As HarperCollins announced massive restructuring yesterday, a number of commentators worried about what would happen to the upcoming book tours and promotional events planned for the publisher’s authors. No matter what happens in the next few months, the burden of promotion will fall increasingly on the author’s shoulders.
Speaking directly to publishers, authors, and readers bewildered by these changes, mediabistro.com founder Laurel Touby told the Tools of Change audience how to build a better book party. She explained her mission: “It’s not just about the author. It’s about the audience, too … those relationships reflect back in positive ways onto the author, onto the book, onto the publisher who brought them together. It’s a beautiful and virtuous circle.”
In 21st Century book party spirit, GalleyCat has archived Touby entire presentation for our readers. The first ten minutes of her TOC lecture are embedded above. After the jump, you can watch the complete presentation and read the full text of her speech.
Here is Part Two of “Bringing Sexy Back: The Book Party in the Digital Age.” Full text follows below the videos.
Here is Part Three of “Bringing Sexy Back: The Book Party in the Digital Age.” Full text follows below the videos.
Bringing Sexy Back: The Book Party in the Digital Age
Book parties have been a staple of the publishing industry since authors learned to tipple. After all, who wouldn’t want to raise a glass to a writer, agent, publisher, editor, friends of the writer, agent, publisher, editor and oh, yeah, press, who all clambered onto the guest list for that one big last hurrah before going to market?
Parties are fun. But they can be good business, too.
Business Reasons to Do a Book Party
* Create community:
* Create conversation, connection, engagement
* create and maintain relationships
* Reach influencers, press, tastemakers.
* Engender a feeling of exclusivity and closeness with the author and the author’s mission of getting the word out about his or her book.
But as much as we love them, book parties also have drawbacks —
which is why publishers are doing fewer and fewer of them.
Book Party Cons
* cost: they cost several thousand dollars
* geographical limits: they occur in one place at one time
* time limits: there’s a 2-3 hour window to have an effect
* limited reach: only so many taste-makers and press can fit into a room
* results: who knows?
Now, imagine having a book party in which you could:
-invite millions of people,
-they could show up any time, day or night,
-they could bring friends,
-share their discoveries about the book,
-stay in touch long after the party ended.
What you would be describing is the Digital Book Party. It can be a series of community events or — an ongoing exercise in community building.
What’s a digital book party?
* It’s not limited by time: it can happen before, during, and after the official release of a book
* It can be asynchronous, meaning you can have a book party occur in many time zones at once, starting/ending at different times
* It’s not limited by geography: it can be anywhere
* It’s bigger: it reaches larger numbers of people
* It’s smaller: it reaches a targeted audience
* It’s authentic: your message is spread by word-of-mouth
* It’s measurable: results are trackable
* It’s forever searchable: because a digital record leaves a trail, you can always look up a digital book party
* It’s community building.
* It’s not just about the author. It’s about the audience, too. The audience wants to interact with the author, but they also want to interact with like-minded souls, just as they would at a traditional book party. And those relationships reflect back in positive ways onto the author, onto the book, onto the publisher who brought them together. It’s a beautiful and virtuous circle.
I’d like to highlight that last point. It’s not just about the author. It’s about the audience. The audience wants to interact with the author, but they also want to interact with like-minded souls, as they would at a traditional book party.
Those relationships reflect back in positive ways onto the author, onto the book, onto the publisher who brought them together. It’s a beautiful and virtuous circle.
Instead of killing the book party, we need to completely transform it.
Keep the same excitement, the same thrill of discovery, the same connectedness — but expand it exponentially and draw it out far longer. Taking the book party digital means identifying and enabling the people who create that Magical Multiplier Effect. That used to be the domain of press, and publicity and marketing. Today, when you take the party to the people, they become fans and readers and are your best marketers and publicists.
It’s not just about selling A book to a random stranger. It’s about:
— getting to know people
— helping them find books they will cherish
— uniting them with others who share their interests and views.
[SLIDE] This is the culture of community that digital tools can create around:
— your authors
— your books
— your publishing house
….so the connection to readers becomes deep and ongoing.
