BookMarketingBuzzBlog

Friday, January 23, 2015

Best Book Ever!?

Who is the greatest author? What is the best book?

How can you begin to answer such questions? It depends on one’s criteria for judging such things, and even then, there could be a wide disparity amongst gender, age, ethnicity and other demographic dividers. Further, the answer is bound to change over time, not just because new books and talented authors come about, but because our needs and tastes change, and because the world changes.

Who or what body would be qualified to rank such things?

I think so many factors are at play in determining one’s all-time favorite list, including:

· What exposure have you had to a variety of authors and genres?

· How many books have you read?

· What do you use as a filter to rate books?

· Can you remember all that you’ve read?

· What was going on in your life at the time you read it?

· Can you remember all that you’ve read?

· What stage of life and experience were you at the time you read each book?

· How smart are you? Can you fully appreciate the author’s talent?

Many writers copy the style of another, so do we properly acknowledge the pioneers of a style – or do we merely look to see who has perfected that style?

For my first 17 years – all through high school – I read only a handful of books cover to cover. Yes, even though I love books now and valued the written word during my pre-English major years at college, I read more Cliff and Monarch Notes than actual books. I read about books rather than reading them.

Some of it was due to time and convenience. Other times, I couldn’t bear to read another Jane Austen book, and other times I needed help because the book was too complex. However, I do recall enjoying the following books:

George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm

Bernard Malamud’s The Assistant

Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man

Joseph Heller’s Catch-22

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies

Jonathon Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet

James Roswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson

I liked Joyce Carol Oates and I also liked reading essays and short stories. There was Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky and Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Ah, good memories.

My adult years have been spent with many books, but largely contemporary works, much more non-fiction than fiction, primarily because of my job and interests. I feel a lot of fiction can be experienced via television and movies, as both industries base a lot of stuff on books. Then again, everyone always says “the book’s better than the movie.”

The place I would start to look at with ranking books is the following:

· Separate by genre (fiction vs. non-fiction and subcategories)

· Divide by era (generations, centuries)

· Weigh critical reviews, sales data, awards won, peer responses and fan reactions

· Would you read it again – and still feel enhanced by it?

· Did a book make you feel, see or learn something?

· Do you feel enriched for having read it?

· Do you fondly recall it years later?

· Is the book significant on some level – did it influence policy, behavior, or a movement? Was it far superior to its contemporaries?

· How has the book been imitated by others?

We are too obsessed with rankings, ratings, awards, and declarations of greatness. Just read what you want and enjoy it and encourage others to read more. The best book is the one in your hands right now.

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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 © 2015

Thursday, January 22, 2015

How Will You Celebrate The Very First National Readathon Day?

Penguin Random House, Goodreads, Mashable, and The National Book Foundation created National Readathon Day for January 24, 2015. It calls for non-stop marathon reading to happen from noon to four in the afternoon in your respective time zone. You can share your love of books and support programs that promote reading by pledging to read and do fundraising for the National Book Foundation.

So how can you get involved?

1. Join a group of people conducting public readathons.

2. Form your own group.

3. Encourage others to participate in the readathon.

4. Buy books or visit your library.

5. Tweet out your experience using the hashtag #TimeToRead.

Why is such a day needed? Because we need to encourage everyone – especially our youth – to read books if we hope to promote books and literacy. According to the National Book Foundation, 53% of all nine-year-olds read for pleasure but by age 17, that drops to 19%.

Read on January 24 – and get others to do so as well!

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New Interview With Famed Author Warren Adler

Warren, what is your newest book about? My latest book, Treadmill, is a political thriller. It was inspired by my own experience in the gym in Washington and the people with whom I exercised. The main character is an unemployed lonely depressed man who keeps body and soul together by spending a great deal of time in the gym. Odd strangers begin to show up in the gym. There he befriends another man who mysteriously disappears and he sets out to find him. Why has he disappeared? Was it foul play? In his search he discovers that he too is being pursued for reasons he cannot fathom. It takes place in the Washington area. There is a political context. Beyond that I can’t reveal any more as it will give the plot away.

What inspired you to write it? I have written numerous books about political Washington where I lived for thirty-five years and knew many of the important figures during the time I lived there. I had special access, especially through the magazine that we owned (and my wife and son ran), called The Washington Dossier. I knew Presidents, Senators, Ambassadors, Congressman, media types and all the important people during that era. My eight mystery books feature Fiona Fitzgerald, daughter of a fictional Senator and a homicide detective in Washington. It is being adapted to a TV series.

How does it compare to some of your previous books? Compare? It is one of my 40 novels. I never compare them. I treat them all as my children and I never have favored any of my children. I love my work and have been doing it since I was a teenager.

