Checklist for your media kit

by Gary Kliewer
June 8th, 2011

These points apply to your printed media kit as well as your online presentation.

  1. Make sure the package sells you and your story, not the book.
  2. Choose endorsements strategically for best effect.
  3. Synchronize your contact information across all media: website, Facebook, blog, media kit, press releases, business cards, video clips.
  4. Triple-check the ISBN and other book specifications for accuracy.
  5. Using links to pages with more detailed information is fine. Give them just enough; if someone is that interested, they’ll follow you there.
  6. Excerpts must be brief. But links to sample PDFs are popular.
  7. Update your calendar of appearances and activities. Frequently and doggedly.
  8. Review your whole kit regularly. Does it still do the job? Is everything current and accurate?
  9. Keep using those hard-earned interviews. Collect and feature your interviews on the site. A well-hosted interview that conveys your message—and your personality—keeps paying dividends long after the show airs or it appears one place in print. A good interview carries legitimacy and timeliness to your message that no self-written marketing material can begin to touch.

    Only by investing and speaking your vision with passion can the truth, one way or the other, finally penetrate the reluctance of the world. ~ Søren Kierkegaard

    Posted in Book Marketing, Social Media | 2 Comments »

    Author and Book Marketing on Amazon

    by Gary Kliewer
    October 22nd, 2010

    What’s dangerous is not to evolve. ~Jeff Bezos

    For the moment, Amazon has the upper hand in the book market. There are plenty of competitors fighting to dislodge them, of course. However, Amazon.com is currently providing the most—and the most creative—support for authors and publishers. They want what the authors and publishers want: to sell lots of books. Therefore, do not neglect the wealth of book-marketing tools Amazon offers. As you develop your website, integrate or emulate Amazon.com features.

    I don’t mean this post to be a blatant promotion for the online bookseller gorilla in the room, but the more I look into it, the more they have to offer our authors, mostly for free.

    Enroll your book. If you are starting from scratch as a self-published author to get your book into the Amazon.com system on your own, you will enroll in the Amazon Advantage program. Unless you like this sort of thing and were born after about 1989, I recommend you hire your Internet tech support person to set this up for you. For the intrepid author, Amazon.com provides all the instructions. Get started here.

    Display your book. If you do not have a shopping cart for direct sales on your site or a direct link to your publisher’s cart, then you will be selling your book through Amazon from your website. There’s a bit of an education required to set this up, but once it’s running, sales are clear and channels for promotion are legion. Sign up to be an Amazon Associate.

    Build visibility on Amazon. Here is a solid stack of features on Amazon.com available for you to employ. I recommend you get started immediately.

    1. Beg or bribe friends to post five-star reviews of your book. Reader reviews strongly influence buyers.
    2. Create a user profile so you can write reviews of related titles. Take the time to write assiduous, useful reviews because these also add to your “expert” status.
    3. People love lists, and the folks at Amazon know it. Create your own topical list in Listmania to strengthen your position as an expert and a player, with a link back to your site, as well. Obviously, you can include your own books in your list.
    4. Add images to your product page. There is a link for this just below the picture of your book on the product page. Set your page apart from millions of others.
    5. Also on your product page, below the reviews, you can add tags that will link your book to keyword searches.
    6. Add your author profile to your product pages through Author Central. (Check out these examples: William Shakespeare, Delia Smith, Wayne Dyer). Amazon offers a useful Author pages FAQ.
    7. If you’re already blogging on your own, you can display those posts automatically on your Author Page. Add a blog you already write using an RSS feed.
    8. Amazon will host a video on your author profile. “Share a video interview, book trailer, or book signing video with your readers.”
    9. View and edit Amazon’s list of your books. Even if your publisher is responsible for loading the data in the system, it is good to check all the details yourself.
    10. Opinions fly in the Communities on Amazon. If you have a niche and strong opinions yourself, you may want to participate. And your lists may be tagged in a discussion.
    11. Offer Search Inside! for your book. Insist that your publisher submit material for your book to the Search Inside! program, or do it yourself if you hold the copyright and marketing/promotion rights to your book. According to Amazon, “The Search Inside! Program helps customers discover your books. With Search Inside! customers can search every word in your book and browse sample pages, helping them find the title that’s just right for them.” You are more likely to buy a music CD if you can hear some sample tracks, right? This is the same for books. Join Search Inside the Book.
    12. Create a widget for your product page and install it on various pages of your own site. To create widgets, you need to become an Amazon Associate. Check your contract, but if you have the right to sell your own title independently, this is how you do it. Joining is free and you earn up to 15 percent in referrals by featuring Amazon products on your web page.
    13. Add links and banners to your site. Another way to present your book with a direct product link. Ask friends to place your banner on their sites, too.
    14. If you hold the digital rights to your book, you can make it available as a Kindle Book on Amazon.com. Enroll your books in Kindle. If your publisher has this responsibility, make sure it gets done.

