President of Outskirts Press

Responding to online criticism – Reputation Management Part 1

Regardless of whether you are a for-profit business, a non-profit organization, an entrepreneur, or a published author, there will come a time when you are confronted with online criticism, poor reviews, April Fool’s Day jokes, or hoaxes from websites, bloggers, review sites, or forum postings. The more successful you are, the more this inevitability grows. Don’t believe me? Just ask McDonald’s, which recently had to deal with the “Seriously McDonald’s” photo hoax, that suggested they were discriminating against African Americans.

Even our Armed Forces are not immune. In fact, the Air Force released a “Rules of Engagement” flow chart that can serve for “best practices” for dealing with online criticism and managing one’s brand reputation online. The Air Force Response Assessment recommends that once you identify online criticism, next you must identify the category in which the “critic” most closely falls from among these choices:

“Trolls”
“Ragers”
“Misguided Individuals”
“Unhappy Customers”

Identifying the appropriate category that describes the website owner, blogger, reviewer, or forum poster will help you arrive upon the most appropriate response. Next time we will discuss the Internet Troll and what you should do if a “Troll” is criticizing you, your business, or your book online.

best self publishing, best self publishing sites, compare self publishing companies, self publishing

Best self publisher for reviews and awards

In the previous post I looked at the number or 4 or 5 star reviews received on Amazon for books published by the top 6 major online self publishing firms. That chart is below again as a refresher. This time the chart is in order from highest to lowest, which, admittedly, is how the previous chart should have been, too (rather than the order it was in, which was the order in which I conducted the research).

Publishing Firm	Percentage of 4 or 5 star ratings
Outskirts Press	52%
Company U	37%
Company C	27%
Company A	24%
Company X	19%
Company L	13%

My conclusion was that Outskirts Press books and authors receive statistically more and statistically higher reviews on Amazon than our 5 competitors. In fact, it’s not even close. 52% compared to the next highest, Publisher U at 37%. Remember, I don’t mention our competitors by name, but it’s probably not too hard to decipher this table…

Reader reviews are all well and good — in fact, we’re proud to come out on top in this analysis — but I was curious if there was a correlation between high book reviews on Amazon and results within a widely recognized and valued book award contest. So I browsed the results of the ForeWord Reviews BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDS that were just listed in the July/August issue of ForeWord Reviews trade magazine to compare these same 6 companies:

Publishing Firm	Book of the Year Awards
Outskirts Press	4
Company U	4
Company C	1
Company A	0
Company X	0
Company L	0

What do you know? There is almost a direct correlation between the percentage of 4-5 star reviews on Amazon and the number of book awards won by a major book contest.

Not surprisingly, those publishers whose books received less than 25% 4-5 star reviews didn’t win any awards at all. And this in spite of the volume/quantity advantage they have. For instance, Publishers A and X publish approximately 2-4 times as many books as we do in a month, and Publisher L claims to publish about ten times as many. Well, quantity doesn’t translate to quality, as you can see here.

I guess this also proves that Publisher L’s CEO was accurate when, in a 2009 New York Times article, he claimed that his company has “easily published the largest collection of bad poetry in the history of mankind.”

I don’t get the press that he gets (probably thankfully, because I’ve been known to put my foot in my mouth on occasion, too), so for the convenience of NY Times journalists everywhere, they are welcome to my analysis above, and this handy-dandy quote: Outskirts Press easily publishes better books, on average, than our five major competitors.

Actually, we seem to publish better books, on average, than any of our competitors. I searched the 2010 ForeWord Book of the Year Awards for all 20 of the publishers I’ve been posting about in the past and I couldn’t find any that can compete with Outskirts Press.

Just sayin’…

Amazon

Book publishing on Amazon

Over the past several posts we have been examining a screen shot showing the 7,300 books published by Outskirts Press for our authors that currently appear on Amazon.com, and we’ve been looking closer at the breadth of subject matter and quality. Well, so far we covered the breadth of subject matter, including the statistic that approximately 40% of the books we publish are fiction and approximately 20% are religious or spiritual in nature.

So now let’s cover the quality. Here’s the screen shot again, so we can look at the Average Customer Reviews of Outskirts Press books:

Of the 7,302 books appearing on Amazon, 4,052 have at least a one-star rating. Notice that this doesn’t mean 4,052 books ONLY have a one-star rating, since the number of books with 4 or 5 stars is included in this 4,052 number. Instead, it means that of the 7,302 Outskirts Press books appearing on Amazon, 55% of them have received a rating of some kind. Compare that with our 5 largest competitors, where that percentage is 42%, 30%, 25%, 21%, and 15% respectively. Ouch. By the way, I’ve mentioned in the past I don’t mention our competitors by name, even when I want to — like now.

