Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 Blog

Literary Video Interview with David Woodard

Literary Video's tagline is "Creating Multimedia Content that Sells Books."  I discovered this service last month and exchanged a couple of e-mails with David Woodard, Founder and Creative Director.  With the ever increasing importance of video in the publishing world I jumped on the opportunity to do a blog interview with David.  Here's what he had to say about Literary Video and what they're up to:

JW: You had been working for a publisher in Nashville for awhile and decided to launch this new business venture, Literary Video.  What's your vision for the business and what drove you to create this start-up?

DW: Working in book marketing for eight years taught me many things, but one of the most impressive things I learned was that the best salesman for a book is almost always the author. There are exceptions to this, but by in large it is true. That is why when the bigger books release (think John Grisham, for example), these authors pop up in various media like The Today Show, Good Morning America, or even Oprah or People Magazine. No one can sale the story like the author can.

The internet and the proliferation of video online gives publishers and authors new and relatively inexpensive ways to reach their audience. According to USAToday, "Book videos are increasingly common and, publishers say, essential." They are the new book cover.

Literary Video has come into existence to help publishers and authors not only develop multimedia content, but multimedia content that sells books. We feel our background in book publishing and marketing gives our clients an advantage that a generic video production house can't give offer. We not only facilitate the creation of content but help mold the content in a way that sells the project most effectively.

Changes in the marketing structure of the publishing house for whom I had been working gave me a unique opportunity last fall to exercise not only the skills and knowledge I had learned but also the contacts and network I had cultivated the last eight years in the industry. Literary Video was born.

JW: Success here largely depends on how many eyeballs see each video, right?  With that in mind, will Literary Video also help show authors how to increase the exposure of their videos?  If so, are there any details you can share?

DW: You are right in that like any advertising collateral, impressions are key. A book video is not an end in and of itself, but a part of a greater strategy. However, book video offers a more intimate "experience," and, it has the capacity to become viral. Book videos are marketing by offering content and not interruption. 

But just as posting a web site does not guarantee visitors, creating a video doesn’t automatically assume viewers; you have to have a bigger marketing strategy in place. However, there are sites, like YouTube, BookVideos.TV, & ChristianReader.TV that people visit in order to find video content. A compelling video posted to the right places can find an audience. This is where Literary Video becomes not just a content producer, but a partner in distribution strategy as well.

JW: I'm a big fan of widgets and it would seem they would represent a useful vehicle for getting videos out on as many websites as possible.  Are you looking to offer widget functionality for Literary Video?

DW: Incorporating video into widgets represents the cutting edge of video distribution. If done right, it not only offers a compelling way to present the video in an easy to use fashion, but also creates a "portable" marketing collateral that can become very effective in viral and grass roots marketing efforts. In other words, if a viewer can forward the widget to someone else, or even take the widget and embed it in their own blog or website, then the widget has become portable. This can also be effective in sales efforts, as book retailers can post these widgets on their e-tailing sites and product pages.

If a client desires to use widgets, Literary Video can develop the content, widget, and help strategize for the most effective use of the widget.

JW: What are the most innovative and interesting elements of some of the better book trailers/teasers that you've been involved with?

DW: I can think of three that I thought exploited unique dimensions of books that would have been lost in traditional advertising efforts.

My Go to Bed Book is a charming children’s book in the tradition of Good Night Moon. It was originally published in the 1950s. B&H Publishing Group released a 50th anniversary edition in the fall of 2007. The backstory as to how this edition came to be is in itself a very charming story. We created a mini-documentary telling this story called The Story Behind the Book, as well as an e-Galley for the book.

Squat is novel written by first time novelist Taylor Field. Taylor's personal story as a pastor running a mission in New York's tough lower East Side is the inspiration and backdrop for this novel. Think Rent meets The Passion of the Christ. The colorful world of Manhattan's Alphabet City is a major character of the book itself. Squat Movie is a mini documentary (embedded below), shot on location in the east village with Taylor as our guide, bringing the landscape and the real life people that inspired this tale. Squat Movie was awarded the bronze Telly Award for 2007.

Biblical Barbie is a fun book trailer that emphasizes entertaining content over hard selling. Making fun of stereotypes, the video is just fun, with a soft sell for the book The New Eve at the end. It is viral marketing at its best. We partnered with stop-motion film maker Greg Pope to create book video that entertains first, and sells second.

Daemon: A Lesson on Leveraging the Community

I don't tend to read novels but the story of this one caught my eye.  It's called Daemon and it's an interesting study in what an author can do to build momentum for their book.  Wired recently ran a short article about it here.