    Even more Amazon resources

    • Author and Writing Groups – This page explains, “Amazon.com offers grants for nonprofit author and publisher groups that share our obsession with fostering the creation, discussion, and publication of books.” You may nominate non-profit author and publisher groups for Amazon’s support through a contact link on this page.
    • Amazon Content Guidelines – Official guidelines on what is not allowed for selling or publishing on Amazon.com’s site.
    • Amazon.com Publishers and Book Sellers Guide – Amazon’s own guide with FAQs and details for selling books on Amazon.
    • Amazon Encore – Amazon’s program for promoting little-known authors with a growing readership based on rave reviews.
    • Tools for Nonprofits. Amazon.com is able to support nonprofit organizations to raise awareness, collect needed supplies, and solicit funds. Amazon customers support thousands of nonprofits and worthy causes. You have to admit this is a powerful additional use of the machine they have built.

    What we want to be is something completely new. There is no physical analog for what Amazon.com is becoming. ~Jeff Bezos

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    Posted in Book Marketing, Book Publishing, E-books, Self-publishing | 8 Comments »

    Ten Tips for Getting Book Endorsements

    by Gary Kliewer
    October 15th, 2010
    300px Michael Jackson with the Reagans Ten Tips for Getting Book Endorsements

    Image via Wikipedia

    More important than ivy-league academics or descriptions of your decades of experience, the endorsements you have received and testimonials you have earned convince and sell your readers that you are the top-of-the-line master. Face it, people want to base their decisions on the judgments of someone else they consider an expert. It is true whether they are voting for a candidate or buying a novel. Naturally, it is especially, critically true when they are selecting a how-to book or a text on a complex topic.

    You must ASK for words of praise for your book. People who genuinely appreciate your work, colleagues (and sometimes even “competitors”) in your field, and others legitimately building reputations all may surprise you at how accommodating, even eager, they are about providing valuable testimonials, especially if you make it easy for them and show professional courtesies. Start early and follow these steps for sparkling, valuable results:

    1. Ask the best in your field. Do not hesitate to reach out to the stars and leaders who are most authoritative. Good candidates include heads of associations, celebrities involved in your issue, company presidents and founders, elders in the field, and perhaps several folks who represent the exact demographic of your audience.
    2. Ask media personalities with name recognition, which today may include leading bloggers, editors of ezines, and subject-specific Twitterati.
    3. Ask other authors. If it is nonfiction, you referred to other experts in your book—hopefully not all of them dead. Find the liveliest colleagues and send them your sample chapters well in advance of publication.
    4. Do not seek blurbs from endorsement whores, the already-famous people you see endorsing every book on the shelf. Your real audience knows better.
    5. Make it easy. High profile people are, by definition, busy people. Make providing you with an endorsement quick and easy for them. Write two or three endorsements for them. If possible, use their own words that you have pulled from their writing or presentations. Editing a pre-written endorsement is easier and faster for the celebrity or the personal assistant. You are more likely to get the quick response that says what you need it to say.
    6. Make the return effortless. If you are working in snail mail—which still commands more attention if prepared in a professional manner—include a self-addressed, stamped envelope (SASE). Always also include your email address.
    7. Give them a deadline. Forty-five days or more works well; longer and your request will be set aside and forgotten, while shorter may send your letter straight to the circular file under the desk.
    8. Follow up. You can’t just send a request and pray. Your endorser may intend to come through for you but set the request aside; it’s hardly their top priority. You may move you to the top of their pile of endorsement requests when you follow up.
    9. Post credit where due. Use the credentials your endorser provides, including their self-promotion line, within reason, of course. This is the return favor. Also, just because you revere this person, it doesn’t mean your readers will know why this endorsement is so impressive unless you include full details and prove this is legitimate.
    10. Post it now. When you get these great endorsements, get them published to your site right away, whether the book is released yet or not. Use them prominently throughout your media kit. Your credibility and sales will increase.

