Tag Archive - Facebook

News You Can Use – April 10, 2012

April 10, 2012 in News You Can Use with 4 Comments

Pew Research Findings on E-Reading – If you want a sense of what’s happening, read this article. Then once you’ve digested it, read Mike Shatzkin’s evaluation of the data. Together the articles may take an hour to absorb.

The Perfect Elevator Pitch for a New Job – Interesting article with applications for a writer creating the perfect pitch for their book idea

Five Best Bluetooth Headsets – A link for you techies out there. If you have a favorite vote in the comment section.

Judging a Book by its Cover – A 17 minute lecture from the TED conference by a book cover designer (Chip Kidd has been a designer at Alfred A. Knopf since 1986). At turns amusing and enlightening. If you are an author and want to get inside the head of a designer in an entertaining way, consider watching.

Five Great Movies about Writing – Have to admit never seeing any of these. Am I an uncultured sloth? Don’t answer that question. Instead add your two cents in the comments below.

Infographic on how the Internet is ruining our brain:

News You Can Use – Mar. 20, 2012

March 20, 2012 in News You Can Use with 2 Comments

Why Finish Books – I loved this essay! He had me at the picture of C.S. Lewis…

Why Your Book Isn’t Selling – Suggestions from a book marketing expert.

The Publishing Industry May Not be Falling Apart After All - One author suggests that today’s crisis sounds awfully familiar. And underneath all the talk of seismic changes and Amazon, she has a valid point. If you click all the way through to her original article you will find a “Live Journal” site that is hard to read on-screen.

Free E-book on How to Attract Customers with Twitter – From Hubspot. Must submit registration info to get the free e-book. They offer a number of these papers on a regular basis.

Is Your Facebook Account Part of Your Estate? – Facebook says that if you die your Facebook account must be closed. So all your writing, pictures, etc. will disappear. And they don’t like it if someone else simply uses your password to keep it online. Goes to the heart of what you “own” and do not “own” on the Internet. Read this and plan accordingly!

How One Man Started Writing for “Sports Illustrated” – He worked on his craft for six years before submitting something to an editor.

The Making of the Hunger Games Blockbuster – Whether you like the book or not is beside the point. Read the article to find out how this YA phenomenon grew via word of mouth and intentional marketing. Fascinating.

News You Can Use – Mar. 6, 2012

March 6, 2012 in News You Can Use, Steve with 0 Comments

Your Average Facebook Post Only Reaches 12% of Your Friends – Exposing yet another challenge to the world of marketing, either through traditional means or through social media.

New French Law Seizes Digital Rights – “Any book published in France–which would include translated foreign-language books–that went out of print in France–not necessarily elsewhere–before 2001, can be scanned into a database.” And then be made available without compensation.

It Has Come to This in Hollywood – GCB. Fire up the TiVo for that one… Good grief.

From Idea to Store Shelf – I love these kind of stories. Shows the incredible “curation” it takes for a good idea to become great and then what it takes to bring it to market. There are many parallels to the writing and publishing industry here.

Give it Five Minutes, Then React to an Idea – A good reason why appointments at a conference are 15 minutes long.

Free Mac Tools That Make Writing Easier - Agree or disagree? What tools do you use? And if you are on a PC, what do you use?

Anatomy of a Successful Press Release – Try writing one for your own book. Discover that it ain’t easy.

Eight Basic Don’ts for the Beginning Novelist – Steve Moore provides some great stuff. Good reminders for those who think they know this already.

This is a very clever ad for the British newspaper, “The Guardian.”
Click to view “The Three Little Pigs.”

7 Ways Agents Measure Social Media

February 20, 2012 in Agency, Branding, Business, Guest Post, Marketing, Steve with 32 Comments

Guest Blog by Thomas Umstattd

We are thrilled to have Thomas Umstattd as our guest today. His company built our web site and we unabashedly recommend their services. Thomas built his first website at the age of 13 and taught his first web design class at only 16 years old. He has been helping authors and small businesses use the web ever since. Thomas currently serves as the CEO of Castle Media Group LLC, a company that builds websites for world changers.

