President of Outskirts Press

blogging, branding, facebook, Google, Social Networking Sites

Self Publishing Branding on Social Media Channels

On this blog I have often discussed the topic of marketing & branding, particularly as it applies to self publishing and social media (sites like Facebook and YouTube, etc.). In fact, in some specific posts in the past, I displayed graphics presenting the way in which Outskirts Press brands itself on multiple social media channels in an effort to market our brand consistently. Previously, these graphics featured the tagline: Write Anything, Publish Everything, Market Everywhere along with three individuals in the act of writing, publishing, and marketing, respectively.

As is so often the case, Facebook and YouTube then decided to change their “look” once again. And at roughly the same time, Outskirts Press added Pinterest to our list of active social media channels. Plus, we wanted to concentrate more specifically on the monthly promotions and discounts we offer. Self Publishing is becoming more competitive than ever before, and even though Top Consumer Reviews has rated Outskirts Press the #1 self-publishing company (more on that in the near future), we still have to compete aggressively for those authors who shop based solely on price (rather than high quality and service).

So our promotions became the focal point of our branding considerations. And we wanted to continue to carry that branding & marketing across our growing family of social media sites which now includes Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In, YouTube, various blogs, Google Plus, and Pinterest.

Like everything, branding and promotion begins on our own website, where we hold the most control over look and functionality. So here is an example of how a monthly promotion appears on our home page:

Self publishing branding at Outskirts Press — Self Publishing Branding at Outskirts Press

Facebook was next. We wanted to utilize the “Cover” graphic Facebook allocates for branding purposes to visually connect the same promotion, while still simultaneously mentioning other monthly events occurring on our Facebook page AND continuing to remind new visitors to “Like” us:

Self publishing branding on Facebook — Self Publishing branding on Facebook

Since Facebook superimposes a square Avatar graphic in the lower left-hand corner of the Cover Graphic, our Facebook graphic also attempts to incorporate that into the overall design aesthetic by using a “lifestyle” image of people engaged in the act of reading and/or writing (typically with large smiles on their faces). Facebook Terms of Service prevent us from placing our actual URL in this cover graphic (although if you look around at other Facebook pages, there are plenty of companies doing it anyway), so we simply say “Visit our website for details” and then include a link to our site in the “About” box directly below the Avatar graphic.

This “Visit our Website” wording is also helpful on YouTube, which also superimposes a URL over whatever Cover Graphic you upload. YouTube’s Channel lay-out changed recently by “borrowing” the same “Cover Graphic” concept from Facebook. In their case, however, the cover graphic specifications are more demanding because YouTube accounts for various platforms, resolutions, and even high-retina displays like the iPad 2+. All of this falls under the realm of “Responsive Website Design” which, if I find time, I will begin to blog about more in the future as Outskirts Press begins to make that design transition for all our online properties. But, in the meantime, just know that creating the cover graphic for YouTube requires an initially HUGE graphic that is then dynamically cropped to appear correctly on multiple devices. Easier said than done, but we ultimately end up with this.

Self publishing branding on YouTube — Self Publishing Branding on YouTube

You can see that the actual “content” of the graphic is respectively small in this sample due to the requirements of the Responsive Website Design specifications for this graphic. In other words, this graphic has to look just as good on an iPhone being held vertically, which decreases the width of this graphic substantially.

Next comes Linked-In, which fortunately, doesn’t yet concern itself with Responsive Website Design specifications for its uploads (although I imagine that is simply a matter of time), so we’re safe uploading a fairly cut-n-dry image of a set height and width:

Self publishing branding on Linked-In — Self Publishing Branding on Linked-In

Pinterest is next, and given the constraints set out by their “Boards” we’re unable to use optimal graphics for the Board page, leaving us with this:

Self publishing branding on Pinterest — Self Publishing Branding on Pinterest

That leaves three other self publishing social media channels for Outskirts Press: Twitter, Self-Publishing News, and Google +. They don’t fall so easily into the above branding category, so I’ll discuss them next time…

Brent Sampson, facebook, self publishing

Self Publishing Bad News & Good News

Back in April, I wrote this paragraph in the closing moments of one of my blog postings: “And speaking of best, over the course of the next few posts, I’ll write more about the 3rd annual Fandemonium Anthology, the 3rd annual Best Book of the Year awards, the 5th placement (hopefully) on the Inc. 500/5000 list, and our 10-year anniversary.”

