President of Outskirts Press

Branding Facebook Pages

When you grow as fast as Facebook, you are constantly tweaking “things” to improve them. The same thing happened (and is still happening) with us at Outskirts Press. Not that I’m comparing our growth to Facebook’s (I wish!) – but we have had quite a few “versions” of our website since it launched in 2002, and to this day we are constantly improving it.

For Facebook, every change they make has the potential to upset 500 million people. That’s a lot of pressure. Generally, people don’t like “change” very much. Even if, in the long run, a change is for the better, people are just more comfortable with the familiar. When transitioning to a new Facebook Pages layout, the Facebook folks offered an opportunity for people to proactively opt-in to the new design before enforcing the transition. Frankly, I’m not even sure when that “deadline” is, but we actively opted-in to the new design as soon as we could, and then started tweaking our Facebook Page layout to take advantage of some of the changes.

Aesthetically, the most noticeable difference is that the Facebook Pages now look nearly identical to Facebook Profiles. Some comment filters have been added (profanity filters, for example), and new dimensions are set for logos and other branding opportunities. While these variables are not yet as robust as those offered by YouTube (more on that in the near future), the new Facebook page does provide some branding opportunities for the creatively-minded.

The first thing you should do to “brand” your company page on Facebook is shorten the URL for it by creating a custom url (for example, www.facebook.com/OutskirtsPress, instead of facebook.com/profile.php?id=123456789)

When this functionality first launched in 2009, Facebook required companies to have at least 1000 fans in order to create a custom URL. But now it appears to be available for Pages with as little as 25 fans. If you have that many fans, you can set a custom URL in your Settings.

The next thing to do is customize the logo box along the left-hand side. The profile image dimensions used to be 200 x 600 and are now 185 x 540. Yes, that means there is a chance you will need to resize or recreate your “old” graphic to optimize it for the new layout once that change is enforced.

At Outskirts Press, we’re in the process of branding all our social networks (or at least the four main ones we use: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and our blog on WordPress). This includes uploading graphics, logos, and summary statements that look the same and communicate the same message across all channels. For Facebook, this meant uploading a new profile image to take advantage of the new size dimensions offered by Facebook. This new graphic matches the front page of our website as well as online and offline advertisements we run. We call it our “Write Anything, Publish Everything, Market Everywhere” creative, or “write.publish.market” for short, which is our new tagline we introduced with the lauch of our new logo and new Version 4 website in 2010.

Facebook allows you to select a square portion of the new profile picture to create your “Avatar” so consideration has to be made to “kill two birds with one stone” so to speak, since successful Avatar images often are not the same as successful branding images. That is why our profile image contains both our new name treatment logo at the top and our “older” circular logo at the bottom – the latter being an element I wouldn’t otherwise have included in the profile graphic; but it is the Avatar we have built our social presence around and I’m not inclined to change it (at least, not now).

If you look closely at that screen shot above you’ll notice the cover image for Fandemonium (our Facebook anthology), which just published today, and it seemed fitting that we should announce that publication to our Facebook fans first. It’s not even available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble yet, but only through our bookstore at Outskirts Press (at a 10% discount, by the way).

And you’ll also notice images of our book publishing package icons (the gems) along the top of our new Facebook Page (another branding opportunity available on Facebook through “manipulation” of the images functionality). And I’ll discuss those topics next time…

self publishing a book

Self Publishing a Book? Three points of view

I haven’t always been an easy person to reach at Outskirts Press. Even to send me kudos, some authors in the past were forced to write me an actual letter and mail it to my attention through the post office. It worked! I always received those, and I still get a letter from time to time. But in this day and age, it seems silly to ask our valued customers to go through such effort just to say nice things about us or to contact me about something. So, toward the end of last year I started contacting every new author who started publishing with us, just to make sure they were satisfied with our services. It’s been a blessing and I wish I had done it years ago.

For example, here’s a very recent email I received, completely unsolicited, from one of our authors:

Dear Brent,

Greetings to you and I wish you all continued success. I could not be more pleased with the great job that Natasha Quick, and the production team, are doing with my novel, AFRICAN SKIES. I am so delighted that The Outskirts Press is my publisher for this book and all my future books. The professionalism, courtesy and attention to detail exhibited by Ms. Quick has been exceptional. Great good luck to you and to all at Outskirts, and all the best,

Cheers,
Mike Tucker

Now that’s an email that puts me in a great mood. Another wonderful email I received recently wasn’t from one of our authors, but was from the owner of Reader Views, Irene Watson. Through Reader Views, Irene comes in contact with a LOT of books from a LOT of self-publishing companies. With her permission, she said I could post this unsolicited email she sent me recently:

Brent,

Geesh..I’ve been meaning to write this email for quite some time but one busy day runs into the next one. This is what I want to say:

I’m very impressed with the quality of books that come from Outskirts Press. We get a lot of self-published books and many are horribly (that’s the most gentle word I could find) produced. The quality just isn’t up to par. Yours match any large traditional publishing company to a T. Occasionally we do review a book that hasn’t been properly edited but we know that’s the choice of the author. If only, if only…there was a way to instill into the authors the importance of editing.

