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I have a new metaphor and code name for the high prices often paid for seemingly small mistakes. Last weekend, I stepped on a rusty nail. A big, very old, very rusty nail. Yes, I knew the area around the collapsed barn was dangerous; I wore my new boots and good gloves. I was watching my step as I took care of the rattling sheet metal. As I left, however, I did not see the board buried in the grass with the nails straight up. A step three inches to either side and it would not have been a blog topic—or a week of doctor visits, the tetanus booster, and industrial-strength antibiotics.

We all hit rusty nails in life and business. How do we avoid them? What is the best protection against them? And how do you respond when you hit them anyway? Your answer to this last question can be life or death and success or failure.

You can assess most situations. Though by definition emergencies arise unexpectedly, we can know the terrain and have a guide who has been around the field. Turn to business leaders in your niche; most willingly point out the nearly fatal spots they hit before you arrived on the scene. If you are producing a book in support of your business, you can work with a design firm that is aligned with your values and tracks the current technological evolution of the market.

You take reasonable precautions. Safe sex, safe hiking, safe business practices. In business, you can “nail down” good contracts and reliable vendors, though nothing but old fashioned experience will train you to know the best from the marginal. Focus on protecting your efforts with ongoing education, cultivating mentors, gathering collaborators, and building diverse networks.

But you cannot avoid every risk. You can’t always move forward as if crossing a minefield. As an business leader, the only way to be safe is to stop moving—but for an entrepreneur, that’s the most dangerous choice of all. And when you are working to address a social or environmental issue, standing still is just not an option.

With rusty nails, it is only the ones you don’t see that are dangerous. So the key question is, how will you respond when one leaps out of the grass and through your Vibram sole? When that backer backs out, that vendor flakes out, and your budget gives out, do you die, or quit, or run for a nine-to-five job? Do your panic, overreact, and make the situation worse? Or do you administer first aid, consider a measured response, and ask for help?

The publishing field is full of rusty nails for entrepreneurs. I can tell you from painful experience quite a number of them lurk in the grass. The old ones are still out there, like printing too many books in the first run or choosing a distributor that goes bankrupt right after you’ve consigned all your inventory to it. Watch out for that most common misstep: wasted money thrown at an elaborate marketing launch before you have identified your real audience.

Newer dangers surround you, but they may be harder to detect and avoid. Here the most common pitfall may be “saving money” by going with the standard self-publishing route that gets you a book that looks and performs like an amateur self-published job. Keep a weather eye out for unrealistic expectations for eBook editions and time lost on social media without a well-defined strategy to follow.

A week later, it looks like the infection in my foot won’t kill me; in an earlier generation, it may very well have been my inglorious end. To follow the metaphor into business, survival requires reasonable precautions, measured response to emergencies, and knowledge of available technologies. A little extra sleep and time to think with your feet up are both highly recommended, too.

Could be great, could be terribly annoying. What do you think?

Vook Launches Direct Publishing Platform
By Rachel Deahl, Publishers Weekly
Vook, the multimedia company that creates e-books which meld print and video, has unveiled a new platform that will allow publishers to independently create their own multimedia versions of their books. Through a new service called MotherVook publishers can upload content independently to a software platform to make media-enhanced digital editions of their titles. When asked how publishers would pay to use the software–whether there would be a one-time purchase fee or houses would pay per book–a rep at Vook said the company is “currently formalizing the licensing agreements.” Read on »

You are convinced authoring a book would be great tool for your business and boost your career. You have built up the expertise and perhaps some articles or a history of blog posts to draw from. But you are also overwhelmed by the prospect of putting a book’s worth of content together. Right?

Well, if you just want another fluffy pep talk, you’re reading the wrong article. Because I will tell you that if you do NOT feel intimidated by it, then step back for a reality check. There are no shortcuts, only techniques, skills, and resources to help. I’m starting to see writers with 5,000 words written down who want to publish an eBook. We used to call that a feature article in a magazine, not a book. To gain the caché of being the leading author in your field, you’ve got to deliver the whole package. And you can!