It’s what I call a Culture of Community, and it’s a different way of looking at the people buying your books. See them as friends you are meeting, engaging with, entertaining, listening to and communing with over the long haul. This isn’t just a one-off — “buy some trade ads” “get some reviews,” wham bam, next author, next book — approach.
You want lasting ties to your audience, who will feel close to your products. Now I’m going to show you some tools and platforms you can use to take your book party digital. You’ll get everything but the booze — and you may even get that.
SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS are the key to a rocking digital book party. What do all social media tools have in common? They help you:
1. Find guests to invite to Digital Parties
2. Spread the word about your digital parties
3. Create a conversation around the book and its author
4. Keep conversation and buzz going long after in-store sales are over
ONE MAJOR Drawback: TIME
Building relationships require an initial investment in time spent online, building up networks, doing research, reaching out. Then, there is the time that must be spent maintaining those networks and relationships once they get going. But the tradeoff in range and power of your reach makes it time well spent.
Twitter: Taking Book Talk to New Levels
Twitter is an online service that enables you to broadcast short 140 character messages known as “tweets” to your friends or “followers.” It’s becoming quite a powerful marketing tool.
Here’s what you do with Twitter:
1. You collect groups of interested followers or “guests” for your digital parties.
2. You organize “Tweetups” (a.k.a. digital parties) with them
3. you deliver news and information about the book/author
4. you respond to questions about your books and authors
5. you basically keep the conversation going!
Twitter allows you to reach larger numbers of your readers more directly, more personally and more consistently over time than ever before. It’s like having a CONSTANT conversation. It’s like tapping in to a list of pre-qualified people who can buy your book — and can talk it up for you, once you’ve gotten them interested in what you’ve got to say.
When people talk up your book on Twitter, it helps create a multiplier effect — people tend to trust those they follow, and their recommendations often spur others’ interest
Trust is key though — it’s a foundation of community building.
You can’t just spam messages out to them as if it were a one-way conversation. The goal is to create, or become part of, a passionate community interested in your product.
This can ABSOLUTELY be done around a book, its author, its subject. Heck, some marketers have created Twitter feeds “written” by their characters. Mad Men, the TV series, has multiple Twitter feeds written by characters in the show, who have attracted hundreds of followers.
So how are you going to bring your digital book party to Twitter?
You’re going to get in and hobnob with your party-goers; you’re going to create a presence for the author, the book, the publisher and maybe even some key characters.
Many authors, agents, and publishers have already joined Twitter. Here are some examples of people in the publishing industry on Twitter:
Macmillan marketing director.
Graywolf Press.
Tim O’Reilly.
Agent Janet Reid.
Bestselling Author Steven Johnson.
Twitter Tips: Bringing the Paparazzi to Your Online Book Party
Drawing other Twitterers to your author’s Twitter feed is like giving the paparazzi access to a fabulous event — they’ll spread the word to the masses. But how do you find them? You do a search! Google won’t help you here. Neither will twitter.com. Here are two search engines that index Twitter.
Use the search on Twellow.com or search.twitter.com and look for terms related to:
Book subject
Book genre
Author name (if he/she is well-known)
Friends of the author (get a list from author)
Press/journalists on twitter, particularly people who write reviews
Anything literary or book-related
Anything writer or writing related
You’re basically seeking out like-minded people across industries and geographies, people who read, people who mention books, people who use their own Twitter feeds to discuss the subjects and topics touched upon in your book. These are the people to follow. When you follow them, very frequently, they follow you — particularly if there’s a connection between their interests and what you’re talking about via Twitter.
Now, there are lots of tricks for using Twitter effectively. To optimize your strategy (how to increase followers, how not to alienate them, etc.), you can follow twitter.com/mediabistro and we will point you to people, tactics and best practices to follow.
Another fantastic resource is: TwiTip blog, edited by Darren Rowse of Problogger.
Another way to get noticed is to follow the All-Stars, the people with the most followers on Twitter, or the Twitterati. Follow them, reach out to them, write to them about your book, invite them to a party.
Online Parties: Tweetups Bring Interested Readers Face to Face
Once you’ve got followers, you can have a party fueled by Twitter.
You can do this in 2 ways.