The author, Daniel Suarezes (who reversed most of those characters to "Leinad Zeraus" for credit on the book) tried the same old agent-to-publisher route but couldn't generate interest.  He wound up taking matters into his own hands and got some key bloggers and other influential names interested in it.  Next, he and his wife created their own publishing house, Verdugo Press, and are selling it as a print-on-demand title.

Although Bookscan numbers are still pretty modest the book currently has a very nice Amazon ranking (in the 1,500's), so the grassroots efforts are obviously paying off...and the Wired article doesn't hurt either!

So if you're an author, what steps have you taken to drive excitement for your book from influential people with huge platforms?  Even if you have a small platform you can always work to leverage other people's platforms.

SharedBook Interview with CEO Caroline Vanderlip

SharedBook is the underlying technology provider for a number of great new content offerings.  I've stumbled across them several times in the past year when I've researched services like Blog2Print and eGuidebook.  With all the exciting new initiatives they've been involved with I figured I could learn even more by interviewing one of their executives.  Caroline Vanderlip, CEO, graciously agreed to answer my questions -- here's what she had to say:

JW: SharedBook seems to be the engine behind many of the newer e-content services I've come across recently.  What's the overall vision for SharedBook and the products you've already released?

CV: We believe SharedBook offers a disruptive enabling technology that has the potential to expand the way people think about publishing in the 21st century. Using our platform, any business or consumer can publish personalized print media on demand.

SharedBook works with traditional publishers, web sites and other types of companies to maximize the long tail potential of existing materials. For example, traditional publishers can use the platform to allow readers to add personalized elements (Random House) and to publish customized anthologies. Web sites (Allrecipes.com, ProfessionalTravelGuide.com) and other types of companies (Regent Seven Seas Cruises) can re-purpose their existing content to suit the individual interests of their customers.

JW: Your website refers to your "reverse publishing platform."  What exactly does that phrase mean for SharedBook and your product line?

CV: I’m glad you asked. We spent a lot of time in the last year working to raise awareness for the concept of "reverse publishing," which simply means publishing online content in print format, or Web to print publishing.

There is a tremendous amount of content available online today, much of which now appears on the Web first. In fact, I recently read that IDC estimated that in 2006 alone, the amount of digital information created, captured and replicated was approximately 3 million times the information in all books ever written.

Since launching our first data integration project with Legacy.com, the Legacy Commemorative Guest Book, in November 2006, we have seen a growing interest, from businesses and consumers, in publishing personally-relevant Web content across a variety of categories. SharedBook currently offers reverse publishing solutions in the book publishing, food, memorial, sports and travel industries, among others.   

SharedBook’s Reverse Publishing Platform automates the book making process, enabling consumers to produce a book dynamically with just a few clicks. Users can choose to preview and purchase a book immediately, or personalize it further by adding their own text and photographs.

SharedBook’s application is also fully collaborative, enabling users to invite family and friends into their private and secure book making space to contribute their own content. Anyone invited into the space can also publish a book if they like. 

SharedBook also provides an extensive range of personalization options. For example, users control which content flows into their books, the placement of text and photos, and the inclusion of comments, notes and annotations.

JW: What are one or two of the most important lessons you've learned from your customer base after releasing some of these products?

CV: We really have two customer bases: the partners that integrate with us and offer the product under their brands and the buyers of the product. From our partners, we've learned to keep the product offering and the solution simple. Make the product offering as easy to understand as possible and then market its uniqueness frequently enough so people begin to understand that they can create something here never before imagined. From our buyers, we learn which content and features are most appealing, some of the product features that they would like to have added in the future, and how satisfied they are with the final product.

SharedBook conducts customer satisfaction surveys every month and while we have an increasingly high level of satisfaction, we know that we need to evolve as the market for our product and capabilities becomes more mainstream.

JW: What's the goal of the SharedBook Open API and can you tell us about any interesting third-party applications that have been developed using it?

CV: SharedBook’s API is available to enable any third party, business or consumer, to integrate data into SharedBook’s platform for on-demand output.

Most recently, Steve Murch of BigOven.com, a social network about food, used SharedBook’s API to develop the BigOven Cookbook. Using one of the wrappers that are available to developers, Steve was able to produce working results within a few hours and had a market-ready solution in less than eight weeks. BigOven.com is the first company to offer multiple ways to connect to SharedBook. Users of the social network about food can create cookbooks from the Web site or from BigOven’s award-winning desktop recipe software.