He runs AuthorMedia.com a resource for authors who need help with technology and need to develop an effective social media strategy. As an award winning speaker, Thomas teaches all over the world where his friendly speaking style blends multimedia and audience participation. His combination of experience and youth give him a unique perspective that can help you use the web in a whole new way.

If you have a chance to take his classes at a future writers conference don’t hesitate. Sign up!

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In the old days all you had to do was tell an agent or publisher “I’m on Facebook, Twitter and I have a blog” and they would be impressed with your online presence. Now publishers are getting more sophisticated in measuring your online presence. They are realizing that not all blogs are the same and that the size of your Twitter following does not directly correlate to influence.

This post goes over 7 ways agents and publishers will measure your social platform in 2012. You may also want to check out 7 Things Agents & Publishers Look for in Author Websites (2012 Edition).

1. Number of Facebook Likes

What is it?

The number of Facebook likes indicates how popular your author page is on Facebook. Notice I am not saying “Facebook friends.” There are only an handful of ways to advertise your book to your friends effectively without sounding like a shill. Fan pages offer much more effective tools for selling books.

Why are fan pages important?

Facebook Fan Pages are better for authors for 3 very important reasons:

  1. Facebook Ads – You can’t buy Facebook ads targeting your friends. You can buy ads targeting just your fans. These targeted ads are some of the most effective advertising you can do for your book. You also can also use ads to get more fans.
  2. Unlimited Fans – Your personal page is limited to 5000 friends which limits your growth somewhat. Agents and editors really want to see Facebook pages with 10,000+ fans.
  3. Landing Pages – Fan pages have the ability to have landing pages that can call visitors to take a specific action such as sign up for your newsletter or buy your book

How do you boost your fan count?

  • Answer the question for your readers: “What is in it for me? What do I get out of liking your page?”
  • Advertise
  • Add the Facebook icon to your website

Read: 10 Ways to Boost Your Facebook Fans

2. Facebook Engagement

What is it?

Facebook engagement is the degree to which people are reacting and responding to you on Facebook. It also is an indication of how many people see your status updates on their Facebook streams.

Why is it important?

Having a lot of Facebook fans is of little value if those people ignore everything you post. The higher your engagement the more fans you will be able to convert into readers.

How do you measure it?

The easiest way to measure Facebook engagement is to look at the “# of people talking about this” on the left-hand side of your Facebook page.

How do you improve engagement?

  • Ask questions
  • Put fill-in-the-blanks
  • Share positive news (people don’t like complaining or bragging)
  • Post interesting images.
  • Care about your fans.

3. Number of Twitter Followers

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a micro-blogging social network that has become popular in the author community. It is a way of posting short messages to your followers or to specific Twitter users. The number of people who follow you on Twitter is an indication of how popular you are on Twitter.

How do you improve your Twitter following?

There are two ways of growing your following on Twitter. The effective way and the easy way. The easy way is to follow other people. There are even some automated tools that will do this for you. The problem with this method is that this sort of follower uses Tweet Deck to ignore your tweets. It is not uncommon to see someone with 10,000 followers on Twitter and none of them retweet tweets or click links. Following strangers on Twitter gives you phantom followers.

The effective way to gain a following on Twitter is to post Tweets that are so interesting/helpful/funny that people are compelled to retweet them. A retweet is a forward of your message to someone else’s followers, many of whom may have never heard of you before. The more of your retweets they see the more likely they are to check you out and follow you on Twitter. This is what we do on @AuthorMedia and we have been growing at around 50-100 followers a week and we don’t auto-follow. These are folks who actually want to hear what we have to say and don’t just want to inflate their following.

Read: 12 Ways to Get More Twitter Followers

4. Twitter Engagement

What is it?

Twitter engagement is the degree to which your Twitter followers pay attention to what you have to say on Twitter.