    When you, in turn, are asked for an endorsement, reply promptly and professionally. The only thing stronger than getting a good endorsement is to appear as the expert being asked for endorsements! Be sure to provide credential copy as you want it to appear—obviously including the link to your own current title.

    Ten Tips for Getting Book Endorsements

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    Posted in Book Business, Book Marketing | 6 Comments »

    Social Media for Authors Test

    by Gary Kliewer
    October 1st, 2010

    Do I have to? You’ve written and perhaps published your book. You’ve discovered how much time it takes to make even a traditional sales kit look professional. You fought for some local publicity. Now you are asking, do I really have to get into the social media thing, too? I am supposed to tell you “yes.” But the honest answer is “maybe.”

    To find out if you should commit your precious time to building your social media presence—or if it is more likely to be a frustrating waste of time you could better use elsewhere—take my patented Author’s Cut-and-Run from Social Media Test. Answer yes or no:

    1. Do you have a Facebook account that you use to communicate with your audience (not just your high school clique)?
    2. Does your book distill your detailed expertise in your career field?
    3. Is your book controversial, shocking, groundbreaking, or funny?
    4. You watch a funny YouTube video. Can you forward the link to a friend in less than thirty seconds?
    5. Have you published a blog consistently for six months or more?
    6. Do you know how to use Twitter #hashtags?
    7. Would you rather send a witty email than chat on the phone?
    8. Do you regularly scan more than three blogs related to your book topic?
    9. Do you have someone dedicated to helping you who would answer “yes” to most of these questions?
    10. Would your book’s audience answer “yes” to most of these questions?

    Results:

    • If you answered “yes” to 7–10 of these questions, you are already in the choir and should update your apps, renew your SEM strategies, and take it to the bank.
    • If you answered “yes” to 4–6 of these questions, it is time to take the following steps: 1)  objectively analyze whether or not the subject matter of your book lends itself to social media activity, and 2) honestly assess whether you’ve got the time and discipline needed to translate online traffic into real fans and sales.
    • If you hesitantly answered “yes” to a few of these questions, keep up your blog if you have one, install a “Share This” button on your website, and call it a day. Focus instead on quality “set it and forget it” content.

    [If you didn't answer "Yes" to any of these questions, good on ya; it's important to be honest with yourself. There are many more important ways to spend your time as a professional writer.]

    IF you dive into the social media community, religiously divide your time (and your accounts) between personal and business chatter. Your site serves as a “landing page” for all other social media and web activity. Never lose sight of the directive that all the time you spend sending email blasts, tweeting, scanning relevant blogs, and ignoring virtual games serves one purpose only: to direct readers to your website.

    Posted in Author Audience, Book Marketing, Social Media | 1 Comment »

    Self Publishing, Custom Publishing

    by Gary Kliewer
    August 20th, 2010

    Yes, there is a significant difference. And good reasons to pursue publication via one avenue or the other.

    Self publishing implies a go-it-alone effort in which you bring the manuscript you have finalized by yourself to a boilerplate layout and print service, then handle all the distribution and marketing. Custom publishing, as I see it, suggests you bring your work to a service that assists with editorial and design, as needed, and works with you to publish a custom product. In all cases the author bears the primary burden of marketing (even with major, traditional houses today) but the custom publishing service may offer a range of  distribution options and promotional support.

    Self publishing is the best choice for many authors. For material that was previously edited and published, for example, it’s the short and inexpensive route. Any book project that is meant primarily for an audience of friends and family, there’s no question that self-publishing is the appropriate route. For business materials that have professionals behind them to catch the typos, a self-publishing service delivers the best deal when “repurposing” your content. For entrepreneurs, consultants, counselors, and others who produce frequent but possibly short-lived material, particularly content best suited to eBooks for online distribution only, self-published work gets to your audience faster and well enough.