SharedBook’s API also formed the basis for Create-A-Cookbook from Allrecipes.com, which launched in November. The application enables cooks to automatically publish collections of their favorite online and personal recipes in professionally-printed book format. Users can choose to purchase the cookbook once a preview of the finished book product is created, or to personalize it further by adding notes to the recipes, and the stories and photographs that make the foods special.

I am not sure if you are aware of this, but the Blog2Print blog printing widget was also built using SharedBook’s API.  Some of our own developers created the widget shortly after we introduced the API to demonstrate how easily an application could be created.

There are several additional third party examples in development now that we expect to announce by the end of Q2.

JW: How do you see your business and the products you're developing evolving in the coming years?  Are there any noteworthy projects you're working on that we should keep an eye out for down the road?

CV: This is an exciting time for SharedBook. Our business has grown significantly in the last 18 months. We added partners in eight different content categories in 2007, and expect to announce as many partnerships in 2008 if not more.

We're currently working on projects that will introduce reverse publishing to several new categories including gardening and magazine publishing.

We envision a time in the not so distant future when consumers will be able to publish any of the online content they need, regardless of the topic, in the format they choose.

The custom cookbook publishing solutions for Allrecipes.com and BigOven.com and the Pocket Guidebook for ProfessionalTravelGuide.com illustrate how it's already possible to create your own book for a particular topic today.

We believe this is only the beginning of a new era in publishing.

"The One-Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedia"??

I don't think I've ever come up empty after a Wikipedia search.  That's one of the most attractive features of the Wikipedia, right?  You rarely leave without finding something of value.  The search options seem endless and it's got way more content than you could possibly squeeze into one volume or even a shelf full of volumes.

So what's up with this announcement that Bertelsmann is going to "publish what could be the first in a series of annual yearbooks whose content is derived from the many hundreds of thousands of user-created entries on Wikipedia."?  The One-Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedia is going to feature the content covering 50,000 of the most-searched terms (from the German language edition).

OK, the One-Volume product will feature information on some pretty popular topics, but am I the only one who feels this whole idea turns the core strengths of the Wikipedia into a weak print product?  Again, I love the sheer breadth of the Wikipedia; every time I visit the site I'm confident I'll learn something.  The One-Volume product will be hit and miss, even though it will cover the most frequently searched topics.  Then there's the living, breathing nature of the Wikipedia.  Whatever I'm reading right now is more up-to-date than the print version.  That might not matter for subjects like World War II but it could mean a significant difference for major political elections or candidates, for example.

Don't get me wrong.  I think there's a great opportunity for Wikipedia content in print.  Flexibility is the key though.  Let customers print the pieces they want, not simply a collection of the most frequently searched topics.  That means print-on-demand is the only viable manufacturing option.

Have you heard of PediaPress yet?  It's still a work in progress but it sure sounds like they're building the model described above.

I'm also still intrigued by the DailyLit model and how it could be leveraged for the Wikipedia (see this earlier post).  There seem to be a number of new, viable Wikipedia content delivery models to experiment with; I'm just not convinced the One-Volume project is one of the best.

14 Points about Author Websites

The author website debate will probably never end.  Do you need one?  What's the purpose?  What elements should it include?  The questions go on and on.

I recently came across this excellent blog post entitled The 14 Things I Have Learned about Author Websites.  Be sure to check out the whole list.  Here are a few things that went through my mind as I read through it:

#2. Author websites are different than book websites. Blogs, twitter, myspace and facebook are different tools, use them in different ways.

Excellent point!  How many times have you come across an author's website that has no personality and lacks the critical attributes of a social network-like page?

#4. Frequency is important...

#5: Frequency isn’t as important as you may think...

Ah, the thorny subject of frequency.  This has been one of the most criticized and probably misunderstood issues on this subject.  How frequently do you need to update your site?  That depends.  It depends on what kind of product you've published and what sort of expectations your readers have.  Two-way communication is the key here.  Don't say you'll be updating every day and then fall back to once every week or so.  Also, check in with your readers and see what they want from your site and how often they'd like to see new content from you.

#6: Free is your friend. Make your work available in its entirety. If someone is willing to read your 400 page novel on screen, you have found a fan for life.

I don't think I could have said it any better myself.  This is an important concept that we publishers seem to be sloooowly embracing.  Just don't forget that if you signed a traditional publishing agreement you probably need your publisher's permission to post all that great, free content...

Author Solutions Interview with Kevin Weiss

Author Solutions is the parent company of several brands including AuthorHouse and iUniverse; recently I was fortunate enough to sit down with several key members of their organization.  The Author Solutions team showed me some of their existing tools and talked a bit about their vision for the future of the industry.  It was a great session and I plan to cover some of these items in future posts.