And in the following posts, I covered the publication of the 3rd annual Fandemonium Facebook Anthology and the winner of the 3rd annual Best Book of the Year awards. That leaves us with the Inc 500/5000 list and our 10-year anniversary, but I’m also going to throw in a big milestone Outskirts Press hit yesterday. But first the bad news. After 4 consecutive years appearing on the Inc. Magazine 500/5000 list of American’s fastest-growing private companies, a run that began back in 2008, we did not qualify for the list a 5th consecutive time. Last time I checked, less than 1000 companies have appeared on the list five times in a row, much less consecutively, so 4 consecutive years is something to be proud of. And this means we get to work even harder through 2013 and 2014, delivering to all our clients continued stellar service and quality at competitive prices.

And now the good news! Yesterday, Outskirts Press reached 10,000 Fans on its Facebook Page, a milestone we are all very proud of. We’d like to thank the writing and reading community for their continued support and friendly participation in one of self-publishing’s growing online communities. Now, all 10,000+ of our Facebook fans are in the running for a free Apple iPad we will give away in a random drawing we hold very soon. More details will be forthcoming on the Self Publishing News blog.

And everyone will want to stay involved with our Facebook page for the drawing we hold once we pass the 25,000 milestone. Stay tuned!

That still leaves the topic of our 10 Year Anniversary, which we officially celebrate in October of this year. I say “officially” because Outskirts Press was “up and operational” in 2002, but didn’t officially incorporate as a corporation until 2003. So you could say we’re already smack dab in the middle of our 10th year, and there’s lots more to come. Our talented editing, writing, and designing artisans along with our passionate authors (and IT/accounting and administrative folks) are all to be thanked and congratulated. Here’s to many more!

Speaking of 10 years, my lovely wife and I are celebrating our 10-year wedding anniversary this month. Happy Anniversary, Jeanine. I love you.

facebook, Pinterest

Save 10% on the latest Facebook Anthology, Fandemonium!

For the past three years, Outskirts Press has collected original short stories and poems from its Facebook community at http://facebook.com/outskirtspress for free publication in an annual anthology titled Fandemonium. This exercise offers writers a chance to interact with Outskirts Press in a fun, fast way without cost or obligation while experiencing the joy of publishing (and seeing their work published) in a first-hand way. To top it off, the proceeds from all Fandemonium sales go toward the American Red Cross, which was the charity chosen by our social media community back in 2011 when we published the inaugural edition.

Over the years, the charity (American Red Cross), retail price ($16.95), title and cover (see below) have all remained branded and consistent — another important facet of self-publishing a series of books:

Congratulations to the writers included in all three volumes, the table of contents for which can be seen by visiting each respective bookstore page by clicking on the cover image above (which, incidentally, is also where one can enjoy the 10% discount!) This is also the first year we’ve been including Pinterest in our social media efforts, and a collection of our anthologies can be found on our Self-Publishing Anthologies board on Pinterest.

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Biggest self-publishing promotion of the year

On July 1st we launched our biggest self-publishing promotion of the year at Outskirts Press — an opportunity to save $200 or more instantly on our most popular publishing package, the Diamond. In the years past where we have offered this discount, is has proven to be our most popular.

Holding “4th of July” events is a mainstay in America commerce, as evidenced by all the car commercials and retail store specials you’re doubtlessly being bombarded with. This is a week when people’s attentions are generally elsewhere (outside, BBQing, boating, camping, swimming, being with family, and watching fireworks, etc.). In an effort to maintain monthly “cash flow” many companies and businesses historically “sweeten the pot” to lure customers and clients to their places of business even during this holiday where Americans, at large, are too busy having fun outside to be inside buying things. It must work. Year after year, you see the same car commercials and retail store specials.

