I
was asked a question the other day about having advice for those looking to
jump from the digital world to the offline world, in terms of creating and
marketing a physical book. That question would not have been asked seven or
eight years ago, and now it has relevance. Just as some struggle to go from a
print book/traditional media approach to e-book/online media, we now have
people who find the world of touch to be a challenging one.
There
should not be a barrier between the online and physical worlds. We have to work
in both and hybridize our efforts. If you don’t have a holistic approach to
publishing and publicity you will surely lose out. The key is to find a
balance, just as one would diversity their wealth portfolio. No one puts all of
their eggs in one basket. Do you?
No
doubt, you will be stronger in one area over another. One feels more familiar,
more comfortable. One feels like English to you, the other Arabic. It’s only
natural that you’ve built up a muscle in one area, and thus have ignored the
rest of the body, but you need to improve your weakest parts as much as
strengthening your strongest ones.
Life
is about balance and finding a way to be inclusive in your approach to it. When
it comes to publishing, you can’t dismiss or ignore online or physical, any
more than you can have an imbalance between work and play, mind and body,
society, and individual, nature and synthetics, people and animals, walking
and driving, art and reality, or robots and humanity. Get the idea?
Even things that seem like opposites -- entertainment vs. reality, dreams vs. living, learning vs. teaching, or love vs. hate need a balance. It’s not 50-50. Maybe it’s 90-10 in certain cases, but you need to strike a balance.
Even things that seem like opposites -- entertainment vs. reality, dreams vs. living, learning vs. teaching, or love vs. hate need a balance. It’s not 50-50. Maybe it’s 90-10 in certain cases, but you need to strike a balance.
Dip
into other worlds in order to live a full life.
The Internet is the Fifth Estate (traditional news media, legislative, executive branch, judicial,
and now digital) or a sixth sense (touch, taste, hear, see, smell, virtual).
Online holds a growing number of opportunities to publish, market, advertise,
promote, brand, and sell books. One can’t succeed without getting online media
coverage, whether it is from bloggers, reviewers, Web sites, or social media
such as Twitter and Facebook.
Conversely,
those who don’t publish in print, dismiss 86% of the marketplace in terms of
the amount of money earned from book sales. Further, to not approach
traditional media, such as radio, print, and TV, is to handicap the possibility
of breaking through the clutter.
The
solution? Play on both campuses -- develop smart, cost-effective tactics to excel
in both areas.
We live in a world of collaboration. Though this is a a time and an era where one’s sense of self and ego may be at an all-time high, due to the technological advances that permit one to create and promote a brand, our best chance of success rests on our ability to work with others and to exploit their resources and connections. We are not islands onto ourselves. We are not isolationists. The formula for victory is to give to others whom you hope will give back to you.
You’ll
need all the tools you can get your hands on. The online world is one piece of
the puzzle.
The
physical world is another. Wed the two and you’ll feel whole.
I can’t
imagine a life of voyeurism and zero participation. Nor can I imagine a life of
doing without thinking and analyzing. We need to strike a balance between our
different worlds and find a path to publishing bliss. There’s no one road that
will lead any of us there, but a road that’s not inclusive of our digital and
physical worlds is one littered with gaping potholes.
One
world, many approaches. Play both sides of the fence, and soon you’ll tear that
wall down.
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Brian Feinblum’s
views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of
his employer, Media Connect, the nation’s largest book promoter. You can follow
him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when
discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©
2013
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