Thinking small

In today's technological society, no company can go without a website. Publishers have no choice as to whether or not they post a site, but how they build and target their online identity is a reasonable debate.

It only makes sense that a company in the business of book publishing would want to use its website to make sales. The site is there for consumers to find and explore, and I can't think of a single reason not to include a shopping cart for purchasing.

A publisher's website is also a great place to highlight and push certain titles. Most of the sites I explored had added content about the authors—video interviews, tour dates. Why rely solely on bookstores and Amazon to present your product?

This said, I think a targeted approach is wise. Why try to reach every potential customer with a single, watered down, chaotic website when all large publishers use their imprints to target a smaller subset of their audience?

I think the best approach is for huge publishers to keep the corporate identity low-key and try to steer customers to the right imprint where they are more likely to find the books they'll want to read.

Imprints should reflect a united and cohesive collection. It is a basic tenet of marketing to know your customer and give them what they want. So why not create an online presence to reflect the target of your imprint? Make a club. Let your readers feel part of something—no different than being part of an online social network.

McSweeney's and Tin House both do a great job of this. They embrace their brand. Larger publishers should do the same and put more effort into branding their imprints and creating networks around them.

I have no idea if consumers will seek out publisher's websites to purchase books. If given the incentive—lower pricing, peer reviews and recommendations, convenience, and availability—they should. Publishers make a product and should be able to control the avenues of sales to some extent. But at the moment, it looks like Amazon will continue to keep a tight grip on the business of selling books.

A sneak preview

I don't want to reveal too much before the book reports in class, but I've been thinking about something I read in Groundswell the other night. The authors divide participation in social networks into six categories: creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators, and inactives.

Creators create content—they write articles, blog, maintain a web site, upload video or audio. 

Critics comment and respond to content. They write reviews, post comments on blogs, or contribute to forums.

Collectors help to organize the web by saving URLs on bookmarking services (like del.icio.us), voting for sites (Digg), or using RSS feeds. (I don't really understand this category yet.)

Joiners maintain a profile on a social network site. The authors put this group at 25% of the adult online population, but the number is growing rapidly. In an article in the Oregonian, Peter Ames Carlin wrote that the number of Facebook members, age 30+, grew 200% in 2008.

Spectators look but don't participate.

Inactives have internet access but do not participate.

The point the authors make is how important it is to know who you're marketing to and how the different groups interact.

In terms of trying to reach these online "personalities," I have a few questions that I hope the book will answer:

Do people's online activities predict their purchasing behavior? A person is probably a creator only in a particular field or area of interest and participates at a lower level in other areas. But I also image that they tend to be early adapters—always the first to buy new gadgets or try new technologies. We already know early adapters are crucial to product launches and influence public opinion, but how hard (and expensive) is it to influence the influencers?

As online marketers, is it effective to reach these groups in their playground? Are marketing and advertising efforts on the web seen as nothing more than an intrusion and received with skepticism and mistrust?

Are these categories just another way to describe personality types? Or do people behave differently from their personality type online? 

With the online world changing so rapidly, is it even feasible to keep track of all this? I can imagine someone moving quickly from a spectator to a critic to a creator as they become more comfortable with the technology. How do you focus on a moving target? Millions of moving targets?

I'm not sure where I fall on the spectrum of the social networking population. Since I'm blogging twice a week, I'd have to put myself into the creator category at the moment. But my blogging activity will probably end right about mid-March. I guess I'm a joiner, but I feel more like a spectator. I've been a member of LinkedIn for years but never did more than fill out my profile. And recently, I joined Twitter and Facebook, but I don't know that I'll keep those accounts active for long. I don't feel compelled to share much, but I will admit to wasting a fair amount of time seeing who's out there. 

Curious if anyone out there feels like slapping a category on for size. I have my suspicions.

Harder than stuffing a genie back in the bottle

Friend or foe, good or bad, dangerous or beneficial? I feel pretty ambivalent about Amazon's market dominance, so I wrote out a list of pros and cons. I was surprised to find the pros outnumbered the cons by a significant number.

Readers certainly benefit, right? I can't think of anything wrong with cheaper, widely available books. The site helps people network through reviews and recommendations to find more books they might be interested in—I always find myself following recommendation threads to books I probably never would have found in a bookstore.

I would think authors benefit from Amazon as well. Books are available for sale for much longer online than on bookstore shelves, extending the life of most titles. It'd be nice to see an end to the incredibly short sales cycle of traditional publishing.

I can't think of a single drawback to the rise in prominence of print-on-demand. I love the idea that anyone who wants to publish a book can do it at a reasonable cost and make all their friends and relatives buy a copy. I don't really see how anyone gets hurt (other than said friends and relatives). On the other hand, it pains me to think of all the publishing mistakes—any number of miscalculations that can befall a new title—gathering dust in warehouses an destined for the recycling heap. I am very hopeful that print-on-demand will curtail the huge amount of waste in the printing business. Some books are meant to find their audience one digital print at a time.

Amazon must benefit publishers at least a little. Their titles gain the largest possible distribution. They make some money from online sales even after Amazon takes its cut. As mentioned before, books live longer in cyberspace, allowing for a longer sales cycle and providing an opportunity for a belated rise in popularity due to some random twist of fate.