Our July promotion certainly works for us. Unlike some of our competitors who artificially inflate their prices just so they can offer 50% discounts all the time, our black/white packages are packed with value and already in the sub-$1000 range. We do not have $13,000 packages simply so aggressive, commission-based sales people can sell them for $6,500 and call it a “50% discount.” Doing such things ultimately undermines the true value of your services, affecting the long term credibility of your business.

At Outskirts Press, our self-publishing packages have remained consistently value-packed and economically priced for years, and we expend a good amount of effort communicating that value with our clients through various channels like phone, email, and social media channels. As a result, many writers come to recognize Outskirts Press as their self-publisher of choice. For many, it’s simply a matter of timing — having a manuscript that is ready to go at the same time the price is achievable. It is our hope our 20% discount in July helps many more authors reach their publishing goals. An instant savings of $200 (or more if they choose our full color Pearl package) certainly does help.

We are able to offer this deep discount (it’s deep for us), not because we artificially inflate all our prices to accommodate a huge discount, and not because we undercut the value of the discounted packages, but because we are confident that the majority of authors who publish with Outskirts Press once will choose to publish with us again and tell many of their friends about their great experience. If the daily author testimonials being posted are any indication, that seems to be working, too.

Happy 4th of July everybody!

Pinterest, self publishing

Self Publishing Award Winners on Pinterest

I’ve spent a lot of posts talking about the Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year awards over the past few months and even though we announced the winner on the Self Publishing News blog, I realized I hadn’t mentioned the winner here. This gives a good opportunity to also discuss another way Outskirts Press is using Pinterest, as a way of further promoting our Best Book of the Year winners and finalists with their own board. We “pin” the three finalists and then the winning author’s photo is also pinned, along with some biographical information. You can see our self publishing finalists and the winners from 2010, 2011, and 2012 on Pinterest by clicking here. And in doing so, you’ll learn the recently crowned winner of the Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year for 2012.

The Pinterest board that focuses on our winners and finalists is different from many of our other boards in that it continues to grow and evolve, with four new pins added every year. In reality, this is how most Pinterest boards should be (albeit, perhaps “pinned” more frequently). Highly successful Pinterest Boards (from a social media perspective) should categorize “pins” and then constantly add new pins within that category. These are the boards that receive the most followers and activity. Most of our boards are static, in that they announce a specific collection of books at a specific period of time (self publishing bestsellers in a particular month, for example), and as a result, those boards never change. That is admittedly defeating much of the advantages of Pinterest, because why would someone bother to “follow” a board that never changed or expanded?

On the other hand, our monthly self publishing bestseller boards do allow us to collect a diverse collection of books that all share one trait (best selling status), and that makes it easier to point to them as a collection when discussing them on other sites or blogs. For example, if I want to mention our top 10 bestsellers from the month of May, I can simply say “Click here to see them” rather than having to generate 10 different clicks with 10 different images. Pinterest has already done that work for me.

Ultimately, both static boards and dynamic boards have their place on Pinterest.

Brent Sampson

Changing email addresses to combat spam

I’ve had the same personal email address at Outskirts Press since I started this company in 2002. Like most entrepreneurs/founders, I was wearing “multiple hats” and doing multiple tasks in the early days, so while I had different email addresses for different departments (information, production, marketing, etc.), my own personal “Brent Sampson” email address at Outskirts Press has been the same for over 10 years. As Outskirts Press grew exponentially, and as Outskirts Press added more people to assist with the hundreds, and then thousands, of authors “coming through our doors,” my email box exploded — sometimes literally, with the Outlook .pst file often becoming so big it crashed seemingly all the time, even with frequent archiving. More people and more Outskirts Press email addresses were added to spread out the volume, but the fact remained that once people had my email address, they rarely used anyone else’s.

Spam is a lot like that. Once your email address is on some spam lists, it becomes nearly impossible to fight the deluge. Spam/bulk filters and “rules” can only do so much. In the early years of Outskirts Press, I was extremely prudent about keeping my email address off of spam lists, since I knew my normal, REAL email volume was bad enough. To keep my email address from spam lists, I never used it when signing up for services/information over the Internet — I had a different email address specifically for that purpose.