How do you measure Twitter engagement?

There are four primary ways to measure engagement.

  1. Retweets – What percentage of your followers forward your messages on to their followers?
  2. Bit.ly+ clicks – What percentage of your followers click the links you share on Twitter? You can check this by adding a “+” to the end of any bit.ly link to see how many clicks it has received.
  3. Follower Ratio – How many people do you follow back? An author who is following 20,000 people and has 18,000 followers is not nearly as attractive to publishers as an author who is followed by 7,000 people and only follows 150 people.
  4. @replies – Some authors’ Twitter profiles are full of a lot of one-way communication. They post and post about themselves and their writing. Other authors spend a lot of time answering reader questions and engaging readers 1 on 1 using Twitter’s @reply feature. A lot of back and forth @replies is the sign of a healthy Twitter page, particularly when those @replies are to a lot of different folks.
  5. Listings – How many times have people added you to a Twitter list? This is an indication that they 1) read your tweets, and 2) find them helpful. Publishers are impressed to see you listed in a lot of Twitter lists.

How do you improve Twitter engagement?

There are no shortcuts here. Excellence in Twitter, as in all things, takes hard work and is not for every author. The majority of authors waste their time on Twitter talking to other authors. They key is to connect with readers and join the conversations they are already having on Twitter. Don’t be that guy at the party who charges into a conversation and starts shoving business cards at everyone.

Read: 7 Steps to Becoming a Twitter Ninja

5. Number of Blog Comments

What is it?
Comments are responses to your blog posts and they generally come in the form of questions or reactions.

Why are comments important?
Responses indicate visitor engagement. Some websites get visitors who come for a few seconds and then bounce away. This counts as a “visit” in your analytics but these sorts of visitors don’t buy books. The kind of visitors who would take the time to leave a comment are the same kind of folks who would buy your book. The number of comments indicates how passionate readers are about you and your writing.

Why would someone pay to read your book if they won’t read your blog for free?

3 Quick Ways to Increase Your Comments

  1. Make commenting easier. Avoid making people type in squiggly letters or doing math.
  2. Ask questions in your posts
  3. Be controversial.

6. Followers on Third Party Social Networks

What is it?

A third party social network is a social network other than Facebook & Twitter. They include, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, GoodReads, StumbleUpon, Foursquare, Gowalla and dozens of others.

Why are they important?

They may not be. The key is to convince agents and publishers that your following on xyz social network is both significant and likely to buy your book. It is unlikely your Foursquare friends are going to buy your next romance book. But the folks who follow your romance book reviews on GoodReads very well may buy your book.

How do you grow your following on third party social networks?

First, don’t get on every social network. Pick the ones your readers (or ideal readers if you are unpublished) are already using. Go to where the party is already happening. Second, provide some sort of value to those folks that is related to your writing. If you write about parenting, give parenting tips and answer parenting questions. If you write about cooking, share recipes. If you write fiction, talk about other fiction and stop spending as much time with social media and go work on your novel.

Read: How To Get More Followers On Google Plus

7. Klout Score

What is Klout?

Your Klout Score is a single number that tries to capture both the size of your following and your degree of influence over that following. In a sense it is a one number summary of the other 6 metrics in this post.

Why is Klout important?

Klout is the easiest thing for publishers and agents to check, which means it will probably be the first thing they check.

5 Ways to Boost your Klout Score

  1. Add all your social profiles to your Klout profile.
  2. Invite your followers to connect with you over Klout and give you +K
  3. Give +K unto others as you would have them give +K unto you.
  4. Unfollow people you don’t care to listen to.
  5. Pick a theme for providing value around the web and stick with that theme.

Read: 7 Surefire Ways to Increase Your Klout Score

 

News You Can Use – Feb. 14, 2012

February 14, 2012 in News You Can Use, Steve with 1 Comment

It has begun – The Welcome Assault on Costly Textbooks- But is this the best way to do it? Free online publisher-quality textbooks for five of the country’s most-attended college courses. Funded by big charitable organizations like The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It could change the economic future of some major textbook publishers. I fear the homogenization of Education or the control of what is taught in college Biology class, just because it is free.

