ceo, marketing

How book promotion is like company marketing

Marketing is marketing. There are some basic steps one must take to promote either a product or a service. As both an author with a book to promote and a business owner with a company to market, it becomes easier to see the similarities in the necessary steps:

1. Establish your expertise
2. Optimize your (new) product/service for Internet searching
3. Make it easy for people to buy your product/service
4. Give incentive for people to buy your product/service
5. Seek awards or other forms of recognition
6. Distribute press releases that announce your (new) award/product, and that…
7. Establish your expertise
8. Repeat

In the coming days and weeks I will discuss each of these steps specifically as they apply both to book promotion and company promotion…

Amazon, self publishing

Navigating the Amazon Sales Ranking

In a previous post I discussed my book SELL YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON’s climb up the Amazon Sales Chart as a result of specific marketing tactics. I included the following graph, which we charted on the day of the campaign:

There are some interesting things to notice about this cart.  For instance, you will notice how rapidly the ranking climbs from 15,000 to 3,000.  And then, again, you will notice how quickly it climbs from 1000 to 200 (the difference in scale notwithstanding, of course).  But also notice how slowly it climbs from 50 to 29.  This is probably obvious, but I’ll say it anyway: The closer you get to a #1 ranking, the more books you need to sell. 

One section of my book discusses the Amazon Sales Rank in detail, and the information may be helpful when looking at the above chart, so I’ll include it below:

First, the disclaimers: Since the algorithm Amazon uses to generate its sales ranking is proprietary, the details contained herein are extrapolated from research and field tests. The resulting consensus finds Amazon’s system to provide marginal sales data at best.

To whit, read Amazon’s own definition of its system, slightly paraphrased from their FAQ: “The Sales Ranking system exhibits how books are selling. The lower the number, the higher the sales. The calculation is based on sales and is updated each hour to reflect recent and historical sales of every item sold. We hope you find the Amazon.com Sales Rank interesting!” This last sentence seems to indicate Amazon’s own perspective on the importance with which the sales rankings should be viewed.

You’re not supposed to find the sales rankings informative or helpful. You’re supposed to find them interesting.

In actuality, the process is somewhat more convoluted than they let on. The ranking does not depend solely upon the actual number of books sold, but rather, on a comparison against the sales figures of the other books in their database (all 5 million+ of them) within that same hour. Simultaneously, a trending calculation is applied to arrive at a sales trajectory. So, hypothetically, a book that held a ranking of 2,000 at 2pm and 3,000 at 3pm, might hold a 4,000 ranking at 4pm, even if it actually sold MORE books between 3-4 than it did between 2-3.

Current projections and historic sales information also play a key role in these calculations. In fact, the predictive nature of the Amazon ranking system is what makes it possible for a newly-released book to outrank an older established title, even though the actual sales figures for the latter far exceed the former.

That said, sales history takes a back seat to current sales rankings. Sales projections and trending take an active role here, which is why a book’s ranking can leap from 900,000 to 200,000 in the span of 24 hours or less. Does this mean the book has sold 700,000 copies in 24 hours? Absolutely not! What it does mean is that recent activity (i.e. purchases) for that book is trending higher than those 700,000 books it just surpassed. But, don’t get excited just yet; since the activity of those 700,000 other books range from slow to stagnant, one or two orders are sufficient to catapult a ranking.

If a book’s ranking breaks into the top 100,000, the sales history calculation starts to rear its head, which is why a “phenomenon” book has a hard time maintaining a high, legitimate ranking. A phenomenon is defined by a book that leaps from the high hundred-thousands into the lower thousands (or better) in the span of 24 hours or less, usually due to some concentrated marketing initiatives. Since Amazon’s sales history for that title doesn’t support the leap, the spike occurs and then quickly drops again.

HOW DOES ALL THIS TRANSLATE TO ACTUAL SALES FIGURES?

Since the data is recalculated all the time, it’s impossible to arrive at accurate, cumulative sales figures, although those figures are applied to the algorithm during the calculation. No, to get a very rough idea of the actual number of books being sold, the sales ranking has to be dissected dynamically, with the same immediacy as the ranking being calculated. In other words, chart the ranking of the book at the same time every hour for 24 hours and then divide by 24 to arrive at its average daily ranking. Do that for seven straight days to arrive at its average weekly ranking.  You can do it all month long to arrive at its average monthly ranking. The longer your average timeframe, the more accurately your sales ranking will reflect “reality” (as opposed to a spike or dip in sales).

self publishing

Are you a best-selling author? Part 2

A common question is, “How many books do you have to sell to become  a best seller?”