Right now, however, you are staring at your pile of notes, with your head full of ideas. So let’s take a look at what you’ve got in hand and what you may need as you start writing and editing.

Every story needs context. You probably don’t have to rehash the entire history of your industry or cause, but you do need to put your new contribution in contrast to what’s come before and what’s happening now. This is a piece of the puzzle you can nail down early. And this context will inform and inspire the rest of your work.

Quotes bring it to life. Get your interviews done early, so you have that grist for the writing mill. One very strong quote from a revered expert can be enough to frame an entire chapter. Likewise, sometimes a quote is so good you need to adjust the trajectory of your message to seamlessly work it in. On the other hand, you don’t want to write a section with the assumption your source will give you a quote to hold it together later. You do not have to use all of a long-winded quote, but you should always be faithful to what the speaker actually said, even if that is editorially inconvenient.

Build your case. You have a position (guilty!) and a case to be made. Don’t let it become an excuse for not writing, but get deep into the research you need at the outset. First, what you discover may surprise you and change the course of  your story. Second, writing is much easier when the characters and settings are already defined. Third, you are building your case just like an attorney before a jury, so you want to organize your argument strategically and tell the story for the best effect.

A surprise in every box. It’s the interception that makes the ball game exciting. It’s the unusual goodies in the salad that make you say “Yum.” So, is your approach honestly fresh, powerful, and creative enough to keep your readers hungry? Build surprises into your text, like plot twists, to keep your readers saying, “Hey, that’s a cool idea.” A good author knows that plot twists are never accidental (though fiction characters do often tell authors what to say) but are carefully planned. Done well, the placement and pacing of key points and take-home messages will be invisible to the readers. But you string them out for deliberate and maximum impact. To do that, you need to plan ahead in your writing.

It’s in the story. Whether you are writing an account of service work in Haiti or explaining a new piece of software, your message will get through to your readers best through stories and anecdotes. Is there a lot of human interest built into the outline of your book? It’s a solid bet you do not have enough material or a big enough concept to write an entire book on your subject if you do not start with more than enough stories that connect your ideas to your readers’ lives, extending the message well beyond your personal narrative.

The vision is to hear yourself interviewed on NPR? Hold to it! There are victories and frustrations to ride along the journey. Give us the context, share your conversations with the experts, convince us and surprise us. The world needs your story, so start writing!

This news item from Publishers Weekly certainly is worrisome for everyone turning to eBooks. Hmmm.

By Jim Milliot
Publishers could be losing out on as much as $3 billion to online book piracy, a new report released today by Attributor estimates. Attributor, whose FairShare Guardian service monitors the Web for illegally posted content, tracked 913 books in 14 subjects in the final quarter of 2009 and estimated that more than 9 million copies of books were illegally downloaded from the 25 sites it tracked. Although Attributor needs to make some projections to arrive at total numbers, the hard figures the survey uncovered are disturbing to any publisher worried about the possible impact of piracy of e-books.

Attributor Study Finds Pervasive Online Book Piracy

I have never smiled through an entire film, reveling in the eye-candy, the characters, the convincing fantasy world, the 3D effect, total invisibility of any line between live action and CGI, the implications of it on future cinema, and the sheer pleasure of the wow-factor. Yes, Avatar blew my socks off. And I’m a sci-fi junkie.

One of the most endearing features of this fantasy world to me is the meticulous detail built into the natural world, in most ways scientifically plausible (with a dose of suspended disbelief regarding the laws of physics and such, but that’s okay). Importantly, in this sci-fantasy the scientists are the good guys again. Grace (Sigourney Weaver) literally wrote the book. (Who is her publisher?) Flaming Liberal Hollywood rarely manages to link disciplined, ethical scientific process to what’s true and right in the world. How refreshing.