In fact, I am so impressed I recommended Outskirts Press to my assistant for her book. It’s in production now with your company.

Irene

The last message I want to share was the email I received from the winner of our free iPad. Last year during the holidays, our monthly promotion offered a free Apple iPad to one of our talented authors. We notifed the lucky author, Vince, the first week of January. Here was his reply (I waited until now so I could also link to his book, which was just published this week):

Happy New Year, Brent!

I want to thank you for this gift from you and Outskirts Press. It hasn’t gotten here yet, but I happily await its delivery.

I’ve written for many years and it is always gratifying when one actually finds evidence of people who appreciate the hard work a writer puts into his work. Like all art, as you well know, writing produces the most fickle and varying opinions, irrespective of the inherent talent or worth of the work. This always leaves one wondering precisely what a ‘Great work’ of fiction actually is. Since my undergraduate degrees were in Psychology and English Literature, and having started writing stories at the very young age of 8, I always tried to fathom what it was that made a piece of fiction a great work of art. After many years of education, and hundreds of books read, I concluded that one can’t really know that, unless he waits a hundred years or so and sees how history treats it; and even then, he couldn’t truly KNOW. What we’re left with is to give our best effort, which I try in every book I write, and keep in mind that I want to engage the reader and not disappoint him or her. As an author, I want to pull that reader into the story and get them involved, and as a Psychologist I want the readers to know the characters, feel they are real, empathize with them, and feel the drama is truly happening. In Science Fiction, the story and action have to be plausible, so you don’t leave the reader thinking, ‘That can’t possibly happen, it’s ridiculous,’ which makes it just a little bit harder task, but one I enjoy doing since I love sci-fi myself. I diligently endeavored to employ these principles with Star-Crossed, and I think it is perhaps the most believable heartfelt of the 9 fiction books I’ve written. All 11 of my books are published in electronic format already, and sell fairly well; half of them are out in print form. I hope with this book, published at Outskirts, I will begin an even more profitable era in my writing life, that I will publish more successful books in the future, and that Outskirts can aid in that vision.

Thank you again,

Vince Riccio

Thank you, Vince…

And speaking of the iPad, we’re just a few weeks away from launching our iPad Edition option… more on that in the near future…

self publishing

Borders Coupons – Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

Borders Books filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on February 16th, and plans to close approximately 200 of its stores.

How does this affect those who are holding Borders coupons and gift cards? The company says it will continue to honor those at stores that remain open, but recommends shoppers use their coupons and gift cards as fast as possible.

Clearance sales at Borders superstores (which are among the 200 locations to close) already began this past weekend. Here is a list of the stores planned to close, according to Borders Group. The stores on this list are expected to close by April:

http://www.bordersreorganization.com/Reorganization_Closure_List.pdf

Borders.com will remain operational as Borders attempts to refocus on ebooks and non-book related items. Outskirts Press books with a 50-55+ Price Plan (trade discount) and the retail returns option will continue to be distributed and sold through Borders.com. Our distribution to Ingram, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the rest, are not affected by the Borders bankruptcy.

self publishing

Self Publishing for Speakers and Coaches

Today I’m in Atlanta to attend the National Speakers Association “UNconference” through Sunday, and also to announce the introduction of our new One-Click Publishing for Coaches & Speakers package.

When Outskirts Press first started in 2002, we focused only on providing high quality publishing services. That focus served us well for a while. Of course, there was less awareness of self-publishing firms back then, and less competition. Through the years, the number of authors becoming aware of self-publishing as an option has exploded, and so has the number of self-publishing competitors trying to help those writers.

As our number of published authors grew into the thousands, many of them began asking for and requiring some level of marketing assistance. Since I’m a writer, I knew the marketing tactics I was pursuing personally; I knew which ones were successful and which ones weren’t. So we started adding marketing services and products to help support our authors after publication. We now offer the largest number of post-publication services in the industry, and often at prices that are literally thousands of dollars less than some of our other competitors. In fact, our marketing support has become one of our largest competitive advantages in this competitive landscape.

Last year, with the launch of our Version 4 website, we began offering many of these marketing services to authors even if they hadn’t published their book with Outskirts Press. Of course, we always give authors who DO publish with Outskirts a discount, as an additional incentive to encourage them to do ALL their business with us (as if our ever-growing rave reviews aren’t enough).