Pinterest Boards for Book Lovers – Ten places to try out the latest social network phenomenon.

Five Ways to Maximize the New Changes on Facebook – Confused by yet another change to Facebook? This should help.

Is Self-Publishing a Ponzi Scheme? – Richard Curtis, as usual, is brilliant and insightful. Do think this is out of line? or cutting close to the truth?

Is it Time to Bundle the E-book with the Physical Book in Online Sales? – I asked this question of Hachette 2 1/2 years ago during a Digital Initiatives presentation and was told no. Dennis Johnson of Melville House Publishers discussed the issue with great insight.

Lady Solves Wheel-of-Fortune Puzzle with One Letter - This article shows that it wasn’t luck but years of study and preparation. Sort of like someone thinking they can just sit down and write a whole book in a weekend. It’s easy!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Valentines' Day is a multi-billion-dollar business. Find out where your money goes in today's GoFigure infographic.
Source:LiveScience

News You Can Use – Feb. 7, 2012

February 7, 2012 in News You Can Use with 9 Comments

Author Says McGraw-Hill Cheats on Royalties - Details of a pending lawsuit.

What is Pinterest? -  The latest craze in Social Media Networks. AuthorMedia shows you the simple steps to sign up and tips on how to use it in the next article below.

Three Ways an Author Can Use Pinterest – Last week an editor told me how she was following a couple of her authors on Pinterest and how much she liked it.

5 Ways to Break Out of the Social Media Doldrums - Well said by Aubre Andrus.

10 Ways to Ensure No One Will Read Your Blog Post – Ali Luke give great insight

How Hard Can it Be to Write a Kids Book? – Sally Lloyd-Jones helps dispel a common myth.

A very cool six minute video envisioning a future technology. Imagine computing being done on glass walls, desks, and even in National Parks. From Corning. By the way, Corning makes the “Gorilla Glass” that you find on the iPad2.

The Perils of Social Media

January 9, 2012 in Business, Guest Post, Marketing, Publishing, Writing with 28 Comments

Guest Blog by Tosca Lee

Our guest today is Tosca Lee, author of Demon: A Memoir and Havah: The Story of Eve. She is also the co-author with Ted Dekker of the NYTimes bestseller Forbidden. The next book in that series will be out this Summer. A sought-after speaker and former Mrs. Nebraska, Tosca was a senior consultant for a global consulting firm until turning to writing full-time. She holds a degree in English and International Relations from Smith College and also studied at Oxford University. Please visit her web site at www.toscalee.com.

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Facebook. Twitter. Shoutlife. LinkedIn. Dopplr. Google+. Plaxo. Blogger. WordPress. Shelfari. Goodreads. Writer’s loops. Conference loops. Endless loops.

By the time I finish updating my status, writing my blogs, tweeting, pasting my bulletins, my newest pictures, my URLs and YouTube links, recruiting friends, recommending friends, sharing reads, rating reads, ranking reads, ranking friends, tagging friends, responding to posts, responding to friends, responding to blogs, ranting, reblogging, re-bulleting, re-accepting (plants, gifts, pinches, bits o’ karma, flowers, flare, tickles, candy, drinks, siege warfare by angry goats and lil green patches–what the heck is a lil green patch anyway??) it’s time to repost my status–and respond to those responding to my status who are reading their walls, shuffling friends, organizing bookshelves, recommending contacts and waging mob wars.

By then, the day is over. I have missed my hair appointment, my deadline and a conference call, needed to go to the bathroom three hours ago, blown off dinner, ticked off my friends (who live in town and did not check my wall to see why I never showed up), neglected my Significant Other, alienated my family, and defaulted on my mortgage.