I’m being sarcastic about Liberal Hollywood because the blogosphere is ripe with criticism that the plotline of Avatar is “out of touch” with the Conservative heartland of America with a story that is anti-military and anti-development. Sorry, but I stubbornly do not believe genocide and scorched-earth strip-mining are Conservative ideals, but these evils appear in our nonfiction daily news and still need to be battled. And the heroes in Avatar are soldiers of conscience. There’s a great American tradition in that. Sure, Neytiri is an insurgent. So was Paul Revere, but he didn’t get to ride a banshee.

There is also a common argument out there that people are only going to the movie for the visual spectacle and ignoring the story. That’s quite a stretch for a film that’s already grossed over $1 billion. It is transparently the old Nature vs The Machine and white-guy-going-native story, but realized with eye-popping visual magic. (See also the anime epic Princess Mononoke for a similar theme but with an Asian ambivalence.) My only criticism is that the bad-guys in Avatar are two-dimensionally bad to the bone. It’s a three-hour movie, for heavensake: isn’t that enough time to develop some Shakespearean complexity to the antagonists?

Obviously, I come in squarely on the side of the Na’vi. Syncing with the trees does not seem far-fetched to me at all—though I don’t have the ponytail linkup. But we must not be too sanguine; one resolution for this year is to be sure Confluence Book Services participates actively in sustainable printing and publishing programs and services. I don’t want to be on the wrong side of a leonopteryx.

The familiar storylines will always be with us, but the new storytellers are using emerging media and technologies with astounding potency. Cameron’s latest leads us to expectations of still richer feasts of imagination on screen. The $500 million in technology developed for Avatar will be readily available to other producers (Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Peter Jackson have already had a chance to play with it.) and perhaps all tech-savvy mortals in a few years. Now a live actor can become anything. And even the tie-in toys are 3D and downloads. What does that mean for books in competition with multimedia? What might it lead to in eReaders and eBooks? Where will it drive reader expectations?

Well, I expect to go see Avatar in 3D again this week.

from Wikipedia:

Avatar: A Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of Pandora, a 224-page book in the form of a field guide to the film’s fictional setting of the planet of Pandora, was released by Harper Entertainment on November 24, 2009.^[95] It is presented as a compilation of data collected by the humans about Pandora and the life on it, written by Maria Wilhelm and Dirk Mathison. HarperFestival also released Wilhelm’s 48-page James Cameron’s Avatar: The Reusable Scrapbook for children.^[96] The Art of Avatar: James Cameron’s Epic Adventure was released on November 30, 2009 by Abrams Books.^[97] The book features detailed production artwork from the film, including production sketches, illustrations by Lisa Fitzpatrick, and film stills. Producer John Landau wrote the foreword, Cameron wrote the epilogue, and director Peter Jackson wrote the preface.

In a 2009 interview, Cameron said that he planned to write a novel version of Avatar some time after the film released.

PPS Isn’t it worth it just for the chance to use “leonopteryx” as a post tag?

Authors—especially those writing in support of a cause or as part of a business—recognize that publishing a blog keeps the interest high and grows the audience. Fortunately, if you’ve written an entire book, you already have a ton of material to draw upon for those blog posts, just by adding new examples, catching a news peg, or exploring new angles. Yet, no way around it, maintaining a blog is a significant amount of work and a long-haul commitment. To make it worth it for you, how will new readers locate you in cyberspace?

For book authors, readers will find their way to your blog through three primary avenues:

Author or Book Search. They heard you speak or saw a reference to a book of interest—yours. So they got your address directly from you, or they “googled” you or your book title. These readers will want to find you quickly and get drawn into your stream with blog, video, and news. These are your dearest friends! These readers will share what they find on your site with others, add comments on your blog, provide honest feedback, and buy your next book. Woo them, offer them free previews, get their email addresses. Friend them on Facebook. Engage them personally online to the extent possible.

Social Media Hook. You captured their attention with a blog reply on a related site or a comment in a Facebook group. Perhaps one of your witty Twitter rejoinders won them over. Even better if someone they respect posted a link to your online presence. These are your soon-to-be best friends. Draw them in with timely content within the theme that caught their eyes. Keep up that consistent online persona and message. If possible, find out where they heard about you, so you can turn more of your time and resources that direction.