    Self-publishing services will tell you they provide custom publishing services. But I think we should make a clear industry distinction. Does the service offer professional editing and proofreading? Is the cover design from a template or does the design involve the author working directly with a designer to discuss each element? Is the interior layout slapped in—with your unintentional bad breaks and all—or is it hand-tooled? Is the eBook version just on Kindle, or will it be distributed to the dozens of other online venues? What brick-and-mortar store distribution is really going to  happen? Do  you have one person at the service who will stay with you all the way down the road?

    Custom publishing is essential for the success of many books. If the book is to compete against titles from major publishers; if the book has to command the respect of a specialized, expert audience; if the book has interior art elements beyond simple tables; or if the book is part of a “brand,” whether of the author or a business — it needs the attention of custom publishing. If you, the author, have a clear vision of the design or the “look and feel” of the book that goes beyond a 6 x 9 softbound print-on-demand item, you will need to apply the expertise of a production team. If you want a long-term marketing plan and the support needed to sustain it, guess what?

    The great news is that self publishing costs next to nothing today, and custom publishing breaks costs down to only the services you really need. Better than that, you are the driver, not a helpless passenger along for the ride controlled by a moribund publishing house. Shop around. Do your homework. Ask questions. All the rules have changed, except the one that says readers are hungry for high-quality writing. I confidently continue to declare there has never been a better time to be an author, and there are more opportunities to publish now than ever.

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    Posted in Book Publishing, Publishing Trends, Self-publishing | No Comments »

    All In with Multimedia

    by Gary Kliewer
    July 23rd, 2010

    Every book we are working on now has multimedia elements.

    Among the textbooks for which we manage production, a large percentage of academic references are website links; that’s where the current, peer-reviewed, accurate sources live now. Most reference works and textbooks have supplemental websites where students go for the in-depth research, study questions, and video. After all, for today’s students, bound books are inefficient and old fashioned.

    No longer do the visual arts and the printed word run is separate circles. For an upcoming title exploring the relationship of natural environment and culture, it helps that the author, Osprey Orielle Lake, is not only a renowned speaker at international conferences but also an accomplished sculptor of monuments in bronze. There is no limit to the ways her important words can be strengthened by art in all media, weaving history, ecology, culture, governance, and women’s leadership to map out an integrated approach to working in partnership with nature.

    Another White Cloud Press frontlist title is a flagship for books converging with other media. Itself a marriage of lyrical words and art photography, Grace and Tranquility (July 2010, Eric Alan) is tied to a music CD of the same name by Gypsy Soul. The songs draw their lyrics from passages of the book, images in the book mirror the moods of the songs. Author and band are touring together, making a reading also a slideshow and concert. The gift market and booksellers are beginning to see the undoubted beauty of combining the book and CD as an attractive sales package.

    A children’s storybook with whimsical drawings tells its story in more ways than ever before. Marketing for the book has to include video of the author reading the story. The author is active on Facebook and her illustrations are ideally suited for sharing across social media (copyright issues alert).

    Even a fairly traditional travel guide just released depends on the associated website, which in turn is linked to all the websites of the featured wineries, weaving a true web. The website augments the print book with updates and news, as well as audio interviews by the author.

    No author should be thinking only of words on paper  ever again. Your story, your message, will be words on paper, in pixels, in audio, in video, in previously unimagined lively combinations that bring your readers right to your elbow  as never before. Celebrate and maximize the possibilities.

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    Posted in Book Publishing, Publishing Trends, Social Media | No Comments »

    Standing on the Internet Tracks

    by Gary Kliewer
    July 19th, 2010

    Clay Shirky is the smartest guy out there right now. By “smart” I mean not the first or only guy to see a train coming, but the one who looks down the tracks we’re standing on and says, “That’s the 502, it’s packing 900 tons, and it will be here in one minute ninety seconds. How about that?”

    In our case, the train is how we use the Internet. It was a Shirky lecture on TED that helped me recognize that all media is converging: print, audio, video, interactive communication all merging online. Shirky is credited with being one of the first to predict the pervasive power of a collaborative digital world, institutionalized now in Facebook, Twitter, and the rest of social media. Based at New York University, Shirky is now pointing down the tracks and leading the debate about using the Internet for communal or civic values; that is, are we going to share news about Lady Gaga’s wardrobe or are we going to provide clean water to all of Africa?