I’m already grossly behind on an article and some reading, on projects for friends and the synopsis I owe my agent… and yet I cannot tear myself from Facebook because I might miss something important–say, another lil green patch–and then I will have gone from being behind with writing, reading and work, to being behind with the relational fiber of my life that is supposed to make the reading, the writing, the work all meaningful.

***
Bouncing back and forth between the social, networking and professional sites I signed up for to catch up with friends, connect with readers and promote my work, it’s plausible that I might never have time to write another book–or if I do, it’ll be 360 pages of 140-character one-liners.

I don’t know half the people in my extended network, but they came highly recommended. And even though I may not actually know Marlene in Dekalb, I’m fascinated by how white her teeth are in her picture and the fact that her relationship status just changed from “In a relationship” to “Single.” I’m wondering if they broke up or she forgot to change it before her last boyfriend. And if I know any friends of friends willing to dish.

I’m fascinated by hub friends, who seem to know and be on everyone’s page, horrified at how many colleagues know schoolmates who have seen me do stupid things, appalled friends’ exes who never had the decency to settle down more than one degree away.

It gets a bit uncomfortable–I worry if raucous friends will offend the straight-laced among my network (or vice versa). I wonder whether I’ll say something dumb that will haunt me forever–or at least until it scrolls off the new bulletin list, pushed down by the newest rants, requests, ramblings or reciprocal idiocy of others.

The only way to know, of course, is to stay pasted to the screen. I find that trolling for feedback is an especially convenient time to spy on high school friends and frenemies, the real lives of people I only see in suits, my exes, my readers (it seems only fair), my colleagues, my neighbors. And I am at peace with my virtual social life, holed up like a voyeuristic hermit, my picture neatly made up in the window as I sit stinky and unkempt at home in my sweats.

One of these days, God willing, I’ll start a new project. Crickets will chirp from the void that was my blog. The status line of my Facebook page will stare blankly at no one. Invites will turn kudzu on my homepage, and my Shelfari shelves will grow dust. Concerned friends will send notes like morose pings into the ether as I wrestle with metaphors and confront the empty page, wishing I could trade my Roget’s for the tiniest lil green patch or bit o’ karma.

***

Tosca just sent you a lil green patch.

[Accept] [Decline] [Ignore] [Wage Mob War Instead]

#caffiene

 

 

Tell No Secrets

February 22, 2011 in Business, Publishing with 8 Comments

How much should author friends reveal to each other about contracts or other business dealings when they have business with the same publisher?

I think it is a huge mistake to reveal the amount of your advances to other authors. This is similar to finding out the salary of the co-worker in the office cubicle next to yours. When I was a retail store manager we had major problems when salaries were revealed, a near fist-fight between two people who had been friends.

Money is viewed as a measure of worth; i.e. a measure of the worthiness of your work. Consequently if you contract for a $5,000 advance with AlphaGammaDelta publisher and a month later, your best writing friend, who is at the same stage in her career as you are, contracts for a $8,000 advance with the same publisher for a similar project…what is your reaction? Sure, at first, it is excitement and joy for your friend. But later, in private, you will naturally begin to wonder about your publisher’s commitment to you. You think, “They must like Sally better than me!” Jealousy and bitterness can set in.

I’m not saying that this will happen to you, but I caution you with every ounce of my being, be very careful about ever revealing monetary details of a book contract with anyone. It can become a form of gossip that does no one any good. I know of an e-mail trail among authors that was very free with this kind of information and consequently there is tension towards a particular publisher for not paying everyone the same. This is unreasonable and unfair…and doesn’t help anyone.

In my years as an editor and now as an agent I’ve seen contracts land all over the board. The timing of a publisher’s economic situation and certain management directives can change quarterly (even weekly!). The relationship the author has with the publisher, the relationship the agent has with the publisher, the perception of value that the publisher has of a project…They all influence each situation uniquely.

But we tend to compare contracts as if all contracts are equal. Trust me, they are not.

Of course I’m speaking specifically about contracts here. There are professional people who can help you determine if your deal is a good one. Or you can simply trust your agent….!!!

