Social Media RipOff

I hereby declare this the biggest social media conference ripoff ever. Ok, maybe not ever. But I don't waste my time researching bogus social media conferences (and you shouldn't either). So there.

$1,000. One day. No confirmed attendee list. I don't see any one-on-one time...AND they're promising you you can learn "best practices." Which you can learn here, here, or here. And many, many other places.

The truth is "best practices" of anything are going to be fairly basic--don't spam, don't overuse the hashtag, etc. You can't talk about best practices of the higher level stuff: crafting a campaign or talking to your specific audience, because there are too many variables. You have to be, at a minimum, familiar with the basics to get anything out of a panel or conference.

Guys, panels are hard. As someone who's been on them and listened to them, it's rare that I come out of a panel discussion with much more than one or two insights to ruminate on (which is usually worth it, actually).

This is because you've got 3 - 5 people, all with different agendas, none of whom want to give too much away, plus an agenda-ed moderator, PLUS a crowd that runs the gamut from someone who knows a lot about the topic to those who just heard about it. And, worse, those who just heard about it who think they're in a tutorial on, say, best practices of social media.

This last group is, unfortunately, the most likely to get suckered in to paying a GRAND to go listen to the head of McDonald's talk about their Twitter strategy. Because obviously what works for them, what's even FEASIBLE for them, should be on your radar, too? No.

Here's the thing about panels and conferences: you have to be really well versed in the topic long before you go there. Ideally, you should have dabbled a little in it, too, so you know what the glitches are for your specific situation. That's why we encourage so much research into agents and publishing before just showing up at a writer's conference thinking you'll get an agent or a book deal. If you don't know what you don't know, how are you going to glean the information that will help answer those questions?

For all of you who've walked out of a panel or a whole conference feeling like you just listened to people talk about totally company specific, personally inapplicable things, that's what happened to you.

So as for these social media conferences? Put your cash into a reputable freelancer who works in your industry and can speak to you particular strategy.

Have you been to a conference before? Did you leave filling fulfilled and knowledgeable or confused and downtrodden?

Writer's Digest Webinar: Self-Publishing

I'll be giving a webinar through Writer's Digest on Thursday, November 17th, about self-publishing.

We'll cover everything you could possibly want to know: the strategy behind self-publishing, its relationship to traditional publishing (aka will it help you get signed or published), file formats, different platforms to use, metadata, etc. etc. etc.!!

And just for icing, there'll also be question time and a guaranteed critique from me. Sign up here:

http://www.writersdigestshop.com/product/when-how-to-self-publish-webinar/

See you there!!

Agencies with Separate Publishing Divisions

I got word recently that yet another agency has decided to set up a side-project to handle "ePublishing." This division will not serve (1) clients self-publishing themselves (no commission taken) or (2) clients who bring the agency ready-to-upload files that the agency then uploads and monitors for royalties/earnings (15% commission taken). It's for (3)clients for whom the agency will handle all aspects of the epublishing.

Sounds alright, right? That's got to be a lot of work!

Except when you consider what actually goes in to converting and publishing a book online.

Unless the agency has undergone some MAJOR personnel changes and hired cover designers and converters, the work of converting and designing the cover of the ebook will be done by outside freelancers.

AKA the agency has a list of a couple of people they know who convert books and/or design covers and they send your book to them, get it back a couple weeks later, then proceed as with client-type (2).

The agency has probably done extensive work on these projects, even the ones that are self-published, and even tried to sell it in many cases. They've certainly earned their 15%. But I'd be hard to convince that the agency is earning more than that 15%.

You should be hard to convince, too.

Ask a lot of questions before signing up for anything that involves more than a standard commission. Who's doing the work? Who's paying them? Get the facts, and you may feel that an increased commission is justified...or you might not.

Facebook: Profile vs Page

In the comments section of the How-to-Social-Media yesterday, I saw someone reference "scrolling down to see vacation pics." They were talking about a Facebook profile page--where people can request and be approved to be your friend. But if we're talking about building your online brand, we're not talking about a Profile page.

Most people have a Profile page to connect with friends and family. It is NOT the type of page you want to set up as your "author" or public page.

If you're setting up any sort of public page: for your book, for you as an author, or any other sort of professional type thing, you want to set up a Facebook Fan Page. The differences:

• People just click "Like" to gain access to a page; they don't have to be approved the way you would a friend request on your Profile page.
• Your content should be related, although it doesn't have to strictly revolve around, the product or service you set the page up to promote. This means no personal pictures, no vacation uploads from your phone after your third mai-tai.

And Fan Pages, like a Profile Page, have some of the same tools to make your life easier:

• You can import a personal blog, so that when the blog updates so does your Facebook.
• All the same types of content is supported--you can add photos of, say, your book cover or a video of a reading or signing.
• You can link out to your website or to a buy link for whatever you're promoting.
• There is a "Wall" section where you and your followers can interact publicly, as well as messages where you can communicate privately.

Go here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php to create your Facebook Fan Page--BUT WAIT.

Make sure you're doing so at the right time. If you don't have a book out in the next year (similar timeframe for other products: if you're not launching within a year, don't jump the gun), you probably don't want to start promoting it now--potential buyers will get fatigued. Twitter is a better, lower-commitment place to start if you're a couple of years out (we'll get to more on that).