1) by creating a “tweet up,” which occurs offline by announcing via Twitter that you’re having a real-life get-together at a local venue or at an upcoming conference
2) you can keep it online by asking guests to meet ONLINE at a given time and place.
So, where do these people GO online to have a tweet up? Do they all appear on your Twitter home page? No, that would be cumbersome, plus you’d be leaving out people on blogs or other places around the web.
Instead, you ask people to MARK a certain word with a tag that designates the entire Tweet or Post (if you’re blogging) as part of the party conversation. The tag is called a hashtag, or the Pound Sign in voicemail land. It could have been any symbol on the keyboard, but that’s the one that everyone now uses.
Hashtags are subject-driven labels that group conversations across the web (NOT just on Twitter) about particular topics. Think of them as the velvet ropes that channel a stream of party-goers to the VIP room in the club.
So, when you write anything on the web that incorporates a hash symbol, immediately followed by a word — let’s say “inauguration,” you have started or contributed to the ongoing conversation on that subject. How do you FIND that conversation? Well, at Hashtags.org, which gathers them into a stream.
You don’t have to be a Twitter user to read them. AND, you can subscribe to and follow any hashtagged conversation via RSS on hashtags.org to monitor what is being said. You should start by searching Hashtags.org for relevant topics.
For example, if you had something to tell journalists about your author — a new twist or book, you could tag your Tweets
#journ2journ or #journ. Those updates would become part of the Hashtag stream those journalists read. #Journchat is an existing group of people who have a weekly party online.
As you can see, the activity for #journchat spikes at specific times. That’s because there’s a moderated discussion taking place on Mondays from 7pm – 10pm Eastern time. Here, journalists, bloggers, and PR folks are attempting to talk with each other. THAT’s a TWEET UP.
#journchat has all the makings of a great party. Interesting guests, witty conversation…and it’s BYOB. Since the conversations remain there, new readers or fans of your book can find them and read up on past Hashtag conversations. As you can see there, it’s even got rules and etiquette and sponsor!
Do a search on Hashtags.org for related terms, just like you did with Twitter, you’ll find lots of discussions going on around #books #bookchat, #reading, the subjects of your book, and on.
Now, creating a hashtag for #yourbook won’t instantly make a party, but you can start using hashtags and start reaching out to others who are using them.
Once you’ve got some followers and interest, create a hashtag reading group that meets once a month and discusses an issue of the day; invite your authors to join the group for the discussion, as experts. Provide participants links to exclusive material, or photos, or video they can’t get anywhere else. Access and status are great draws. Make it a party and they’ll want to come back, and even bring their friends!
Blogtalkradio — live streaming radio (or listen later)
Using Blogtalkradio, you can listen live to a streaming radio show on the Web, call in, and connect with others interested in that topic, all in real time. Your show is automatically available through RSS feeds and iTunes. Blogtalkradio handles syndication and distribution, expanding your reach even further. It’s free to set up. (They sell ads in shows, splitting revenue with broadcasters.)
BlogTalkRadio brings the old-school author radio tour to the Web, with the potential to reach many more people all at once. BlogTalkRadio launched in 2006, it has broadcast more than 200,000 episodes, hosted by tens of thousands of individuals, companies and organizations. Raised $4.6 million recently.
It’s LIVE. Listeners participate by calling in via their telephones or by submitting written comments via a chat screen. After the show, hosts and listeners can hang out in the chat room. And after the show runs, it stays saved and searchable, so anyone who missed it can listen to it again. Books have their own category on Blogtalkradio’s home page.
Authors on Air is one of the popular “stations” on Blogtalkradio, meaning there’s a channel just waiting for your own author.
There are also genre shows for sci-fi, romance, and librarians, as well as venues for best-sellers, including Book Club Girl, who has her radio show streaming to her site.
It’s easy to become a host and get your show on Blogtalkradio.
1) Set up a time when you’ll be “live” with your author, then promote the party time all over — via Twitter, via Facebook, using Linkedin, on your author blog, wherever. Talk it up. Let everyone you connect with digitally and face-to-face know about it.
2) Or, do a weekly “Digital Book Party” — make it fresh by inviting guests for your author to speak with, fellow writers, book subjects, experts in the field. Is there a bookseller who’s been talking up the book? Invite him or her to be on the show.