    Leisure time is now a global resource, he observes. So he looks at what people are doing online and notes, “All of these are effusion of people pooling their spare time and talent, but some of them are good for the participants, and some are good for society as a whole.”

    Shirky’s new book, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age Standing on the Internet Tracks (Penguin Press), looks down the tracks at the possibilities of the Internet age and the obligations that will come with it. “If we don’t celebrate civic value, we underuse the medium,” he says.

    On traditional publishers adapting to the digital age: Shirky quotes Upton Sinclair. “It’s hard to make a man understand something if his livelihood depends on him not understanding it.”

    On who to watch in publishing: “I’m interested in young writers and editors entering a system that is plainly structured around the vestiges of a world fast draining away.”

    On the opportunities for authors today: “…while I hope [Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown] does get recognize and gets picked up to do a book, she doesn’t need a book to have a voice. In literature there’s never been the kind of place for women’s voices that there is now. It’s spectacular.”

    I will be buying Shirky’s new book, Cognitive Surplus Standing on the Internet Tracks, which I confidently predict will be full of additional concise observations and conversation-starters. Though I am also standing on the tracks, I’m an old guy, so I hope Clay won’t mind if I buy it ink-on-paper.

    Reference: “Here Comes Clay Shirky,” Publishers Weekly, by Parul Sehgal, Jun 21, 2010.

    Read the rest of this entry »

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    Posted in Book Publishing, Collaboration, Publishing Trends, Social Media | 1 Comment »

    Author’s Website: But wait, there’s more!

    by Gary Kliewer
    July 9th, 2010

    Whether working with a major house or self publishing, an author today must maintain a website. Having a professional online presence is as standard as having a sales sheet and a business card. But the old (that is, more than two years ago) expectation that a website can be just a glorified billboard is obsolete thinking. What can or should an author-and-book website do for an author now?

    First, the site does serve as a sales tool, but only if it is a dynamic tool where reviews and endorsements are added on the fly and news about you and your book is kept current.

    Your site serves as a “landing page” for all other social media and web activity. Never lose sight of the directive that all the time you spend sending email blasts, tweeting, scanning relevant blogs, and ignoring virtual games on Facebook serves one purpose only: to direct readers to your website.

    You can’t fit everything want to grab people with into posts and email, or even fliers and mailers. Send your potential fans to your site, where you can wow them with rich content. In other words, include your URL on everything. Then give people good reasons to come back.

    There are no finished books, only deadlines. So what to do with that great extra chapter or the appendix that got cut? You site is where you give readers something more than the material in the book. If it’s fiction, you can tell side stories about the characters or explore your world. Any nonfiction work will have updates and additional resources to provide. Often the best way to sell something is to give it away. Your site visitors will gravitate toward free excerpts and sample chapters from upcoming titles.

    You will be told your website is where you can engage your readers. That sounds good, but can it really be done? Yes. People are hungry for the author-reader connection. Readership loyalty is not a thing of the past; indeed, the interactive media you are using right now has ushered in an age of reader participation never imagined before. Integrate a blog on the themes of the book and write riffs on highlights from the book, keeping it fresh in context of current event and your life. (For example, see Grace and Tranquility.) Respond to comments. Join online discussions elsewhere on the Web. Review other relevant books. Be creative with it.

    If you have published several books, your site evolves into the primary stage where you tie your work together, where you integrate and relate the arc of your writing to your larger vision. If your books are an actual series, make sure your site evenly represents the whole series and always highlights the latest. (See a new one set up for more in a series: The Wine Seeker’s Guides.)

    No book is a print-only instrument anymore. You are not two-dimensional, and neither is your book. You site should carry podcasts, video interviews, and candid author images. Include links to videos and other multimedia sites. Keep vigilant for content that could augment your story, then find ways to draw new readers to you with it.

    More than ever, readers want—and will soon expect—to feel like they know  and are interacting with the author, or that they can in some manner participate in the book. So put a personal face on your author persona  that reveals more than just the dust-jacket copy.  Use this amazing interactive medium to let your readers feel like they are part of your story. That’s what good storytelling has always been.