However, over the past year, I became less concerned with protecting my personal Outskirts Press email address from spam, probably because my REAL work related email was finally becoming manageable due to aggressive delegation of responsibilities that I had held on to for so long. In retrospect, I’m not sure why one was related to the other (perhaps subconsciously, I MISSED crashing my Outlook .pst file due to volume). But, sadly, it only takes one or two “submit your email address here” missteps to lose control when those sites seemingly add your email address to other lists and then others still until you suddenly find yourself receiving hundreds and thousands of emails with subject matters as ridiculous and diverse as…

2 easy steps to get 1500 in less than an hour
Just like your neighbors (receive cash back on your home Monday)
Urgent personal matter regarding your credit rating
Serious complications associated with mesh implant
Cheap Auto Coverage
Summer is here get fit with Dr oz
How to save your health, Brent Sampson
We have just what Dad wants and for only $19.99
Order modern medicaments for better sex. Cheaper than offline!
You shouldn’t go another day withoutb
MUST SEE- Dr Oz Exposes the new diet breakthrough
Unsecured Business Loans for Every Business Owner with Any Credit Score
Explore the Possibilities With Beautiful Chinese Women
Your Service Order Request: Home Warranty Confirmation
You Are Risking A Lot Here by not activating your policy- extended one more day
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Grab trusty medicaments against premature ejaculation. Works really fast!
Last Chance: Get 20% off your order + Free Shipping
Receive FREE Bible verses daily.
2013 Medicare Plans
Take the guesswork out of Father’s Day
Secure your loan application in 7 minutes
Your pain can be quickly and effectively reduced today by Anatabloc
Log in details enclosed…Hot brides from Russia
Get the money you need
Discover this joint pain secret
Home Depot and Sears new window quotes.
Try the electronic cigarette on us!

… and that’s just from THIS MORNING!

Spam, your days of bombarding my personal Outskirts Press email box are coming to an end! Over the next week I will be phasing out my Brent Sampson email address that I’ve had since 2002 and I will create a new one. Doing so comes with some necessary logistic steps and some potential downsides, which I’ve listed below, but in this “war on spam” I have to consider that acceptable collateral damage. Here are the steps and downsides I anticipate:

1. Notify the Outskirts Press board, our executive Vice President, and the department heads at Outskirts Press that I’m changing my email address to something else. They, in turn, will disseminate that contact information to others in their respective departments.

2. Notify personal contacts like family and close friends of my change of email address.

3. Change the Outskirts Press system notices to my new email address (our system notifies me automatically of some statistics and milestones related to our company, so I’d still like to receive those emails).

4. Put an auto-responder on the “old” Brent Sampson email address that is “spam/robot” proof — this means, unfortunately, that it cannot mention my new email address within the body of the auto-response.

5. Realize (and come to grips with the fact) that much of the contact I currently enjoy with our published author-base may cease or be delayed. This downside is what has prevented me from changing my email address for so long. I enjoy hearing from our authors. Many of the authors who write to me have been with Outskirts Press for a long time, and I consider many of them friends. The vast majority of emails I receive from authors are positive, and when they’re talking about something I love (like my company), it fills me with joy and pride to read what they have to say. I’ll miss that. Once in a while an email I receive from an author is negative, and when they’re talking about something I love (like my company), it breaks my heart; and I do everything I can to a) address their concern in a reasonable way, and b) prevent the issue from becoming a problem in the future whenever possible. But, the fact of the matter is that someone else now handles all those glowing author testimonials (new ones are added daily) and someone else now handles client concerns. And that means it’s time to make this change.

Dr. Oz, I’ve seen the last of you and your diet miracles. Good riddance.

self publishing

Outskirts Press Book of the Year thoughts

Last week the three finalists for the Outskirts Press Book of the Year were announced. Congratulations to Sharon Rhodes for her novel, It’s a Family Affair; Whitney J. LeBlanc for his book, Blues in the Wind – Revisited; and Basil Pallis for his true experience brought to the pages of 46 Days in Ukraine. Last Friday, these three finalists were put into a public poll on our Outskirts Press blog to determine the winner of the 2012 Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year. We are accepting votes until tomorrow.