And now, with the launch of our first “One-Click” package we are taking the natural step to combine our top-tier publishing service (the Diamond) with a selection of marketing services specifically tailored toward a particular category of author. In this case, with our first One-Click package, that target audience is speakers & career coaches — in other words, busy professionals with platform-driven non-fiction who plan to support their professional careers with book publication. We have already published many, many professionals who fall in this category, so this new package draws upon that experience and provides a very fast, high-quality service for this market.

Needless to say, we’re very excited about it. I’ll discuss this package (and other packages coming up in the “One-Click” line) more next time…

self publishing

Small Press Department Changes at Barnes & Noble

Toward the end of January, Barnes & Noble reorganized its departments and staff. In the process, it laid off approximately 50 employees, including the Director of Small Press & Vendor Relations, Marcella Smith. Many small presses and independent publishers viewed Smith as a champion of independent book publishing. Those holding that view are now left wondering just how seriously Barnes & Noble will view small press publications in the future, in light of this reorganization. Personally, I question how seriously Barnes & Noble ever viewed small press publications, but that’s a topic for another day.

I met Marcella several times during Colorado Independent Publishers Association conferences. At Outskirts Press, we also communicated with her and others in the Small Press Department from time to time on behalf of our authors. In spite of these efforts, our authors more often found success being stocked in local Barnes & Noble stores through specific personal contact with local store managers rather than direct contact with the national small press department in New York.

Marcella always had interesting stories to share about her experiences, including a now-well known author (who shall remain nameless), who boldly placed copies of his self-published book on the shelves of random Barnes & Noble stores himself since they refused to stock it. The result? When people started bringing the mysterious inventory up to the register in droves, they were forced to enter it into their system and start ordering it. Talk about reverse engineering a process! Naturally, Ms. Smith advised AGAINST this tactic, as it caused them great havoc.

While it’s always sad to see someone lose a job they’ve held for so long, I have a suspicion Marcella Smith is going to be just fine. With the self-publishing industry growing so fast, and Marcella possessing the experience she does, it wouldn’t surprise me to see her land squarely on her feet in the warm embracing arms of a self-publishing firm…

self publishing

Borders Bankruptcy?

The industry has been ablaze this month with “will they or won’t they” guesses concerning the future of Borders Bookstores. Are they declaring bankruptcy?

Borders is the second-largest chain of bookstores behind Barnes & Noble, which is having its own share of financial difficulties in the current economy. I’ll discuss more about Barnes & Noble next time.

But the future looks even less bright for Borders, which may have to file for Chapter 11 if it is unable to successfully renegotiate terms with its vendors and lenders.

What led Borders to this position? Some could say it over-extended itself with the opening of gigantic “superstores” while statistics seemed to strongly indicate that more and more people were buying books online. It’s true. Perhaps 95% of our authors’ books at Outskirts Press (and most other self-publishing firms) sell online via Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s website.

Others have hypothesized that Borders was “too late” joining the e-book game, following in the wake years after Amazon and months after Barnes & Noble. Personally, I’m more inclined to believe the first reason than the second. A physical store typically makes just over $5 selling a $10 paperback novel. You know how many books each store must sell every month to pay for 50,000 square feet of retail space? And that’s before heating and lighting it. Plus there are the employee costs and other expenses typical of running any business.

Of course, to supplement that income, it’s a little known fact that most large retail chains like Borders and Barnes & Noble make a large portion of their revenue selling advertising and “premium” space in the store to traditional New York publishers (many of whom are having their own set of financial difficulties, which may be contributing to a decrease in those advertising dollars at the store level).

Here’s hoping Borders pulls through.

branding, self publishing, Social Networking Sites

Adding Facebook Plug-ins to your Author Website

Last time I suggested that having an author website, webpage, or blog was the single most important aspect of promoting a book after it is published. This was also the consensus of the “Promote Your Book” panel I was on during the recent Writer’s Digest conference in New York. This next suggestion is admittedly further along the “promotion tactic timeline” but is worth mentioning now for a number of reasons. For one, this is also a suggestion I made while at the conference, albeit to the attendees of the other panel I was on, involving social networking. And secondly, we just recently performed this enhancement to our site at Outskirts Press.

In fact, as you surf the Internet, you may notice this specific functionality cropping up more and more, on a wide variety of sites, both informational and commercial in nature. What functionality am I talking about? The Facebook “Like” button. By adding a Facebook “Like” button to your own web presence you give your visitors an opportunity to interact with your site in a “fun” easy way that they are already accustomed to. Additionally, their act of “liking” your site is reported on their Facebook account to their friends, which theoretically helps increase your exposure.

We recently added “Like” buttons on our site for all our products and services. We haven’t yet invited our Facebook community to visit our site and tell us which services or products they like, but that is a recommended course of action once you add the “Like” functionality. After all, the benefit of adding this functionality is so that people recognize that a large number of other people “like” what you have to offer. And, of course, when you first add the functionality, the number of “Likes” is zero. So you want to take steps to increase that number.