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    Posted in Author Audience, Book Marketing, Social Media, Storytelling | No Comments »

    Genetic Publishing

    by Gary Kliewer
    June 30th, 2010
    DNA orbit animated Genetic Publishing

    Image via Wikipedia

    Even if you are not personally ready for base jumping, you may enjoy watching extreme sports. Now we have extreme publishing: James Joyce has been quoted inside the DNA of a bacterium!

    Researchers from the J. Craig Venter Institute stitched together the entire genome of the bacterium Mycoplasma mycoides. We have been adding and subtracting bits of DNA for decades, but this engineering feat is a milestone. This time, the scientists started from the raw recipe, the A’s, T’s, C’s, and G’s that make up DNA. They cooked up the short pieces of DNA into a working genome. With some help from surrogate yeast cells, they produced a genome of 1,077,947 DNA letters. Then they installed the whole package into a different kind of bacterium. The entire genome was swapped out—and the converted cell switched species.

    The goal is to make organisms for environmental cleanup and other commercial purposes. On the other hand, the dangers of customized “bugs” with unknown capabilities getting out into the open will make for many more years of debate and tension. But certainly, as we start building genomes from scratch, it is essential that we write unambiguous “watermarks” into the code that identify it as engineered.

    That’s where bioengineering just met publishing. The Venter team encoded all the letters of the alphabet using the A’s, T’s, C’s, and G’s. This bit of cryptology allowed them to insert words and phrases into the genome.

    The watermarks included:

    • The key to the alphanumeric code
    • The names of the research team (and their boss, J. Craig Venter)
    • A website address “where those who have solved the code can go to gloat”
    • And, delightfully, a quote from James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: “To live, to err, to fail, to triumph, to recreate life out of life.”

    Confluence Book Services strives to keep up with new publishing formats for eBooks, print on demand options, and mobile apps. But no, we won’t be offering genetic encoding of your memoir any time soon, sorry!

    The work was reported on the May 20 online issue of Science, and I’m drawing from Laura Sanders’ story in the June 19, 2010 issue of Science News. Visit www.sciencenews.org/ventercode.

    “To live, to err, to fail, to triumph, to recreate life out of life.”

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    Posted in Book Publishing, Humor, Publishing Trends | 2 Comments »

    Product of Revolution

    by Gary Kliewer
    June 3rd, 2010

    I am personally a product of an earlier publishing revolution.

    Propheten1 Product of RevolutionMy family’s most precious heirloom represents the pinnacle of the publishing revolution in the mid 1500s that fueled a shift in the Zeitgeist of Europe. And I am personally a direct product of that larger revolution. Now I am participating in the next publishing revolution, coming full circle.

    The heirloom is a Bible published in Wittenburg in 1584. It is Martin Luther’s translation from Latin. This is no pocket edition, though they become popular about that time. This is the congregation’s Bible, roughly the size of an unabridged dictionary. It features marvelous hand-colored woodcuts with colors as vivid as the day they were inked.

    Undeniably, the thriving publishing industry, based in Wittenburg (Lutherstadt), fueled the Protestant Reformation. My ancestors in Holland and Austria embraced the Protestant ideals, only to be severely persecuted for it.

    On my father’s side, my people settled along the Vistula River in Prussia for 250 years. Then, again because of religious persecution, in 1803 our family, together with the entire church congregation, migrated to Russia.

    Altar1 Product of RevolutionAs my father described it in a 1963 newspaper article, “Among the possession of my great-great-grandfather, Heinrich Kliewer, on this journey, would have been this Bible.”

    In 1874, my paternal grandfather, as a youth of 14, arrived with the congregation in Philadelphia. Among his few possessions as he got off the ship was the family Bible.

    One of the first things my future mom and dad discovered when they met in California was this common heritage. Thus, it is hardly a stretch to say my DNA—indeed my existence—is directly tied to that technology-driven publishing surge.

    A few years ago, I had digital photos taken of some of our Bible’s vibrant plates. Recently, I used excerpts of these as chapter frontispieces for a novel with a medieval setting published by RiverWood Books. And I plan to compile the art for an eBook and gift cards. Plagues Product of RevolutionThus, this icon of an earlier revolution is playing a small role in shifting today’s Zeitgeist. Who can say where our publishing revolution will take us?

    Product of Revolution

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