Well, it depends upon the list.  Another way of saying that is, it depends upon what you’re “comparing” your sales against.  While my Sell Your Book on Amazon is “officially” an “Amazon Best Seller” I will say that Outskirts Press has published many books that have sold more copies than Sell Your Book on Amazon in any given month, and many of them don’t refer to themselves as “best sellers.”   In fact, today on our Self Publishing News blog, our top 10 best sellers from 2009 are announced.

I will also say that a “best-selling” book doesn’t always translate to high revenue or high sales. In fact, those two criteria do not have to be connected at all.  We have other “official” Amazon Best Sellers who sold enough books to reach #1 in their category on Amazon for a period of time, but didn’t sell enough books to become one of our top 10 best-selling authors in that month.   We have other books where authors earn $20, $30, $50 or more for each copy of their books that Amazon sells, but the content is very niche.  As a result, their quantity of sales are never statistically “high” enough for them to be considered “best sellers” but we still send them impressive royalty checks. If their goal was to receive impressive royalty checks, mission accomplished. And then we have other authors who receive impressive royalty checks AND are best sellers in their category.

Authors have different goals when publishing a book. Some want to be famous; others want to make a lot of money; others want to share a message with the world; and still others want to attract the attention of an agent or New York publisher and get “picked up.”  We have helped authors reach all these goals, and that is part of our goal at Outskirts Press. Most authors’ goals fall into one of these four major categories, and being a “best selling” author is simply a by-product of, or a catalyst to, reaching one of those other goals.

branding

Are you a best-selling author? Part 1

Some of my previous posts have already touched upon the caveat that should exist with the term “best-selling author” since different lists from different retailers have different values and different processes for creating the list.  An argument could be made that the only true way to define a “best-selling” book is based upon the number of copies it has sold.

As both the president of a self-publishing company and an author, I am in a fairly unique position of being able to see my own book sales, compare it with my Amazon Sales Rank, and then do the same for the 5,000+ other books that have been published through Outskirts Press.   I talk about this a little bit in Sell Your Book on Amazon, because I feel it’s a unique perspective.   And since I have an opportunity to share a unique perspective, I feel obligated to do so.

And here’s my perspective: If you have an “Amazon Best-Selling” book, you should be proud.  All things taken into consideration, that’s an amazingly hard feat to accomplish.   With the proliferation of books being published nowadays (500,000+ a year), it’s been said that publishing a book isn’t all that impressive anymore. Excuse me? There are over 6 billion people on the planet.  If you’ve written and published a book, no matter how you’ve done it, you’re in the minority. 

With the “best-selling Amazon campaign” it’s been said that being an “Amazon best seller” isn’t all that impressive anymore. Excuse me?  There are 500,000+ books published every year.  If your book was/is an Amazon best seller, no matter how you’ve done it, you’re in the minority.  And books that are Amazon best sellers still attract attention and kudos from publishing traditionalists like editors, agents, and conventional publishers.  These people are scanning the self-publishing ranks looking for their next authors/clients, but maybe no longer due to the strength of the book and the promise of its sales potential. Now I believe it is because an author that can “become an Amazon best seller” themselves has successfully demonstrated his or her ability to leverage/monetize their platform.  And that’s what is valuable to all publishers and agents — an author who not only has a platform, but can turn that platform into book exposure and book sales. Just having a list of 500,000 to million people to conduct the “campaign”  is impressive to publishers and agents, not to mention composing a “pitch” compelling enough to get a large number of those people (most of them strangers) to purchase something.  Like I said before, it’s all easier said than done, and that’s why being an Amazon best seller is a hard-earned, noteworthy status. We have many authors at Outskirts Press who have accomplished this, and it is a milestone in their continuing book promotion efforts.

branding

How to add a graphic to your Twitter background

1. Go to twitter.com and sign-in to your account if you’re not already signed in. You do this along the upper-right hand corner.

2. Once you are signed-in, you will see your menu choices along the top and these include: Home, Profile, Find People, Settings, Help, and Sign out. Click on “Settings.”

3. You now get a sub-menu of choices under the “Settings” section, including: Account, Password, Mobile, Notices, Picture, Design, and Connections. Click on “Design.”

4. At this point, your computer may ask you whether you want to only view the “secure” elements of this page.  Click “No.”

5. You will see a collection of  “themes” you can select from.  Below the thumbnail choices representing your theme choices are two links: Change background image and Change design colors.  Click “Change background image.”