You love to write across many genres and themes. Is that unusual for writers? I suppose it is unusual although many writers cross genres. I can’t write to the rules of any genre. I write what interests me. If it falls vaguely into a genre format I don’t realize it. It is both a benefit and a curse, but I just keep writing and let the chips fall where they may. I have optioned or sold many of my novels to film and television. My son Jonathan Robert Adler has formed his own production company, Grey Eagle Films, which has the rights to my books. He currently has nine of them in some form of development for theatrical films or TV.

Did I hear correctly that War of the Roses, your book that became famous as a movie, will be a Broadway play? What is that all about? Yes, it has been optioned as a Broadway play by important Broadway producers. Based exclusively on my novel, it has appeared in other countries all over the world. We are hopeful it will be staged on Broadway sometime this year or early next.

What trends are you seeing in book publishing today? The shift to digital has been astounding as I predicted when I introduced the first viable reader at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show in 2007. I am a pioneer in digital, having taken all of my book rights back in the late eighties. At that time I had twenty-seven novels published by traditional publishers, which were also translated into many languages. I have since published 13 in digital and POD with more to come. My company does not follow traditional patterns of publishing. My goal is to keep my authorial name alive beyond my lifetime. No one knows what will happen to the future of publishing and reading.

What did you make of the Amazon-Hachette dispute? A business ploy on the issue of how to split proceeds. It has been settled. The big question is how will the author benefit? We shall see.

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Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Market Your Book Like You Lost Your Keys

Maybe it’s a guy thing, but I must say on an almost daily basis, “Anyone see my keys?” My family just shrugs their indifference to my frenzied plight. They always turn up, usually in the most obvious place.

One time I left them in the front door. Okay, many times. I once left them in the car – with the motor running – and the doors locked. On other occasions they are in my shirt, in a hidden pocket – and I’m wearing it! But over the holiday break I went about five days in search of keys that ended up being where you’d expect them to be – in the pocket of my winter coat.

I hadn’t checked there because I was convinced they couldn’t be there. It was too obvious of a place, but there they were after turning the house upside down. I moved furniture and rugs that hadn’t been touched in years. I looked high and low, imagining the worst. The cost and inconvenience of replacing two car keys and house keys is enough of an incentive to push forward to find those keys. I was so relieved once I did.

But it occurred to me that looking for the keys is a bit what the book marketing process is like. You may feel like you’ll never find or achieve what you are looking to do, and yet you are certain that if you look or try hard enough it’ll turn up. Often, we don’t start with the obvious and quickly make things more complex than they need to be.

So the lesson here – aside from getting a GPS chip to locate the ever-elusive keys – is to start your book publicity pursuit by doing what’s obvious, reachable, and conceivable. Before you think big and dream far, take care of the basics.

Before you think of going on a 10-city tour, make sure your book’s published on time and you send advance review copies out 3-4 months in advance of your release date.

Before you design an intricate, souped-up website, make sure you blog several times a week and pursue connections via Twitter and Facebook.

Before you look to get an organization to bulk-buy hundreds of copies of your book, make sure you have distribution available to bookstores and libraries.

Before you try to sell your book to a movie studio, first generate local publicity for your book.

Before you look to land speakers bureau representation, make sure you speak at local bookstores and community centers.

First do the obvious and the easy – then pursue bigger things and dream even bigger!

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Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Interview with Author Serena Andrews

What is Epic Fail super win about? It's a book of really raw and inspiring interviews. They talk about the roller coaster of wins and fails that is the fabric of life for artists, innovators or entrepreneurs. I wanted to highlight people who are in the trenches now. Each person contrasted their worst failure and best success. I think the single take-away that was universal to every story was: Keep going.

What is so unique about how it was created? Well the book itself is crowdsourced, which is exciting because there's magic there... you don't know what you are going to get. Much like a documentary film, this style of writing starts with a curiosity and a hypothesis, but quickly develops a mind of its own. Now the book and concept have become almost a living work... and as an author I'm just following where it leads. We thought we should keep the spirit of crowdsourcing in the marketing, which is how Be In This Book was born... But there is another aspect of the campaign which is particularly unique to today's creative markets. It's responsive and interactive. You don't just read the book... you're part of the book.

What is the rationale for this concept? The process of answering the questions can be transforming for people, especially because it takes some guts to talk about failure. But failure is part of the creative process. We wanted people to have access to the stories of peers and contemporaries, and at the same time be empowered to tell their own. The project has evolved, and includes a gifting element, now... but the hope is that creative readers will not only read the book, but contribute to the project.

Where do you see book publishing heading? Personally, I see it following the footsteps of the music industry... which some would argue is good and bad. I think it's remarkable. Personally, I'm a champion of all things DIY, i.e. self-publishing, digital platforms, grass roots, small batch, human friendly and mobile friendly. With the power to self-publish inexpensively, the market can get flooded with product, and it's a wide range of quality. But the old system had a serious bottleneck. Already, the independent market has responded with aggregators and technology to help sort and choose from all the options. I think talent will always be marketable, so after the initial chaos subsides, we'll have a richer, more authentic voice being heard in the publishing industry–one that's evenly distributed.