In the mean time, Kevin Weiss, President and CEO of Author Solutions, agreed to do a blog interview as well.  Here's what Kevin had to say about Author Solutions, the iUniverse acquisition and the marketing and PR process:

JW: What are the key attributes that you feel help distinguish Author Solutions from the other self-publishing options out there today?

KW: Leadership and innovation. At AuthorHouse and iUniverse we have continually introduced new services and systems to make publishing more professional, affordable and accessible to authors. That commitment has enabled us to become the worldwide market share leader. But we’ve only just begun.

We are currently making significant investments in both our internal production and customer-facing systems. By Q3, we will introduce the most advanced systems in the industry, which will give authors --and publishers-- unrivaled flexibility, efficiency and opportunity to make the best choices throughout the publishing process. 

We are also working diligently to make publishing a more "open" environment. Historically, the industry has been "closed" in the sense that a select group of people decided what should be made available to the market. We don’t think that system will work with the next generation of authors.

They have been raised with file sharing, online collaboration and self-directing content creation. They also expect nearly simultaneous feedback. Waiting months for a rejection letter won’t work with this crowd. That's why we have made our Wordclay platform available to individual authors and communities who have members who want to publish books quickly, affordably and professionally.

We take all we’ve learned from publishing nearly 80,000 titles and make that available to any one who has a book in them. We believe the end result will be more authors publishing more titles for more readers, which is good for readers, good for us and good for the industry.

We expect to have more to say about both of these areas around BEA, so stay tuned.

JW: Last year you completed the acquisition of another self-publishing operation, iUniverse.  How do you see these two teams fitting together and what does this mean to authors from both organizations?

KW: Author Solutions acquired iUniverse because we see the brands as distinct and the teams as complimentary. AuthorHouse, which was Author Solutions first acquisition, has a broader product offering both in publishing and promotional services. iUniverse has distinguished itself by its editorial services and traditional-publishing experience.

With this acquisition, we are able to take the best practices of both organizations and offer authors of both brands the most valued services in the industry and more expertise than any other self-publishing company in the world. Because we are publishing nearly 20,000 titles, we are also able to create production efficiencies that we can pass on to authors in the form of higher value and more affordable services. We are excited about the future of both brands and the strength of the leadership teams.

JW: How about on the marketing side...what programs do you offer your authors to help them get the visibility they need to succeed?

KW: Ask successful authors today and they will tell you they work on their marketing plan as much as their manuscript. So while we provide a range of services to help authors gain visibility, they still need to make a commitment to promote their books.

Depending on the brand, we can offer authors a public relations program, bookstore marketing packages, including returnability and even a personal publicist if they have the budget and the title warrants it.

Perhaps the most important marketing tool we provide though is a free author Web site. We've been offering this service through our AuthorHouse brand since December and authors love it. Four weeks ago, we just announced a beta version of AuthorTree. AuthorTree is a site that offers all published authors a free, easy-to-use tool to set up an author Web site.

These Web sites give authors 24/7 visibility for potential readers and provide a powerful way for them to build an audience.

JW: How much do you rely on authors to help with the PR and marketing effort?  Do you have any success stories you could share?

KW: As I stated previously, the author is the key to marketing and PR. Even JK Rowling has to get out and talk about her books, and it is no different for our authors. We have  many great examples of authors successfully marketing their works, but two recent ones stand out.

The first is a book AuthorHouse published titled The Gift that Heals by Reg Green. Reg's seven-year old son was murdered in Italy 12 years ago on a family vacation. They made the decision then to donate his organs and the story received worldwide acclaim. Since then Reg has become a leading advocate for organ donation and wanted to write a book about how organ donation affects the people involved in the process. He is very passionate and has a great sense of urgency, so he didn't want to wait for months or years to have traditional publishers decide to publish his book. He self-published with us and the book is selling well. A few weeks ago, he was featured in People magazine and last week he was on the morning talk shows in New York

Another example is Martha Barnette. Martha had previously published with a traditional house, but they allowed her books to go out of print. In the past few years she has become the host of a radio nationally-syndicated Public Radio show called A Way with Words, which focuses on the beauty and intricacy of words. She has published two books with iUniverse that were previously out of print and brought them back for her listeners. Self-publishing has allowed her to develop a whole new following of readers and create an even greater platform.

Travel Guides 2.0

What's the worst part of most printed travel guides?  Lugging them around.  Plus, although they're written by travel experts, I generally find that I really only need portions of the book, not the whole thing.  After all, how many hotels can one person stay at during a one-week trip?!