Direct Search on Subject. Someone who searched the Internet on a term that leads to you may bring you a whole new audience. If your website or blog supplies answers and fulfills the promise of your expertise, you’ve won a new fan who will dig deep into your work. It is worth being diligent and technically savvy about search engine optimization (SEO) in order to make sure these readers can find you. The tricky aspect is that initially you don’t know for sure what the best search terms will be. Make sure your SEO analytics tell you how and why people are finding you.

However your audience finds you, the work of keeping them engaged is never-ending. Today, many of your potential raving fans have browsing attention spans that don’t run past 140 characters or a ninety-second video. Draw them into your blog with deeper content laid down like breadcrumbs in the forest leading to articles. Catch them with surprises on your site, such as a humorous video or a related game. Develop a resource page to browse that may draw them back. Above all, respond to comments and keep promises.

In short, getting a book published is easier than ever, but being an author is not a single accomplishment: When your audience finds you, it is the beginning of a dynamic, ongoing conversation.

You must tell your story. For that cause to which you have made a commitment, your perspective is unique; if you do not share it, the world will not have it. You alone employ the life experiences that guide your skills, making your contribution literally priceless to the rest of us.

Your voice is also yours alone. You can and should emulate heroes, learn from masters, and borrow insights to carry them forward into applications. But no one else can mix, fuse, integrate, refine, polish, and present the story the way you will. That makes it your sacred duty.

Jan Phillips, author of The Art of Original Thinking, captures the urgency succinctly, saying, “These are times to bring the inner outward, to engage our souls in every endeavor and express our meaning in the teeming marketplace.”

Bring it out with shock-and-awe evidence and soul-stirring passion. You do not have to be a world-class orator or literary master. Rather, just be clear, concise, organized. You must keep your audience in mind in every paragraph. Do not inflate flimsy material. Make sure your strongest stuff frames your central message. In short, attend to it like a successful business presentation. You are in the business of making your strategic and significant contribution.

But relax about it. This book you will write in 2010 is not your only story. It does not have to (you should not try to) say everything you want to tell everybody. Better that it say one thing honestly and well, with simple truth and open heart. Other angles on your story—fresh perspective on your experience, new voices, breathtaking world changes, personal epiphanies—will enliven your writing along the way. I promise. That’s how it works.

The urgency is real. Your days and resources are numbered. The opportunities are bubbling over right now from the heat of needed change. Use the energy of that urgency (or the energy of your fear or your anger) to get the job done and the story written. “Because everything we do and everything we are is in jeopardy, and because the peril is immediate and unremitting, every person is the right person to act and every moment is the right moment to begin,” said Jonathan Schell.

Phillips adds, “Wherever we are, whatever we’re doing, there is always the chance to reveal the inner, to shed that light, to share our warmth with a shivering soul.”

Make your plans for 2010, and make them ambitious. First priority: tell your story.

At a recent gathering of social entrepreneurs, marketing icon Mark Victor Hansen asked how many in the audience were writing or planning to write a book. Every hand in the room went up. These folks are working for peace in the Middle East, replanting Amazon rainforests, and helping the homeless in the Southwest. They sustain these efforts through business ventures. So the books they are writing will champion their social and environmental causes with passion and compelling detail, of course—but they must also promote their products.

Are you among the social enterprise writers? Here are five writing tips for business leaders/authors balancing people, planet, and profit:

Write to your audience. (Yes, you’ve heard this from me before.) Remember, you cannot reach everybody; you are trying to sell to your Tribe, or those on the edge of the camp circle. Who are those people? Are they mostly women? Men? What age range? Identify those who may not only resonate with your mission but can also be your perfect prospects. Write to them.