Go to your book’s page on Amazon.com and leave a comment with details of your BlogTalkRadio Show there, inviting potential readers to enter the dialogue! And be sure your invited guests to do their part and send out emails/twitters, etc. and promote their appearances on your show.
Ustream.TV: — this time, the revolution will be televised.
You may know of Ustream.tv as the home of the famous Puppy Cam, the most-viewed streaming video to date, closing in on 16 million views. Someone took a stationary camera and streamed the adorable doings of a box of Shiba Inu puppies, around the clock, without interruption. By way of comparison, CNN served 13.9 million live video streams leading up to President Obama’s inauguration. Just imagine what would happen when Obama installs his puppy cam in the White House!
Imagine any event you plan streamed live–for replay later. The video recorded at the event is archived and is now available to anyone, at any time. You can reach a much larger audience. And the video archive will appear in searches a lot longer than the event.
Ustream is free. All you need is a camera and an internet connection and you can stream your own show live, with comments from viewers streaming alongside your video.
So, here’s a suggestion: set up your own channel on Ustream and announce that you’re planning an event– whether it’s a book reading, an interview with someone, a cocktail party, anything! Get the word out via Twitter, Facebook, Amazon.com’s comments sections, your blogs and other social networks. Have your author appear on the show. Follow it with a live chat with readers or fans or book clubs around the country. Anyone else can watch later, too and it helps with Search Engine Optimization to have yet another source linking to your author’s name.
Gary has been called “the first wine guru of the YouTube era.” As Time Magazine says, “He’s more hyper than Emeril, more cheerful than Rachael Ray, more street than Bobby Flay and cockier than all of them combined.”
If your author has an infectious personality, you might consider having him or her host a regularly scheduled live streaming TV show online. Take Gary Vaynerchuk — one of the masters of online video. His Wine Library TV is a daily webcast all about wine. Gary has upwards of 100 thousand viewers a day. And Wine Library, the family liquor store that he took over when he was a teen (not even able to drink his biggest product line!), is now a $50 million dollar business.
This is largely due to the devoted following he’s gained with his online shows. Gary did this without investing in a studio, or a PR rep, or even a script. He just set up his web cam and CONNECTED to a community that found him on the web. If you watch his show, you’ll see how — often, he’ll stop in the middle of a show and speak directly to commenters while also listening to questions and pouring wine.
Meetups: Where Digital Book Parties Get Physical
The old-school book party rounded up the usual industry suspects who may or may not have had any interest in your author or the topic of the book. Now, imagine having a guest list of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people who are FASCINATED with the topic of your book, avid readers or who may want to connect with your author. Meetup can help you create THAT guest list, bring those people together and meet more like them.
Meetup.com was founded in 2002 and claims some 2.5 million members. As Huffington Post described it, “Meetup provides a platform for people anywhere to set up a meeting, and organize others with similar interests. Chess Players, Working Mothers, Computer Geeks and Book Clubs all use the Meetup platform to gather, share, and accomplish things that can only be done in groups.”
You can use Meet up in a couple of ways. You’ll have to think like a community organizer. That’s the best way to approach this:
1) EXISTING BOOK GROUPS
There are tons of book club groups you can tap into that are already using Meetup. In a moment, I’ll show you the beginning of the list for the hundreds New York area book club meetups. You’ll want to befriend all of them. With the bigger groups, try to meet with the organizers, find out what they are interested in reading and stay in touch. With the biggest and most prestigious of the book clubs, see if they would be interested in meeting your author. Offer them advance galleys and other insider-y things. Send them Holiday cards, for gods sake. Make them feel special, and they’ll feel a stronger connection with your author and their book. Then, they’ll promote your message without your asking.
2) EXISTING INTEREST GROUPS
You can also find passionate communities on almost any subject in specific locations. So if you happen to have a wine-related book, you could reach out to 34 groups who are interested in wine in Fairfield, CT. Again, reach out to the organizers in the same way you would do with book club groups. Offer special access and treats.