What challenges and rewards attached themselves to the writing of your book? Oh my. Well, I can say this has been extremely challenging. Honestly, the writing of the book was enjoyable and probably the simplest part of it, especially because it's based on interviews. The tough parts were the formatting and the marketing. I've learned that it's well worth it to pay someone for formatting unless that's your wheelhouse, and that marketing is an ongoing process. Going the DIY route, you basically live and breathe the book. There's not really a "set it and forget it" option.

The most rewarding part has been the response from people who've read the book. People have really taken time to call or write and let me know that they needed to read the book, and that it hit home. That is honestly the most awesome feeling, and I feel like I've done something worth

For more information, please see: www.beinthisbook.com

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Bests-Seller List Secrets

Many authors ask me: How can I get on the best-seller list? Here is my answer:

1. Based on the best-seller lists of Publishers Weekly (there are many other notably lists, including Amazon, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Library Journal, for 2014, the best route is to not be self-published nor be with an Indie press or a university press. Seven publishers (two of which recently merged – Harlequin and Harper Collins) dominated the lists. They controlled spots on 87.3% of hardcover bestsellers and 91% of the paperback bestsellers.

2. Less than a seventh of one percent of all books published last year made it onto a PW bestseller list. Out of 700,000+ titles released, 1,030 made it onto one of four lists.

3. Percentage-wise, you have a better chance of getting a hardcover best-seller than a trade paperback. First, 273 hardcovers were best-sellers vs. 226 for trade paperbacks. Second, more trade paperbacks are published than hardcovers.

4. Books turned into movies tend to get more book sales. Gone Girl, The Best of Me, Unbroken and others sold a ton of books.

5. To make a list, it helps if it’s not your first book. For instance, of the 273 titles for hard cover fiction that became bestsellers, only five were from debut novelists – 2% of the list.

6. It’s getting harder to last on the bestseller lists once you make it. For instance, there was a 3% increase in the number of titles making the bestseller lists. This means, each title, on average, is on the list for less time.

Best-sellers come in all sizes and shapes, on all kinds of subject matter. The key is to hit as many different lists for as long as possible. Regardless of making a list, selling books period is the name of the game. Many book sales are not reflected in best-seller lists because they happened out of the recording range of the industry. For instance, authors who sell books from their site without links to Amazon or BN usually don’t count. When books are sold at an event and they weren’t shipped from a book retailer, they don’t count. If you package your book with either services or items and sell them on your own, the sales aren’t registered.

I conclude with this factoid from Publishers Weekly. It’s a list of the seven publishers that dominated the best-seller charts in 2014 for printed books:

Hardcover Bestseller Share (Based on total number of weeks of all titles on the list)

· Penguin Random House 39.8%

· Hachette Book Group 17.0%

· Simon & Schuster 11.5%

· Harper Collins 10.5%

· Macmillan 8.0%

· Harlequin 0.3%

· Kensington 0.2%

Paperback Bestseller Share

· Penguin Random House 37.8%

· Hachette Book Group 16.1%

· Harlequin 13.7%

· Simon & Schuster 8.3%

· Harper Collins 7.5%

· Kensington 5.0%

· Macmillan 2.6%

Books make it to bestseller lists because of the publisher’s brand recognition by the stores, the author’s name recognition, and orchestrated marketing campaigns that funnel big bucks to manipulate things. But they also make the lists because they are books that touch enough people in a way others were unable to. Best-sellers and best quality aren’t always the same thing, but certainly many best-sellers are entertaining reads or inspirational or highly useful.

How do you become a best-seller? No one really knows – or do they?

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Monday, January 19, 2015

Do Authors Need A Video?

I don’t know that a video alone sells books but it certainly is another means to promote your brand – along with audio, words, photos, and tools like blogs and websites, and platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

Video is useful to authors if it is:

· Filmed well (no shaking, distracting tricks, poor lighting/sound)

· Short (no more than a few minutes)

· Informative or entertaining – but not commercial

· Conveying something to supplement your other content

· Timely and fresh

Video is still a novelty in our sound-bite society. Some studies show people remember 10% of what they read but 50% of what the see and hear. Video provides a feeling of something happening. There’s movement and texture to it.

Not sure if your video or book trailer measures up? You can locate samples at these sites:

· Moby Awards for Best and Worst Book Trailers

· American Library Association Book Trailer Awards

· BestBookTrailers.tumblr.com

· Just Google “book trailers” and your genre

What makes for good video?

· Background music

· Cool graphics

· An unusual image

· A commanding or soothing voice

Where can you grab royalty-free images? Try:

· Stock Photos

· Morgue File

· Open Clipart

How about free or inexpensive music clips? Try:

· AudioMicro.com

· SoundCloud.com

Whatever video you create, upload it to YouTube. Then get it onto other video-sharing sites.

In a given day, one billion people view 300 million hours of video. Could your video be amongst them?

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