Sharon jumped out to an early lead last Friday, quickly capturing over 90% of the votes. As of today, her vote percentage remains in the mid 80’s. Whitney and Basil have their work cut out for them if they wish to end the reign of female authors winning the Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year prize. Last year Susan Mercer won the 2011 prize for her book, Pathway to Math Proficiency: Mastering Equivalent Fractions, Decimals and Percents…With Ease and Doris Kenney Marcotte won the 201o Best Book of the Year award for her novel, The Beads of Lapis Lazuli.

It’s strange writing “last year Susan Mercer won the 2011 prize…” because that makes it sound like it’s 2012. That’s always been one of the problems with book awards. Typically the year of the Award doesn’t coincide with the year of publication. For instance, our CIPA EVVY finalists were just awarded their 2013 EVVY Awards, even though those same books were in the running for the 2012 Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year Award. Yes, the 2013 EVVY contest was concluded before the 2012 Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year awards. What kind of sense does that make?

But it is important to note that our awards are for a specific year in which the book was published. So I think we’ll slightly change the way we mention our award. Instead of calling them the 2012 Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year Awards, it may be more effective to say the Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year for 2012. A small matter of semantics, yes, but that’s what a writer worries about–semantics.

In any event, a new board on Pinterest has been created to recognize our Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year finalists and winners and you can see them here: http://pinterest.com/outskirtspress/best-book-of-the-year-winners-finalists/

When the public poll on our blog determines the winner for 2012, he or she will be added to the Pinterest board. Good luck to them all.

self publishing a book

More details about the Outskirts Press 2012 Best Book of the Year Awards

Today on the Self Publishing News blog, we announced the first finalist for the 2012 Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year Awards.

Congratulations to Sharon Rhodes, author of It’s a Family Affair, which is the second novel she has written and published with Outskirts Press. We will be announcing Finalist #2 and #3 in the coming days and then public voting will commence to determine the winner this coming Friday.

Winning a CIPA EVVY Award is a pre-requisite to winning our own Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year award, now in its 4th year. In 2010 we published a book called The Beads of Lapis Lazuli, by Doris Kenney Marcotte, which went on to win a 2011 EVVY Award for Fiction and become a finalist for our contest. Doris was up against The Key to Job Success in Any Career, by Frank B. Leibold, Ph.D and Psych Consults by Robert J. Mignone, M.D. In the weeks following the finalist announcements, Doris engaged in some aggressive “author platform” leveraging and social media marketing efforts, which paid off — her book was named the 2010 Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year, recognizing the best book we published in 2010, written by the author who demonstrated the best marketing muscle. Her interview is here.

In 2011 we published a book called Pathway to Math Proficiency:Mastering Equivalent Fractions, Decimals and Percents…with Ease, by Susan Mercer, which won a 2012 EVVY Award for Workbooks. She went on to win the 2011 Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year award, after competing head-to-head with the other two finalists: Angelic Warfare, by Bolko Zimmer and The Keya Quests: The Battle for Shivenridge, by Glenn Skinner. And like the 2010 contest, the 2011 public poll was a close call, going right up to the wire.

I summarized my thoughts about how the public polling panned out here. In that posting, I shed some light on the aggressive marketing efforts the winners must make to secure the award. It may also help to know what process determines the three finalists in the first place. Logistic and creative elements have already been taken into consideration and recognized (given the fact that all finalists are already EVVY Award-winning books), so determining the three finalists are admittedly a more subjective decision making process. While the “order” of the EVVY Awards (first, second, third, merit) play a role in determining our finalists, there are other considerations we take into account that EVVY judges do not. We know the authors. We are more familiar with their writing career and talents and aspirations. We know if they have published previous books and, if so, how THOSE books have performed in various contests. The CIPA judges take none of these factors into account when judging individual EVVY Awards (nor should they) but we do when choosing finalists from among all the EVVY winners.