The good news is that Facebook makes adding this functionality very easy. They offer a variety of “plug-ins” that are easy to add to your site. Just go to developers.facebook.com and see if any of their plug-ins will help you. Of course, gettting a large and growing number of people to “like” what you offer is a different challenge entirely. If only Facebook offered a plug-in for that…

blogging, self publishing

What is the most important thing an author should do to promote a book?

Sorry for the delay in updating. I had a bit of a medical situation when I was in New York.

Speaking of New York, I participated in two panels for writers last weekend. One was on all things “social networking” related and another one covered the topic of book promotion. On both panels, we (me and the other panelists) had the opportunity to answer questions from the audience. To benefit those who were unable to attend, I’ll report on some of the information that was shared on the panels along with some of the questions we fielded (and the answers, of course).

At the book promotion panel, the first question we received was this – perhaps a bit paraphrased: “You’ve thrown a lot of information at us. It’s all a little overwhelming. If we only had the time/money/resources/interest in doing ONE of the things you suggested, what would you recommend doing first?”

All three of the panelists and the moderator agreed upon the answer: You should have a website or a blog, not unlike this one. Most blogs can effectively act as an author website as long as you’ve added a widget or some other form of functionality to sell your book from it. Outside of that, as long as your book is sold on Amazon, your Amazon “sales page” can act as your website and accept book sales for you. Amazon’s sales page also posts reviews of your book and can broadcast your blog if you have one — by setting that up through your Author Central account, which I’m positive I’ve blogged about in the past.

The good news is, between your Amazon sales page and WordPress.com or Blogger.com, it is relatively easy and free to get started on the right path toward book promotion. The only cost is time. Blogging takes commitment. But it is also the one thing all the panelists agreed upon was the first most important thing you should do to promote a published book. Blog consistently, professionally, and respectfully. After all, you’re building your author platform, here.

I’ll talk about other things we covered on the panels in New York in future posts, along with more Facebook stuff as I promised.

marketing, Social Networking Sites

Why is Facebook so Popular?

I’m becoming a believer in this “Facebook phenomenon.” Only recently has Outskirts Press actively engaged the “social community” in terms of Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, YouTube, and the rest. Even though it sounds like I’m mindlessly jumping on the bandwagon when I say this, I’ll say it anyway: It has shown immediate dividends.

Sure, we’ve been “blogging” for a number of years; but to successfully engage the promise of “Web 2.0,” companies need to embrace the multiple platforms and entertwine them.

Yes, we as a company have a long way to go on all those platforms. It’s an on-going exercise that requires quite a lot of effort, actually. For example, thanks to our Kindle giveaway in December and our Facebook Anthology project in January, we are seeing large increases to our Facebook Community, and we will continue to offer our community more promotions and incentives to become involved. It is wonderful that these people are all supportive of each other and positive in general.

And perhaps that is one of the main reasons Facebook is so popular. People there are nice and respectful. Isn’t that a refreshing change of pace from other “locales” on the internet where anonymity allows people to be rude, spiteful, argumentative, and sometimes downright jerks? Amazingly even those who aren’t anonymous often choose to show their true colors daily, a la Russell Hantz on the TV show Survivor. Every comment to a Yahoo article ridicules something; many bloggers seem to believe the only opinion they’re allowed to have is a negative one; and forums are filled with such pervasive confrontation they’ve actually coined a term for it: flame war.

And yet on Facebook, people are supportive of one another, kind, giving of their time and knowledge, and respectful. This never became more obvious to me than it did a few days ago on my birthday (January 19th). Current friends, old high school and college friends, relatives, Outskirts associates, and Outskirts authors all took a moment to wish me “Happy Birthday” on Facebook. So did my wife, since I was on a business trip that day.

Why is Facebook popular? Because Facebook makes people feel good. It makes them feel liked, popular, and as if they are a part of something bigger than themselves.

This doesn’t seem to be a happy accident, either. Facebook appears to have been designed with that specific purpose. Unlike other “voting” mechanisms on other sites (“thumbs up vs thumbs down” on many sites or the 1 star thru 5 star rating on Amazon, for example), Facebook only has a “Like” option. It doesn’t give you the opportunity to dislike something or to be mean, even if that is your intent. The “meanest” thing you can do is NOT vote . And that’s probably not very satisfying for mean people. As a result, they don’t get involved. Facebook stays a happy place while the rest of the Internet continues to revel in its own misery. Win-win.

It just so happens I’ll be talking more about Facebook and other social networking opportunities for writers the day after tomorrow at the Writer’s Digest Conference in Manhattan. But I thought I’d give another sneak peek here first. And I’ll be discussing more about Facebook in upcoming posts, too.