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Here is another update from our upcoming “Facebook Achievements” functionality that we are launching soon for self publishing authors with Outskirts Press:
Last week we announced our Beta test program on our Facebook page, and then on the following Monday (last Monday), we invited 25 of those Facebook friends to add a special Award to their Outskirts Press shopping cart as part of the Beta Test. Interestingly, even though our Alpha Test (an internal test using some of our personal Facebook accounts) worked fine, this Beta Test (an external test featuring a small number of our actual authors) didn’t work nearly as well. But that is what is important about testing — we took that information from the initial Beta Test on Monday and our web developers made some adjustments to how Outskirts Press was “communicating” with Facebook.
We then invited those authors to test the Award again and had greater success. One thing we learned was that a greater percentage of authors than we expected do not leave themselves “logged-in” to Facebook, but rather log-out after their session with Facebook is complete. Our Outskirts Press functionality works nearly seamlessly when the author is logged in simultaneously with Facebook and Outskirts Press (through cookies), but otherwise, in order to receive the Achievement on Facebook, the author must first “Connect to Facebook” via the typical blue button that is becoming more prevalent on websites.
Ultimately, the beta testing was successful because we caught bugs in the programming we may have otherwise missed, which will allow us to launch this new, complicated functionality more successfully in the coming weeks. Then, our authors will be able to conveniently and automatically share their writing, publishing, and marketing milestones and achievements with all their Facebook friends.
Before I get back to updating everyone on the recent happenings at Outskirts Press (Facebook Achievements, Book Your Trip to Hollywood options, the 2011 Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year contenders and winner, our new full-color illustrations, etc.), I wanted to provide a link to my recent appearance on LA Talk Radio, where Max Tucci (of Max & Friends) interviews me about self-publishing.
I even got a chance to put out some props to our Best Book of the Year winners (Doris from 2010 and Susan from 2011), which I always enjoy doing when possible.
Anyway, give a listen at this streaming audio link: http://www.latalkradio.com/Players/Max-062412.shtml
In an effort to catch up on my blog postings from the nearly two week hiatus I took due to other priorities and responsibilities, I’m providing brief summaries of some of the recent events and “goings-on” at Outskirts Press. One of the major initiatives we are launching this summer to help self publishing authors gain more exposure for their own writing, publishing, and marketing accomplishments is our FACEBOOK ACHIEVEMENTS.
For those who haven’t heard of the term “gamification,” this is the concept of motivating “action” in a user-base by providing awards and public recognition for accomplishing certain tasks — in essence, making a “game” out of something that is typically seen as more “mundane.” Of course, the most common examples of “gamification” are seen in video games themselves, when you “level up” or pass a certain stage or build a certain character to a certain level of “experience points.” These are gamification elements because they provide an award for accomplishing a task or passing a milestone.
Relatively recently, businesses have started applying the same concept to motivate clients and customers to take certain actions. Four Square recognizes its users with Major badges, for instance, when said users visit certain local businesses with enough frequency.
Our own gamification functionality has been in development for a while now and is going to launch live within the coming months. Yesterday we posted an invitation on our Facebook page for Outskirts Press published authors to volunteer for an open Beta Test of the awards program. We’re looking for 20-40 volunteers to receive their first Beta Award in recognition and thanks for helping us test this new feature. They will be provided with instructions on how to notify us if something doesn’t work quite right. Then, when it launches, Outskirts Press will be connected automatically with a user’s Facebook account and will broadcast the author’s major publishing & marketing accomplishments to all his or her friends. Of course, an author can easily opt-out of the program at any time. Based upon preliminary feedback, our authors are excited about the new feature and we are excited to be launching it for them soon.
It’s been a while since my last post. June has been busy at Outskirts Press, with a lot going on, so priorities have not allowed the volume of updates to my blog that I would like. When I last posted, we were hosting our free social media webinar, which was our highest attended free webinar yet. Thank you to Elise in our Marketing Support group for putting that together for our authors and those from our social communities who registered.
Two days after that the polls closed on our Best Book of the Year contest and Susan Mercer was recognized as the 2011 Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year award-winner. Congratulations, Susan!
That following Monday we opened up a “sneak peek” for our authors to our new Book Your Trip to Hollywood suite of services designed to help authors turn their books into movies or a television series. And the following Friday we launched those first two Hollywood services officially.
And yesterday we announced additional styles to our growing suite of custom, full-color illustration packages. Yes, a lot has been going on as Outskirts Press continues to help authors write, publish, and market the book of their dreams. I’ll discuss all of these events in more detail in the coming days/weeks.
Today Outskirts Press is holding a free webinar on Social Media. Based upon the number of sign-ups, this is a very popular topic. The webinar is live and will be conducted by Elise, the point person heading up our author support division. In the webinar, Elise covers opportunities for authors that are presented by Facebook, Linked-In, Twitter, and YouTube. She uses two fictitious examples of writers (one, an author of a non-fiction book and the other, an author of a poetry book) and how they can use these social media channels to better promote their book and build their own author platforms.
This webinar is a complement to one of our services, the Author Platform Set-up Through Social Media, which is a convenient way for an author (published with us or not) to kick-start their social media marketing efforts…
All this week our Outskirts Press publishing blog has been featuring the three finalists for our 2011 Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year award. Here are the three finalists:
Congratulations to Susan, Bolko, and Glenn. For more details about all three of these books and their authors, visit our Outskirts Press blog. Beginning tomorrow, June 1, our blog will open the public polls so our social community of readers and writers can vote on the finalist best deserving of the award of the 2011 Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year. Good luck to them!