Of course, simply receiving a rating doesn’t necessarily equate to “quality,” particularly as it involves the one-star ratings. But receiving a rating does relate to is ENGAGEMENT by the author in marketing effort. Let’s look at those figures above again. Only FIFTEEN PERCENT of one of the major online publisher’s authors have managed (or bothered) to even get 1 review of the book they worked so hard to write and then threw into a machine to publish. That’s kind of … sad. Perhaps that is because once their book is published, their publisher forgets about them. They probably don’t receive years of ongoing marketing support via email like our authors do with the exclusive Outskirts Press Marketing COACH.

So now let’s look at the quality of books, which relates to the number of reviews that are 4 stars or higher. For Outskirts Press, that number is 3,791, which is 52% of all the books we have published. That IS a demonstration of quality.

So, let’s compare the quality of Outskirts Press with the quality of those 5 other publishers, at least as determined by Amazon readers:

Publishing Firm	Percentage of 4 or 5 star ratings
Outskirts Press	52%
Company A	24%
Company U	37%
Company X	19%
Company C	27%
Company L	13%

Hmm, I guess on second thought, if I published with Company L, I wouldn’t go out of my way to get any reviews either – since I’d have the highest possibility among these 6 publishers of getting a lousy review. Better yet, I think I’d consider publishing with Outskirts Press, where our books are reviewed more often and receive statistically more 4 & 5 star reviews among all the major self-publishing companies. If you’re looking for a way to compare self publishing companies, this is one way. There are other ways, too, and I’ve blogged about one way here.

Amazon, self publishing

Amazon publishing

To continue the post from yesterday, we’re looking at this Amazon screen shot of the 7,302 books Outskirts Press currently has published and listed available for sale on Amazon for our authors:

We discussed the New Releases and Department sections yesterday. That brings us to Format, where you can see Paperback books are far and away the favorite, although Kindle Editions are catching up fast, considering the Paperback count starts in the year 2002 and the Kindle editions began in 2010 with the release of our Amazon Kindle Edition.

Since we also provide the Kindle Edition service for authors with books from other publishers, our Kindle numbers are actually much higher, but we often perform that service for authors “behind the scenes.”

We do a lot of these because authors from many of our competitors would rather pay us a small one-time fee to perform this service independently so they keep 100% of their profits as opposed to letting their current publisher do it and take up to 50% of their Kindle profits. Hmm, you’d think that same reasoning would translate to moving their books to Outskirts Press where we pay 100% profits on paperbacks and hardbacks, too. And you know what? It often does.

But I digress. “Binding” comes next and seems to be fairly redundant. Then comes mentions of specific authors and then Series, followed by “Shipping Option” and “Promotion.”

The “Average Customer Review” is interesting though, and I’ll cover that next time…

Amazon, self publishing, self publishing a book

A closer look at our self-published books on Amazon

In yesterday’s post I included a screen shot of our Outskirts Press books on Amazon.com, showcasing the 7,302 total title count (as of July 1). Let’s take a closer look at that screen shot and what it tells us about the breadth and quality of books being published by Outskirts Press:

The circled title count of 7,302 shows the number of books, in all formats, published by Outskirts Press.

The “New Releases” just to the left of the circled total title count shows 46 new Outskirts Press books were added to Amazon in June, while 298 were added over the months of April, May, and June, for an average of roughly 100 titles a month in that time period. The number of books we’ve put onto Amazon is actually much higher than that. With our Private Label publishing option, many authors and publishers use our high-quality, full-service packages “behind the scenes” and publish their books under their own publishing imprint name. Therefore, those titles don’t appear on a search for “Outskirts Press” nor contribute to any of the stats seen here.

In the “Department” column under the “New Releases” you can see Amazon’s categorical break-down of the types of books Outskirts Press has published onto Amazon. These categories are based upon the BISAC codes we and our authors assign to their books during the pre-production stage. Our two most popular categories are “Literature & Fiction (2,945)” followed by “Religion & Spirituality (1,456).” In other words, Literature & Fiction represents roughly 40% of our total output, while Religion & Spirituality represents 20%. With 60% of our business focused on these two categories, it’s no wonder we excel at both.