Lawsuit over Hyperlink?

December 20, 2010 in Business with 6 Comments

In Canada a man is suing another person for linking to allegedly damaging web content on a web site (the suit is currently before the Canadian Supreme Court).  A big “thank you” to Mac Slolcum for writing about this issue last week. In his article Mac asks the pertinent question, “Is a link on your web site equivalent to an endorsement of that content?” Think about it for a second. If you click the “Like” button on Facebook aren’t you telling your “friends” that you endorse that product, idea, video, or web site? What about when you re-tweet someone’s comments and then link to their site (like I hope you do with my blog posts! :-D )

The full story can be found on arstechnica’s web site. The article is from two weeks ago and I cannot find a follow up story regarding the final ruling on the case (if you have the info, please let us know in the comment section below).

Many years ago the pastor/leader of a very well known ministry endorsed an author’s book with glowing terms. A couple years later the author had an affair and the author’s ministry all but collapsed. The pastor then had to answer questions about why he endorsed that person’s book. And since the book was still in print his name was “associated” with that author’s name. His board of directors then made a policy that this pastor would no longer endorse another author’s book unless they were a long time personal friend and he could vouch for their character. Many other well-known Christian ministry leaders followed suit and maintain that policy today.

I know these are two different issues…but are they?

What sort of criteria do you use when “endorsing” or “linking” to another web site? Is it merely citing your source? or is it tantamount to an endorsement? And if so, so what? What is the big deal? Is this merely a frivolous lawsuit? (not if it made its way all the way to the Supreme Court it isn’t.) Should you be more selective?

And how careful are you in endorsing another writer’s non-fiction book or novel?

Is this just a case of being guilty by association?

Ten Commandments for Working with Your Agent

September 24, 2010 in Agency, Business, Publishing with 36 Comments

By request, here are my Ten Commandments for working with your agent. Break them at your own peril. Thou shalt vent only to thine agent and never directly to thy publisher or editor.

  1. Thou shalt not get whipped into a frenzy by the rumor mill fomented by internet loops, groups, Facebook, or blogs.
  2. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s success. Be content with thine own contract.
  3. If thou hast a dispute with thine agent thou shalt talk to thy agent and seekest resolution. Jumping ship for no good reason is unprofessional…and agents talketh to each other.
  4. Thou shalt consider thy deadlines as sacrosanct. Thy hand signeth the contract, therefore thou art obligated. Thou shalt not expect thy agent to miraculously create extra time, at the last minute.
  5. Respecteth the boundaries of the communication relationship with thy agent. Do not risketh being classified as a spammer or high maintenance by thy agent.
  6. Thou shalt be reasonable and balanced with regard to Facebook, Twitter, blogging, or blogs. Thou art a writer….not a teenager. (Thy social networking and Internet writing shouldeth be related to marketing efforts or to increasing thy platform and readership.) Remembereth…every word written on Facebook is a word not written on thy manuscript. [This commandment was revised on 9/25/10  in response to visceral reactions both public and private. I previously stated that a writer should spend no more than an hour a week with social networking and blogs. Boy did I touch a nerve!]
  7. Keepeth it all in perspective. Selling only eight thousand books still meaneth 8,000 people have “bought a ticket” to read thy work. That crowd would filleth a basketball arena.
  8. Remember thy calling to be a writer and keep it holy. You are in the business of changing the world word by word. Everything else is secondary.
  9. Thou shall rise and call thy agent blessed. (and send chocolates at Christmas and cash on birthdays…)
  10. If thou dost not have an agent, do not passeth “Go.” Instead grabbeth one and bringeth said agent into thy camp ASAP. This industry is a labyrinth and thou shalt someday discover thou needest one, and then it shall be too late. Real life examples available upon request.

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Permission is granted to use this in your own bog or web site, as long as you include the following copyright notice:
© 2010 Steve Laube of The Steve Laube Agency (www.stevelaube.com)

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