instantly recognizable brand
• Win the attention of publishers and distributors
• Consistently win more—and higher-paying—speaking and consulting gigs
• Create multiple streams of income with profit-building products ...

but none of that matters if you are missing the one most important marketing tool: a stellar book cover.

DID YOU KNOW…?

— Bookstore browsers spend an average of 8 seconds looking at the front cover and 15 seconds studying the back cover before deciding whether to buy your book? If your book cover doesn’t instantly hook their interest and eyeballs, and then convey the right message about you, your chance to make a sale is gone.

— And you don’t just lose the sale. You lose a potentially long-term, highly profitable customer. Most authors, speakers and consultants use their books as the introductory product in a funnel of increasingly expensive products and services. When prospects don’t buy your book, you lose the $19.95 sale—and the thousands of dollars they could have spent on your audio programs, seminars, and coaching/consulting services.

— Bookstore distributors carry book covers only—not books. How shocking is that?

— A whopping 75% of booksellers say that the cover is the most important element of the book.

— John Willig, president and literary agent of Literary Services Inc., told me about his agency’s “3-Second Rule” which they use in evaluating any book submission. If the cover doesn’t grab them in 3 seconds, they pass on it. Only 3 seconds!

Do you want a front cover and book spine which will practically demand that readers pick up your book for a peek inside, with back cover that captures their imagination and piques their interest, so your book goes straight to the cash register, not back on the shelf?

Avoiding these 7 COSTLY MISTAKES will result in a totally unique look and feel for your book which instantly appeals to the readers, clients, and gives you the results you’re after.

Costly Mistake #1

You consult with someone who’s had success with his or her own book. And you follow exactly what she did to a T. But what worked for her lone book won’t work with yours. Because every audience is different, and…what appeals to one group of people could easily turn off the next.

Costly Mistake #2

You may have heard some experts say that your book design, specifically the cover, doesn’t matter because customers care about the content, not how it’s packaged. Although content is important, books are different than other products. Most book buyers experience the book before they buy. And if everything about your book — from the graphics and colors used on the cover to the font and format used inside — doesn’t combine into a siren song which that mesmerizes book browsers, they won’t buy. True, you can easily put together a campaign to hit #1 on any online bookstore within a 24-hour period. But that’s fleeting, and artificial success. If you want to be a true bestseller, your book must be able to sell over the long haul.

Costly Mistake #3

You try to figure everything out on your own and end up making horrendous mistakes simply because you don’t know any better. For example, you seek input from people you know, like your spouse, friends and co-workers. They care for you and want what’s best for you, so it’s safe to trust their advice, right? Wrong! In reality, their opinions are useless. They aren’t your target audience so what they think, well, it simply doesn’t matter. If you develop your book to make your friends and family happy, you end up with a book which won’t appeal to your buying audience in the slightest.

Costly Mistake #4

Your hard work and study gives you an accurate understanding of the steps involved in the book publishing process but you don’t fully understand the timing involved. And because you don’t know how long things will take, you end up missing prime bookselling opportunities. For example, a shocking number of authors think they can go to press in November to bring out a book in time for Christmas sales.

Costly Mistake #5

You want control over your book, so you hire lots of individual vendors to be involved in your book’s creation and marketing. But with so many unrelated, inexperienced people adding their creative inspirations to your project, you end up with separate marketing pieces which don’t tie together in look or feel much like having a closet crammed with shirts, pants and jackets, but no complete outfits to wear.

Costly Mistake #6

You want your book designed and published good, fast and cheap. The problem is you can have only two of these three. The fast-and-cheap combo is very popular right now but it produces substandard quality and cookie-cutter looks — not a winning combination if you want to sell a sizeable number of books or if you care how the book influences your brand. You get a limited number of templates to choose from for your book cover. And if the company you select is successful at selling their services to other price-sensitive authors, there will be even MORE books which look like yours! Plus, these book production factories have no time in the schedule or room in the budget to slow down and pay attention to quality or your brand image. The bottom line is when you pay dime store publishing prices, you need to expect dime store quality books.

Costly Mistake #7

You don’t have the time or interest to handle the publishing details, so you enlist a friend, relative or a local designer to help. But that person doesn’t have experience in the book industry. You end up sinking several hundred dollars (at least) in a book design only to realize too late that distributors won’t take your book because the design doesn’t meet industry standards. Then you have to start over, pay double, and still end up with a garage full of dusty, unsold books. Here the bottom line is that you wrote a book and published it without knowing the industry’s guidelines—and you have spent time and money with no positive results.

About the Author: Dunn+Associates helps bestselling authors and first-time authors. Their mission is to help you avoid these 7 Costly Mistakes. Call Hobie now at 715-634-4857 or email him at hobie@dunn-design.com to schedule a free 30-minute consultation as a gift to friends of John Kremer. Hurray because this $350 value gift is yours FREE for a limited time.

For more details about their services, see http://www.dunn-design.com.

Copyright (c) 2009 by Dunn+Associates Design and Creative Services for Advertising