We’ll examine more stats next time…

is outskirts press legitimate

Is Outskirts Press legitimate?

“Is Outskirts Press legitimate?” This is a question we see from time to time in online forums and searches, and a question we even hear directly from potential authors. After all, as one of our successfully published authors, a doctor on the west coast, has said, “Outskirts Press almost seems too good to be true.” He just published his second book with us.

The short answer is “Yes, Outskirts Press is legitimate,” but don’t take my word for it. Take it from the hundreds of authors who have posted comments and testimonials on our website and on the Self Publishing Author blog.

Or take it from the thousands upon thousands of authors appearing on Amazon.com, where you can find over 7,300 Outskirts Press titles, written by writers and professionals just like you. See the Amazon screen shot to the right, with the total title count (as of July 1, 2011) circled in red. Outskirts Press books are for sale and available for order worldwide every day online from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Or take it from Facebook, where our legion of fans and friends outnumber all other high-quality, full-service firms. Notice I said “high-quality and full-service” so you-know-who and you-know-who don’t count.

Or take it from YouTube, where our growing number of videos, channel views, and total views outnumber all other high-quality, full-service book publishing and marketing firms.

Or take it from some of our successfully published authors, like:

Sally Shields, who published TWO #1 Amazon.com bestsellers with Outskirts Press. See her case study here.
Gang Chen, who earned over $100,000 in 180 days from Outskirts Press. See his case study here.
Andrew Rafkin, who published 4 different award-winning novels with Outskirts Press. See his case study here.
Susan R. Dolan & Audrey R. Vizzard, who were picked-up by a traditional publisher after publishing their book with Outskirts Press. See their case study here.
Ronnie Lee, perhaps the most prolific self-published author anywhere, with over 5,500 (and growing) pages of published material, all with Outskirts Press. See his case study here.

Or take it from a talented and diverse group of cover designers, illustrators, editors, book formatters, ghostwriters, marketing assistants, and other professionals who help approximately 150 Outskirts Press authors publish high-quality books every month. These talented people (see a small sample of them and some of their family members below) receive checks from Outskirts Press for a job well done.

Is Outskirts Press legitimate? The short answer is yes. Not only is Outskirts Press legitimate, but we publish books for established, legitimate writers and professionals, too — CEOs, politicians, speakers, doctors, lawyers, actors, and professional athletes from the Wide World of Sports, including:

FROM THE NBA: NBA All-Star and “Sixth Man of the Year” Ricky Pierce, author of Bouncing Billy
FROM THE NFL: St. Louis Cardinals, Carolina Panthers, and Tennessee Titans NFL star Isaac Byrd, author of How to Think Like a Pro & Play Like a Pro
FROM THE MLB: NY Yankee pitcher Fritz Peterson, author of Mickey Mantle Is Going To Heaven

Of course, all this means nothing if YOUR book remains unpublished, sitting in a drawer or on your hard drive, so the best way to prove it to yourself is to…

Any one of those three options will start you down the path of experiencing the best service and the best quality in affordable online book publishing.

branding, ceo, compare self publishing companies

3 Tips for Conducting Research Online – Tip #3

Over the last couple of posts, I have suggested that the problem with conducting research on the Internet is that it is difficult to find facts. Even Wikipedia uses “social opinion” to shape and shift information; although they also require corroborative evidence or support from encyclopedias and/or newspapers for much of their new content. Isn’t that ironic? I wonder what Wikipedia is going to do for corroboration when it puts encyclopedias and newspapers out of business.

Until then, any potential customer or client researching a product or service online finds herself or himself in the wild, wild west. All you can really do is follow a few simple tips. I posted Tip #1 (determining the legitimacy of the source) and Tip #2 (Look at the date of the content) previously.

Tip #3 for Conducting Research Online: Analyze multiple sources

If you were thinking about buying a new BMW, would you go to the Mercedes Benz website to conduct your research? Perhaps. But you certainly wouldn’t stop there. You would probably also go to the BMW site. And then you would look at some car review sites and/or magazines. Then you might read testimonials from people who had purchased the same BMW. And you might read testimonials from drivers of other cars. In other words, you would locate multiple sources and analyze all the information. Rarely would one online comment that “BMW sux” be enough to completely sway your $60,000 decision. And yet many people allow a single random comment on the Internet to sway their decisions on less expensive decisions all the time. When you consider going to a new restaurant, does one negative YELP review point you in a different direction? “Hamburger Joes SUX.” Isn’t it the same concept as “BMW sux” — one person with one opinion? In fact, if anything, the LESS expensive a product or service is, the MORE it requires many different opinions to reach a worthwhile consensus. This is because the barrier to adoption for less expensive things is so low, there will be many more opinions of it, so statistically speaking, you need a larger sampling to get an accurate average.