3) ADVERTISE
You can advertise directly on topically or regionally relevant pages on the Meetup.com site. So, when someone goes to Meeup and searches the term Wine, anywhere in the country, your ad will pop up. That’s as targeted as any google ad, and probably a lot cheaper.
4) SPONSOR
You can now sponsor groups via Meetup, so offer to sponsor the next five meetups of the Wine Meetup in Fairfield county. It’s a lot cheapher than hosting 5 events of your own.
5) HOLD EVENTS of your own
In larger markets, you’ll want to set up your own events via Meetup. It’s an easy way to find new people who you would never meet independently, who are obviously searching against relevant search terms in order to find you. Create a Meetup Panel discussion with your book as the required reading material to get the conversation going.
Remember, your author doesn’t need to show up at a meetup for it to be legitimate and worthwhile to members. The meetup does need to be organized by someone take-charge, who is passionate about the author or about the subject matter and who will create a fun, interesting event. The world is full of such people, and plenty of them are actively online, just waiting to be tapped.
In fact, you don’t even have to use the Meetup platform to meet up. Some authors are using speakerphones or webinar software such as Webex and GotoMeeting to “virtually visit” book clubs and plan their own virtual events.
Social networks: Facebook, ETC. — Beyond Throwing Sheep
We all know of Facebook as that wildly popular community site — and, yes, virtual sheep-throwing corral — where people and businesses create profile pages that others connect to. But are you really using Facebook effectively?
1) Obviously, you’ll want to set up a fan page for your author, book, its characters, or publishing company. But what about a PERSONAL page for your author — and don’t let those pages become static. Change the content, pictures, updates up, at least weekly.
2) Connect your pages to your Twitter account. Then, every Twitter message automatically updates your status on Facebook, so you don’t have to ever do Facebook staus updates.
3) Use FB to send out any invites to Tweetups and meetups
4) broadcast news, positive reviews of the book or any mentions of the book there
5) host discussions, upload video, cross-link to the author blog and more.
6) MOST importantly, ENGAGE your fans and friends on FB, write to them congratulating them on a new baby, a success, etc. Don’t be a one-way push machine.
Melissa Walker is one such author, who uses her Facebook page to connect with the many young adult readers who flock to her teen-centric books. Here is the fan page Melissa created for her book.
And here is the Personal Page Melissa has created. As you can see, her current image right now is the cover of her soon to be released next book because she’s in full-on promotion mode. She’s got more than 1,000 friends, many of whom are her readers, in addition to real-life friends/acquaintances.
She published a note last week about purchasing her previous three books. She’s continuing to market them via Facebook. Can anyone say backlist sales?
DIY Book Communities — The Thing About Ning
Facebook is a big, one-size fits all social network. But, what if you could create your own group dedicated solely to a title or an author, complete with most of the interactive community tools found on FB? Platforms like Ning.com are the way to go.
Using Ning, you can build your own site, brand it your way, and make it as public (or not) as you want. Ning has custom text and widgets; branded video, photos, and chats; blogs for every member; and RSS feeds.
Here’s a Ning site for thriller writer James Patterson.
The focus throughout the site is on the group members — though this is the “official” Patterson community built by Hachette, the continuing energy comes from the group and the connections they have formed. They create their own Profile pages, they chat, they comment, they discuss, and with every interaction, the page and community evolves, giving members reason to return again and again to see what’s new. The beauty of online connection is, you never have to go — it continues and you can keep coming back.
With 36,000 members, it’s one hell of a book party. And it shows no signs of slowing down.
Online Book Parties Never End
I’ve shown you only a few platforms to get your book party started.
But the most important lesson to take away can be expressed in these four activities:
Search — for like-minded people — using everything from Google, to Twellow to LinkedIn
Reach out — to people who are influencers and Multipliers
Engage — get a conversation going
Keep engaging — stay in touch
The key thing is to think of yourself as a community organizer, not as a marketer.
Exciting new social media tools and techniques are constantly emerging. But if you’re looking at how to apply them to sell books, you’ve missed the point. More importantly, you want to immerse yourself, build up a reputation, connect with like-minded people, and cross-talk all of your efforts across platforms.
You want to be part of the people not part of the platform.
Why? Because platforms are for visiting; but, communities are for life.