My con list was short, but it included a problem that might outweigh all the pros—bookstores are dying. I read an article in yesterday's Oregonian about a successful attempt to shore up the cash-strapped Broadway Books by promising a burrito to anyone who bought $50 worth of books over the holidays. Really?! In this case, the owner's son and his Twitter savvy saved the day, but for how long? I have no idea what bookstores can do to change their odds for survival. Record stores and video rental outlets haven't gone extinct yet despite predictions of certain doom, but it doesn't look like a viable business model for any of these media outlets.

We are lucky here in Portland—we have Powells. We probably take for granted that we can walk to the greatest new and used bookstore in the states, while the rest of the nation has Borders and B&N as their best option for book buying. If given that choice, I'd shop online, too.

A First Impression of Book Trailers

I read an article on Publishers Weekly's site that asked publicists their opinion of book trailers. Reviews were mixed at best. Since I am very new to this promotional device, I decided to check it out. I chose a publisher (Penguin) and watched the current trailers they have posted. From this tiny survey of seven, here are my observations:

• When Hollywood is criticized year after year for destroying great literature with crappy adaptations, do you think it's wise to cast the characters of your book, making an indelible mental picture for your readers, and to try to capture 300 pages in three minutes? It seems like a good way to doom the book sales right from the start.

• Even a seasoned performer like Lewis Black looked embarrassed to be shilling his book in a trailer.

• I watched two trailers that were staged like a 60 Minutes segment—an interview with the author combined with an atmospheric montage. One (for In The Woods by Tana French) came across like a Match.com advertisement with glamour shots of the author in various stages of quiet contemplation. The other (Ann B. Ross, author of the Miss Julia series) was more successful, with the author describing her writing process and inspiration for her stories. I was charmed by her southern drawl and dignified demeanor—until the trailer staged a reenactment of her in a restaurant getting a story idea from a nearby table.

• Two of the trailers took a silent picture approach. Still photos interspersed with subtitles and ambient background music—it works so well in the film industry, it's sure to be a big hit.

• Of the seven, the trailer for Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander was worth the four minutes. The video mixes still images of biblical artwork with archival clips as the author's voice-over introduces his memoir about growing up an Orthodox Jew. The script is funny and engaging, and the imagery fits perfectly. It doesn't hurt that the author's voice and delivery sound exactly like David Sedaris.

My conclusion, based on a survey of seven, is that there are many ways to go wrong with a book trailer. Is it worth the risk of alienating potential readers by casting a book's characters with bad actors or producing a piece that comes across like an infomercial? This brief bit of research has made me all the more impressed with Chris Huff's smart trailer for Ooligan's title 42.

So, are there any other praise-worthy trailers out there?

Finding your audience

Having to venture into the world of publisher's websites, I felt assaulted by all the flash. I started with publishers that immediately came to mind—Macmillan, Putnam (Penguin), HarperCollins, Simon and Schuster, and Random House. The homepages for these sites had book covers blazing across the page, videos, pop-up menus, and all sorts of bling and virtual bombast. There is something for everyone, which makes perfect sense for publishers with countless imprints and titles in every conceivable category. Of the large publishing sites I visited, I found Macmillan the least offensive if only because nothing was moving and it was well organized. I especially liked the banner at the top where you could scroll book by book through the featured titles.

Next, I searched for smaller publishers. I tend to buy books about cooking, gardening, design, and computer software, so I compared a few sites with a similar focus. I started with Peachpit Press and O'Reilly. Since I use a Mac and work with graphics software, I expected to prefer Peachpit and my expectations were met. I think O'Reilly's site does a good job targeting their audience of sophisticated computer users, but Peachpit incorporates a sleeker design and has a stronger aesthetic appeal—important for Mac users, though the yellow is, uh, wrong.

Many of the cookbooks in my collection are published by imprints of one of the large publishing houses; however, I found plenty to love at Chronicle Books, W. W. Norton, and Ten Speed Press. The three sites are very different. Chronicle offers books on art/design, food, pop culture, and lifestyle, and their site's colorful and eye-catching design reflects their editorial focus. Ten Speed is also colorful and energetic, but it feels jumbled, chaotic, and unprofessional. I found Ten Speed titles through the Culinate Magazine website, and it was a much more appealing display of their cookbook titles. The Norton site is about as anti-flash as you can get. The browse recent books page is all text, with a laundry list of author/title divided into categories. It's either a fly-in-the-face rejection of current web marketing, or they don't have a penny to spend on a web designer.

I couldn't end my website survey without a look at McSweeney's. The site hits the perfect pitch by combining a personal, laid-back approach with a dose of humor.  They know how to speak to their audience and make you want to join their club. And with their sale prices and combo subscription offers, I found it difficult to resist their persuasive powers. Of the websites I visited, I found McSweeney's did the best job at understanding and speaking to their audience.

Oregon at Work book cover

I am designing the Ooligan Press title Oregon at Work: 1859–2009. I'm almost finished with the interior which means that I must revisit the cover design before we go to press. The top image is the original cover (full jacket design) that was approved by the Executive Committee with some reservations. Suggestions were made to look for one or two photos that would  improve the diversity, include a broad range of industry, and expand the timeline represented on the cover.

I'm afraid I only managed two of the three requests. I replaced the miners on the back with the welder (I found a good spot in the interior for the miners). It gives me a modern photo, but it also gives me an action shot. I replaced the three guys on horseback with the timber photo. I love the photo, but it is difficult to tell what the guys on horseback do for work. I think the timber photo is impressive, but I will miss those horses. I hear animals on the cover really help to sell a book.

I would appreciate any feedback you might have about the changes. The press date is looming large, but there's still a little time left.