In the past week we have posted the results of the 18th Annual EVVY Awards, which is the contest held by the Colorado Independent Publishers Association. Outskirts Press won 15 awards, the most among all participating Colorado publishers. Winning an EVVY is a pre-requisite to winning our own Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year award, now in its 3rd 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. 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. Her interview is here.
We’re at it again. From among the 15 EVVY winners announced last Thursday at the CIPA ceremony, Outskirts Press selects three finalists. Those finalists will be announced next Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. And then the public poll (open to everyone) will be posted on Friday, June 1st at SelfPublishingNews.com where everyone will vote upon the winner.
So how are the Best Book of the Year finalists determined from among the EVVY winners? Since they’ve won an EVVY Award, a lot of the technical and artistic components have already been taken into consideration and recognized, so the three finalists are admittedly a more subjective decision making process. We do not simply go in order of EVVY prizes awards (First, Second, Third) for two main reasons. 1) Each category of the EVVY awards are judged separately and independently, meaning a book that receives a 3rd place in one category is not automatically “worse” than a book receiving a 1st Place in an alternate category; the first category could have simply had a collection of a much higher caliber of entries. 2) Unlike the EVVY judges, we have more context to apply to our decision for the Best Book of the Year finalists. 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.
So with all those factors in mind, we first seek the opinions of various people at Outskirts Press in regard to the EVVY Winners. “From among this list, who do YOU think should be the Finalists, and why?” We collect those answers and add those variables to our consideration. Next, we look at the EVVY Winners in order of placement (I realize I just said the decision doesn’t simply depend upon the order of the prizes, and it doesn’t, but the order of the EVVY awards are taken into consideration), and from that order we basically ask ourselves, “Is there a reason this book should NOT be a finalist?” For example, the 1st place EVVY winner, Opting In, is not eligible for a 2011 Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year award because that book was published in 2012 (which is also the reason we didn’t nominate it specifically and instead the author nominated it herself since she was personally a member of CIPA, also). It’s a great accomplishment and we love to see authors take their destiny in their own hands. Congratulations, Molly.
So that leaves us with the 2nd, 3rd, and Merit award winners to consider. Using the parameters and considerations outlined above, we arrive upon the three finalists. And those finalists will be announced next week in preparation for the voting to begin on June 1. Stay tuned…
Last Thursday I attended the 18th annual EVVY Awards, held annually by the Colorado Independent Publishers Association and this year introduced by Jake Jabs of American Furniture Warehouse fame. Of the nominees we announced last December, and the finalists we announced last week, here are the results of the awards ceremony. Congratulations to all the winners. In the coming weeks, this list of winners will be narrowed down to three finalists for the Outskirts Press 2011 Best Book of the Year Award. In the next post, I’ll go into more detail about how those three finalists are selected.
But in the meantime, here are the EVVY winners, including the Outskirts Press sweep of the Autobiography/Memoir category:
1st Place
Autobiography/Memoirs
2nd Place
Autobiography/Memoirs
3rd Place
Autobiography/Memoirs
2nd Place
Workbooks
2nd Place
Religion
2nd Place
Fiction
3rd Place
Fiction
Merit Award
Fiction
Merit Award
Fiction
Merit Award
Fiction
2nd Place
Juvenile/Young Adult
3rd Place
Juvenile/Young Adult
Merit Award
Juvenile/Young Adult
Merit Award
Inspirational/Spiritual
Merit Award
Parenting/Family
Toward the end of each calendar year, Outskirts Press specifically nominates a certain percentage of our published titles for that year to submit to the Colorado Independent Publishers Association. Not only is winning an EVVY Award an honor it its own right, but one EVVY Winner then goes on to be named the Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year. We have thirteen finalists from among all the books we officially nominated for EVVY consideration. And I just heard from CIPA that Outskirts Press actually published two additional EVVY Finalists, where the authors submitted their books directly, since they resided in Colorado and were members of CIPA personally. Congratulations to them, as well.
Tomorrow evening, Jake Jabs of American Furniture Warehouse fame will be hosting the 18th Annual EVVY Awards where 1st, 2nd, 3rd Place, and Merit Awards will be handed out to all the EVVY finalists from all the participating self-publishers. So, just how are the EVVY Awards judged?
1. Each EVVY judge answers 30 questions for each book they judge. 25 are general questions that are non-category specific and 5 are category-specific questions. The non-category specific questions involve both technical and creative elements about the books, like for instance, does the book have a barcode, does it have an ISBN, does it have a copyright page, etc. 10 questions are true or false and 20 are scored on a scale of 1 (bad) through 100 (perfect)
2. The first round of judging is scored and all books with first phase scores under 50 are eliminated from consideration. The remaining entries are then judged by a different judge answering the same questions and the scores are taken again. All entries that attain a score of 70 or above from the average of both judge’s scores are deemed finalists. These are the 13 (+2) books that represent our EVVY finalists this year.
3. The finalists are then judged a third time. The order of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and Merit awards are determined by a combination of high score, judge’s determination, and overall comparison of other books within the category. This “Category comparison” means that the average scores can be the same across all categories.
4. 1st Place winners score 81 points or above. Books scoring between 74 – 80 are awarded second place.
Stay tuned for the Outskirts Press EVVY winners….
President of Outskirts Press 