Keep it personal while you relate your work to the universal themes. Your unique story, your distinct voice, will captivate your audience. An impersonal manifesto, even though well-intentioned, will only illicit a passive nod. Have faith that your audience wants to make a positive impact on the world too, and you, personally, are a role model. They will buy your product or service out of conviction and loyalty, and that defines the new economy.

Keep the old adage in mind: Facts tell but stories sell. People love to read stories. Gaining new customers and supporters to the cause is often just a matter of telling a great story.

Get endorsements. Put great effort into compiling the best possible testimonials, examples, and social validation. Be sensitive that people who may be your best supporters are constantly bombarded with green-washing and spin. They rightly fear being ripped off or over-sold. Take away their fear by proving that what you offer is solid and proven.

People love to buy, but hate to be sold. If you tell your unique story to a sympathetic audience and convince them of both the value and the service of your work, you will invoke a desire to buy. No sales pitch required; only a “please join us now,” an honest call to action.

Above all, get your thoughts written down, polish the words later, then make the commitment to share them with a world that so badly needs you.

“Don’t think it, ink it.” ~Mark Victor Hansen

Stephanie Chandler hosts the Small Business Growth Strategies blog. She is an author of several business and marketing books.

I’m reblogging (like RT on Twitter?) her blogtalkradio interview because it touches on so many points I also make about your book serving as your best business card.

“I had a fun interview this morning with Jon Hansen on his PI Window on Business radio show. We discussed how writing a book can be a powerful tool for building your brand and your business. If you want to impress clients, book speaking engagements, attract the media, charge higher rates and build credibility, a book is a wonderful way to make it all happen. You can listen to the show below…”

Sorry about the prelude of Jon Hansen’s commercial, but kudos to him for setting an excellent online radio host example.

Are you combining the passion of a social mission with your innovative but practical business solutions? If so, then you face the ongoing challenge of describing and explaining your vision and strategies. The most versatile and virile/viral medium to tell your story may be in a book.

Don’t scoff and tune out yet! The definition of “book” has radically changed in just the last few years, and its dizzying evolution presents opportunities for the nimble business leader. We may be talking about a printed book with all its traditional impact, or a short-run, print-on-demand book available on a just-in-time basis, or perhaps an ebook—more concise and far more portable—but just as professional. We may also consider a multimedia “book” combining your hard facts and your impassioned descriptions. Here’s the tip: Your audience defines the best format of your book—you apply market analysis as you would with any product.

Consider these five solutions your book will provide:

Define yourself as the leader. Lay out your vision and plan with confidence and clarity. Guaranteed, that message in print sets you at the vanguard. It gives others a flag to rally around. Your perspective becomes the leading edge. You are the one invited to be the keynote speaker, because you literally wrote the book on the subject.

Recognize the pioneers and innovators of the field. Honor them in your book. Suddenly you stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them, humbly perhaps, but indivisibly. By placing your work in context to those you admire, you connect yourself philosophically or literally to them. Do you think someone you dream of working with will be more receptive to your proposal if you have respectfully referenced them in your book?

Make your case. You have a unique perspective on the social cause your business is addressing. In a book, you have the stage—front, center, and solo. Here’s your chance to crush the misconceptions, spotlight the toughest challenges as you see them, and redefine the game. Then you cannot not be misquoted and misrepresented. Refer them to page 32 of your book to set them straight.

Gather the powerful network you need. Now, as an established thought leader associated with the icons of the field and empowered by a compelling strategy, you can nurture collaborations that were if-only pipedreams when you started. New links in your network enter the conversation holding the high concepts from your book already in mind. With the unambiguous authority of your book as a velvet hammer, you can forge alliances that will rock your world. That’s what you want most, isn’t it?

Sell it. The book is part of the enterprise. You have a product or a process that offers a sustainable solution the world needs. We also need your story, your visionary version of how this could go. Give journalists covering the social problem and your industry colleagues real news in your book. They will tell the world about it for you. Feed inspiration and insights to everyone working in related social enterprises. They’ll pay you for it, gladly. The book earns its own place in your successful business.