That said, Finalist #2 will be announced on Wednesday and Finalist #3 will be announced on Thursday. But, readers of this blog know they sometimes receive some news early, so allow me to say this: This upcoming poll does give us an opportunity to witness a little social experiment first hand. You may have noticed from the paragraphs above that our previous two Best Book of the Year winners have been female, even though they were each competing against two other men in the Finalist rounds.

Without revealing TOO much about the next two finalists, I will give a hint and say that we have that same situation again. Sharon Rhodes will find herself head-to-head-to-head against two male finalists when the voting begins on the Outskirts Press blog this coming Friday. Let’s see if she continues the trend started by Doris and Susan before her, proving that in this digital day and age of social media marketing and online book promotion, female authors are not to be trifled with. Or will our first male Best Book of the Year author finally take a crown. We’ll find out this week!

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2013 CIPA EVVY Award Winners

The 19th Annual EVVY Awards took place last Saturday night in Denver. Our Outskirts Press blog will make the official announcement of our EVVY winners this week, but one of the benefits of reading my blog is that sometimes you get information early. So without further ado, here are the EVVY Award-winners from Outskirts Press:

First Place Winner

46 Days in Ukraine, by Basil Pallis (Non-Fiction/Experiences)

Second Place Winners:

Blues in the Wind – Revisited, by Whitney J. LeBlanc (Fiction)

The Cloudy Corners of Creation, by Mark Tate (Religion/Spirituality)

Third Place Winners:

Family Likeness, by Wilson Awasu (Religion/Spirituality)

It’s a Family Affair, by Sharon Rhodes (Fiction)

Living Between the Line, by Eulus Dennis (Autobiography/Memoirs)

Merit Award Winners:

To Know You by Rebecca Del Reye (Fiction)

On the Hole by Jeff Bacot, (Fiction)

EVVY Finalists:

Bahotep and the Stone of Edyn, by Ayden Eschen

Death at Willow Creek Mine, by J.D. Savid

Grateful Life, by John Fields

Obibini Blackman, by Kwasi Boadi

Shadows and Fire, by Jennifer Fales

One of these books will be recognized in the coming weeks as the Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year for 2012. Congratulations to them all!

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2012 Best Book of the Year qualifiers

Our third annual Best Book of the Year Award winner is going to be announced the first week of June. Leading up to that announcement, a few things need to take place.

1) The books we published in 2012 need to be qualitatively narrowed down to roughly 50 or less (that’s about 2%, so yes, we do cut deep). We do this process throughout the year by considering factors like editing, front cover design, back cover content, retail price, subject matter, interior design, interior content, etc. The books that make this cut are officially invited to the Colorado Independent Publishers Association EVVY Awards. Those invitations were sent out earlier this year to our EVVY nominees.

2) The EVVY submissions are judged by an independent panel of judges on behalf of the Colorado Independent Publishers Association. The judges are judging not only Outskirts Press books, but all the books submitted to this contest by publishers and self-publishing authors from around the country. The EVVY judges arrive upon a selection of “EVVY Finalists” and notify all the participating publishers. These EVVY Finalists were determined within the past 2 weeks.

3) The EVVY Awards Banquet takes place to announce the First, Second, Third Place, and Merit Award winners in each category from among the EVVY Finalists. This Awards banquet and reception occurs this coming Saturday night in the Denver Tech Center. I will be on hand to receive awards for our authors who are unable to attend in person. Joining me at the EVVYs will be Rob M. from our marketing division, Lora G. from our tech & analytics division, and of course my beautiful wife.

4) From among the Outskirts Press EVVY winners, three Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year finalists will be announced on May 20th.

Since we know every EVVY Finalist wins an EVVY Award, and since we know winning an EVVY 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or Merit Award is a prerequisite to being an Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year finalist, then we know that our three finalists, and the ultimate Best Book of the Year for 2012, is among our 12 EVVY Finalists. And those finalists are below.

One of these books will be the 2012 Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year. Which one will it be and which author will win the $1,500 prize? Stay tuned in the coming weeks to find out (and to vote in a public poll to determine the ultimate winner). Congratulations to all our contenders.