With the cost of our most popular publishing package coming in at $999, I wouldn’t necessarily say we were “less expensive” (although when you compare that to the average cost of independently publishing your book yourself with the cost of a professional book designer, cover designer, and off-set print-run, we certainly are). Since our services fall in the realm where comparative research is important, I recently compared four sources to arrive at an average score for 20 self-publishing companies, and those results are here, where Outskirts Press received an average of 33.41 points out of a possible 40.

But the point of all this is that, even if the service/option/product you are considering is “cheap” or “free,” comparative research is a must. The opinion of the person who writes “Hamburger Joes SUX” isn’t any more or less valid than the opinion of the person who writes “Hamburger Joes ROX.” For authors, it comes down to this: After the months or years it took to write your book, do you really want to rest the fate of it on “cheap” or “free” or on the opinion of one random “Hamburger Joes SUX/ROX” individual?

So, for readers of my blog who are in start-up mode themselves, or running/managing/operating their own business, my piece of advice is this: Get mentioned and reviewed in as many sources as you can. One might be bad. Others average. Hopefully most are good. And get lots of testimonials. Your satisfied clients are your best advocates. I’m pleased to say that we are in wonderful position as far as author praise is concerned; we get so many heart-warming and touching comments about our services and company every day, it just reinforces my personal drive to keep delivering even more value for them.

compare self publishing companies

3 Tips for Conducting Research Online – Tip #2

In yesterday’s post I suggested that the problem with conducting research on the Internet is that it is difficult to find facts. Even Wikipedia uses “social opinion” to shape and shift information; although they also require corroborative evidence or support from encyclopedias and/or newspapers for much of their new content. Isn’t that ironic? I wonder what Wikipedia is going to do for corroboration when it puts encyclopedias and newspapers out of business.

But until then, a consumer researching a product or service online finds himself in the wild, wild west. So all one can really do is follow a few simple tips. I posted Tip #1 yesterday, which was determining the legitimacy of the source.

Tip #2 for Conducting Research Online: Look at the date of the information

We think of the Internet as an immediate, up-to-date source for everything from news to the latest photographs of Lady Gaga. As a result, it is easy to assume everything you read on the Internet is timely. Don’t be fooled. “Information” (or a better term would simply be “content”) posted on the Internet is available for a loooong time. You may be looking at information that is 3, 4, 5 or more years old. It may no longer be relevant or even accurate (if it ever was). Always look at the date the content was initially posted to make a better assessment of its relevancy to your search.

And speaking of being fooled, be extra cautious of information posted on April 1. “April Fool’s Day” has earned its namesake in the Internet age, with desperate marketers using the date as justification for posting false, fraudulent, and libelous claims. A competitor of Outskirts Press, for example, once distributed a press release on April Fool’s Day claiming that the Library of Congress needed to add another wing to accommodate the vast quantity of books being published by said competitor. Another company in our industry claimed in a press release dated April 1 to have reached a deal with J.K. Rowling for the ebook rights to Harry Potter. Were both these press releases clever? Of course. But they muddy the waters in an already confusing industry and ultimately confuse the end customer/consumer/client even more. I’ve seen evidence in social media comments and postings that suggest many people fail to realize these press releases are “jokes.” Of course, that’s good news for the original company or individual who posted the April Fool’s Day press releases to begin with; they want to mislead you. That is their intent.

Separating fact from fiction is hard enough on the Internet. Companies don’t have to make it harder one day out of the year.

Tip # 3 next time…

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3 Tips for Conducting Research Online – Tip #1

Most people nowadays do research on the Internet. When you are seeking opinions there is no better source; EVERYONE has an opinion and everyone is either “blogging,” “tweeting,” or “Facebooking” it. Yes, I just coined the term Facebooking – feel free to use it.

But the problem with the Internet is that it is difficult to find facts. The lost art of journalism is truly becoming a lost art and let’s just say “Fact Checker” isn’t the number one sought-after position on Monster.com these days. Even Wikipedia uses “social opinion” to shape and shift “facts” — although they also require corroborative evidence or support from encyclopedias and/or newspapers for much of their new content. Isn’t that ironic? I wonder what Wikipedia is going to do for corroboration when encyclopedias and newspapers are out of business.