What's really needed here is more flexibility and customization.  I'd like to pick the contents from a list of options and create my own custom guide.  That's possible now thanks to Professional TravelGuide's new service, eGuidebook.  You'll find information on more than 7,000 destinations and it's easy to pick and choose the content you want in your custom eGuidebook.  Build it by yourself or in collaboration with other friends or family members.  Once you're happy with the contents, turn your eGuidebook into a print product with the Pocket Guidebook service (click here for a demo).  Pocket Guidebooks are produced via print-on-demand with prices starting at $18.95 (including shipping in the U.S.)

I tend to think cellphones and other portable devices will eventually become the key travel content delivery platform, but between now and then, we can use services like eGuidebook and Pocket Guidebook to add more of a personal, fun touch to a family vacation or other getaway.

Blackberry Reading

The WSJ's Lee Gomes recently wrote an article about reading books on a Blackberry.  It's something I originally tried on a 7100t but met with disappointing results.  My 7100t died last year though and I wound up switching to the larger 8700g (shown on the left).

Ever since then I've found myself using the Blackberry for more reading than ever before.  It's amazing how much the reading experience improves when you go from the 7100t screen to the slightly larger 8700g.  Besides the larger screen, the major reason I find myself reading on a Blackberry is the reason Gomes cites in his article: You have the thing with you, so you might as well make the most of it.

I can't tell you how many times I've stood in line in a store, pulled out the Blackberry and started reading.  One of my favorite selections: Book summaries from getAbstract, which I might add are available in a simplified PDF format that are ideal on a Blackberry.  In fact, I recently read two summaries while waiting for an oil change; now that's productivity!

Other content sources I've dabbled with include DailyLit and Mobipocket, which also offers a free Blackberry reader.

The "Author" of 200,000 Books

What do you get when you combine print-on-demand (POD) with the wealth of free information that's widely available on the web?  How about a guy who has used both to produce more than 200,000 different titles on Amazon?  If you want an example of the long tail in action, check out this quote: "the most popular of his books may sell hundreds of copies (while) many have sales in the dozens."

I had to check the story's date to make sure the following excerpt wasn't part of an April Fool's joke:

And he is laying the groundwork for romance novels generated by new algorithms. "I've already set it up," he said. "There are only so many body parts."

Yikes.

Much of this content appears to be nothing more than an aggregation of web search results.  In fact, when asked about one of his products, Philip M Parker, the man behind this initiative, admits in the article that "if you are good at the Internet, this book is useless."

While the value of the content in many of these 200K+ works is debatable, I can't help but wonder what the future looks like for this sort of approach.  Mix in the promises of the semantic web and a few other clever algorithms and you might have something there.  For more info, check out Parker's YouTube video, embedded below.

Brookstone's Content Opportunity

While dining with the family and waiting for a table at The Cheesecake Factory Saturday night I decided to kill some time in Brookstone's.  They had a device on display that really caught my eye.  It's called the SportCast Wireless Baseball Scoreboard.  It's a simple LCD display that provides up-to-the minute box score and standings information, all received through a satellite feed. 

I'm a baseball junkie but even I feel the $99 price tag for this was way too high.  I look at something like this and think of what it could become though...

The device's dimensions are ideal for placement on a desk or shelf.  Sitting next to your computer you'd have a bit of additional content surface area that could be used for a variety of things.  It's also a great size to take with you.  I could see them adding a flap that's set up to serve as both the stand and a protective cover.

Why make it more portable?  Because I think there's a great opportunity to provide more content.  Think of this as a stripped-down Kindle.  Thanks to the satellite feed it could receive all sort of additional content.  Would I want to read a book on this thing?  No, but it would offer a great way to take newspapers, magazines and other short form content on the road, always up-to-date.  If there's not enough memory already built in to house the content, just add an SD slot for customers to increase it on their own.

Then there's the advertising component.  It would be pretty simple to create an additional revenue stream by including banner ads, for example.  They could offer two subscription models: One that's less expensive with ads and an ad-free one that's a bit pricier.

(Speaking of advertising, when we finally got seated at The Cheesecake Factory I noticed that every other page of the menu is an ad for another store in the mall.  Pretty smart, especially when you think about the captive audience reading the menu and the fact that they're already at the mall.)

Suddenly that $99 price tag wouldn't seem so expensive, especially if this device could be my gateway to portable content that's priced at the same level as what Amazon charges for the same content on the Kindle.  I wouldn't need the sexier eInk technology for this...a simple LCD would do the trick.