Over the next few posts, we'll be talking more about Facebook, how to use it, and what its future looks like for commercial use. Stay tuned!!

BEA Day 1

I had so much fun walking around--in many ways, BEA feels like a big party for publishing people, particularly agents. Agents sort of get a pass to sit in panels, network, and, of course, swag.

This has been my experience in the past, but it certainly wasn't yesterday. As foreign rights director, I had to have, like "meetings." With some delightful publishers from Japan. Of particular interest were innovations that the publisher NHK (the BBC of Japan) is working on to bring ebooks to the Japanese market.

There's currently no hardware for reading ebooks in Japan. Consensus seems to be that this is because Japanese people are not interested in a dedicated reader device--something that only reads ebooks. It's a complaint that Western readers had, too but got over, and that is now being solved by WiFi and 3G readers. And the stupid iPad.

Instead of trying to get readers to adopt new hardware, NHK is working on a platform in mobile app form (it's only in Japanese so far, drat) that will allow people to tweet or post to facebook (and other social media sites, I'm sure) right from their reading environment--from their Kindle for iPhone app, for instance. So they can have their reader+ on their phone. The challenge will be getting people to read on a phone, but I'm seeing more of that even over here.

May be reiventing a couple wheels there, but it's an interesting approach. Our discussion centered on whether people even want that capability. These days, escape from social media and social _______ seem to be the main draws to reading for most.

MeMeMedia

There was a Comment Section Debacle yesterday on a book reviewer's blog. If you haven't heard about it already, let's just say it involved some pretty defensive reactions from an author whose book got mixed (not bad) reviews. And other commenters thrashed her for it. She was acting cray-cray. But the incredibly hostile reaction was ill advised too.

Neither our disgruntled author nor the self-righteous backlashers were in the right. Both trounced online best practices--you know, the ones where you don't get too personal with questions or overshare or post your bachelorette party pictures. Or freak out on people. Sarah Fine has a great post on the psychology of it all.

Yesterday's display points to a serious tendency among online media users to be short-sighted and self-centered. We're all guilty of it. We're getting used to feeling entitled to say whatever's on our mind: broadcasting with the sense that someone out there must care, and that our opinion matters, even if it's adding nothing to a discussion where the same sentiment has been expressed ad nauseum (They don't, It doesn't). Protected by the quick pace and relative anonymity of the web (getting no response to a tweet or status update is much different than, say, telling a joke at a party and getting crickets), we live more stream-of-consciousness than ever. Stream-of-our-own-consciousness, that is.

Getting outside our own heads is important for a lot of reasons. First off, as I have previously advocated, making content relevant to your audience means thinking of their needs, not just yours. That's about building a following, a brand, etc.

But besides being a good PR/marketing move, taking a step outside of ourselves, as real-world interaction forces us to do, makes us considerate of others and temperate in our reactions. That's about being human.

Don't forget that those avatars represent people, people.

Technology and Books.

Recently, I fielded a phone call from a woman who wanted to "get in touch with a literary agent." Le sigh. But, we get a lot of these. I (usually) know how to handle them. So I give her my usual shpeel about researching online, blahblah, queries, blahblah, QueryShark...and she interrupts me.

So at first I'm all "Gurrrrrllll..."

But then I realize what she's saying: She doesn't have a computer.

What? What do you mean, "no computer?" How do you email breathe? I was literally speechless for a second.

"Do you have a local library?" I asked. She harrumphed.

She went on to express frustration that her writing had to be "shoved into a computer" in order to get it looked at. I mumbled something about efficiency (which is actually a totally foreign concept to me) until she hung up. Not my finest phone moment.

My first instinct was to laugh. But this actually brings us to a crux of the current book world.

On a small scale, for agencies, the electronic vs hard copy debate is about equality. Email queries are preferred: they make no waste paper and, because agents are already addicted to looking at their email, they get answered faster. But we've found some good stuff in the hard copy queries; they shouldn't be frowned upon.

More broadly, tension between old and new, print and electronic, is palpable among a lot of readers. You know, the ones who don't want to shift to ebooks because they "like how the pages smell." Now, this is not me (I have no heart, so...). But it is a lot of other people.

Publishing is one of the oldest industries in the world. It's not quick to change. It's not on the vanguard of anything--except maybe cultural trends. We sort of like it that way. Yet this post, by a publishing person is tagged "technology." And it's on the interwebz!!

Publishing's next chapter is about new and old finally having to come to terms. I've made light, in the past, of the tendency to call digital initiatives "a brave new world." But that's actually not fair. It's reductive to scoff at that.

People who express discomfort and apprehension about publishing+tech aren't really being Luddites. What they're really reacting to is a very real fear that something essential to books, reading, and the noble art of publishing books, of promoting art and artists, will be lost. Or at least irrevocably changed. For the first time in hundreds of years.

And that's nothing to scoff at.

The reality is that books are going to change, maybe dramatically. The way people write and the expectations they have for their publishing journey will change. Readers' expectations will change (what do you mean, Jonathan Safran Foer, that I can't read TREE OF CODES on my KINDLE?!).

I think we should all be aware that, as exciting as all of this digital stuff is, print books have been moving us, deeply, for nearly six hundred years. That matters. It always will.