But until then, a consumer researching a product or service online finds herself in the wild, wild west. So all one can really do is follow a few simple tips:

Tip #1 for Conducting Research Online: Determine the source

Look at the source of the information and ask yourself if it seems biased or impartial. Outskirts Press, for instance, is a part of a fiercely competitive industry without much regulation or policies. As a result, the competitive environment is ruthless, savvy, sometimes unethical, and even downright nasty. The same can be said for many other industries, and the larger the companies get, the more unbelievable the information and tactics of the companies involved.

So if you, as a potential customer, are looking up a business on the Internet and run into a blog posting or a website claiming Business XYZ is “bad” or “a scam” or in some other way not on the up-and-up, then it is up to you to determine if the source of that information is truly impartial, or whether they have ulterior motives. You’d be surprised how many businesses post inaccurate, unsavory, or maliciously libelous statements about their competitors behind the anonymity of blogs or in the name of journalism. Just look at the PR “smear campaign” Facebook initiated upon Google for a recent example (more on that later) . In other words, due diligence is essential.

Tip #2 next time…

best self publishing, best self publishing sites

Best Self Publishing Sites

In my last post, when I set out to compare the “best self publishing sites” based upon four self publishing review sources, I applied a numeric value to each company based upon their relative ranking in each source. That resulted in the following average totals for the top 5 best self publishing sites, out of a possible 34 points:

Outskirts Press 30 Points
Company 3 24 Points
Company 5 19 Points
Company 2 13 Points
Company 14 13 Points

Upon looking at that data, I realized that some sources were weighted more heavily than others, since each source didn’t share the same value system. One had a 13 point value system while another had a 3 point value system. So for the purposes of this next chart, I will apply the same 10-point value system to all four self publishing review sources to give each source equal weight and therefore arrive at a more accurate total:

The way one does that is as follows:

TopTen Reviews already has a 10 point system, so the points there remain the same.

Top Consumer Reviews has an 8 point system, which means each point is worth 1.25 points to reach a 10-point system.

Top Self Publishing Firms has a 13 point value system, so to bring that into a 10-point system, each point actually is worth .77 points.

The Fine Print of Self-Publishing has a 3 point system, so each point becomes worth 3.33.

And that leaves us with this chart below, which, interestingly enough, is not significantly different from the previous chart I posted yesterday. Value is value. The best self publishing sites are the best self publishing sites:

	TopTen	Top Consumer	Fine Print	Top Firms	Total
Outskirts Press	8	8.75	6.66	10	33.41
Company 5	7		10	6.93	23.93
Company 3	10	5	-1	8.47	22.47
Company 14	6	7.5	3.33		16.83
Company 6			6.66	6.16	12.82
Company 2			3.33	9.24	12.57
Company 12			10	1.54	11.54
Company 10	9		-1	3.08	11.08
Company 4			3.33	7.7	11.03
Company 15	5	2.5	3.33		10.83
Company 18		10			10
Company 9	2		3.33	3.85	9.18
Company 8		3.75	-1	4.62	7.37
Company 16	3		3.33		6.33
Company 19		6.25			6.25
Company 11	4		-1	2.31	5.31
Company 7			-1	5.39	4.39
Company 20		1.25			1.25
Company 17	1				1
Company 13			-1	0.77	-0.23

Out of a possible perfect score of 40 points, the 5 best self publishing sites according to the combined data from four different review sources are:

Outskirts Press 33.41 Points
Company 5 23.93 Points
Company 3 22.47 Points
Company 14 16.83 Points
Company 6 12.82 Points

As stated in the last posting, I don’t name our competitors. That wouldn’t be very sporting to Company #13. But it’s easy enough to tell who is who by reading Top Self-Publishing Firms. The order in that book determined the order I used — well, at least for the first 13.

Okay, okay, I hear some of you saying, “Yeah, yeah. You’re the president of Outskirts Press and you’re saying you’re #1. What a shocker!” You’re right, as the CEO, I am biased toward this information. Why shouldn’t I be? After all, I wouldn’t be blogging about this analysis if I was the CEO of Company 13. But the fact that I’m involved with the #1 company doesn’t make the average scores any less valid; it just makes it easier to understand why I’m taking the time to write about it. I’m proud of our company, our people, and our authors.

And that leaves me with this: As you are conducing your own search for the best self publishing sites, there are three things you should keep in mind as you do your research. I’ll discuss those three things next time…