6. You will see a “Browse” button to the right of an empty box. This is how you select the graphic from your computer. If you already have your graphic, click the “Browse” button to upload it now and then skip to Step 10.

7. If you don’t have a graphic you will need to create one.  Depending upon your monitor’s resolution, it may appear that you have a “lot” of space for your background graphic. Or, it may appear that you have almost no space at all.  The “lower” your resolution, the less space you will have.  The graphic you use should be optimal for the maximum number of monitor resolutions, so it is best to keep your graphic no wider than 100 pixels wide.  For example, our logo is 76 pixels wide on our Twitter page, but there’s still some “room to spare” even on lower monitor resolutions.  So, if you’re thinking of uploading the cover to  your latest book (which would be a good idea if you’re an author), you may want to consider a graphic size of 100 pixels wide by 150 pixels high.

8. Depending upon the graphic, you may need to “color match” the background color setting from Twitter. Twitter claims to accept .gif images, too, so you may also be able to use a .gif image with a transparent background if necessary. Fortunately, if you’re putting up a square or rectangular image, like a book cover, you won’t have to worry about this.

9. Save your image to your computer and then use the “Browse” button on your Twitter settings page referred to above to upload your image.

10. Once you have uploaded your image, be sure to select it from the thumbnail choices that appear below the “Browse” button.  Note: If your image doesn’t appear, it means you indicated that you did NOT want to see non-secure images when you were asked. In that case, you’ll need to leave the “Design” page and then come back, answering the pop-up question properly.

11. Once you have selected your image thumbnail by clicking on it, click on the “Save Changes” button and your graphic will be added to your Twitter page’s background.

12. Congratulations! You’re done, and your branding on Twitter has officially started.

blogging, branding

Branding your Twitter page

Let’s first take a look at the NFL’s Twitter page so you can see an example of what I discussed previously.  Depending upon your monitor’s resolution, you will either see the NFL logo clearly visible and non-obstructed along the left-hand side of the “conversation” box.  Or, if your monitor has a lower resolution, you may see part of the NFL logo “covered up” by portions of the Twitter page itself.  Or, I guess a 3rd alternative is, now that the Super Bowl is over, the NFL people may remove or alter the logo entirely, and naturally, I don’t have any control over that.

Now that you’re looking at an example, the goal is to put something of YOURS on your Twitter page that will help you brand yourself on Twitter.  With the example of the NFL fresh in our mind, we added our company’s name to our Twitter page on its side.  Obviously, we would prefer for it to be “right-side-up” but then one runs into the issue the NFL experienced, with the graphic being obstructed or partly-obstructed by the Twitter box and/or Twitter logo.  We have two versions of our “company graphic treatment” — a horizontal version and a “stacked vertical” version — but after experimenting with different lay-outs and sizes, this was what we settled on because it was the only one that looked consistently the same, regardless of monitor resolution.

And now this opens up a number of different topics for me to blog about in upcoming posts… 1) the creation and considerations involved in creating a graphic treatment for your company name by using ours as an example and 2) the details of adding a non-scrolling graphic to the background of your Twitter page.

I could cover some of that now, but I read in a recent Entrepreneur article — about “ghost blogging,” interestingly enough — that business/corporate blog postings are ideally supposed to be under 300 words in length. So, with that sage advice in mind, until next time….

branding

Twitter, the Super Bowl, and branding

Before the Super Bowl this past weekend I went to the  NFL’s Twitter page to see what a media phenomenon like “the big game” was having on the social media site. Yes, lots of tweets and yes, lots of followers (over 1 million – wow!).  I also liked the way they had “branded” their page with an NFL logo.  On my monitor — which is set at a resolution of 1600 x 1200 — it looked fantastic. Almost too good actually.   So I looked at the same NFL Twitter page on a monitor set at a more common resolution, and the NFL logo was obstructed in a not-very-visually-pleasing manner by the “conversation box.”  You could see that the NFL logo was “behind” the content box on Twitter, and the left-most portion of the logo was clearly visible in the “border” of the frame, but on a whole, it looked more like a mistake than it should have, especially since over 1 million people were probably looking at it.

So I guess one could take away two morals from that story.  1) It’s hard to take “things” like that too seriously on the Internet — if the Super Bowl people can miss a concept like accounting for all common resolution types in front of 1 million people, you’re certainly forgiven if you do, too.  And, 2) branding your Twitter page is one of the quickest ways to give it a little panache in a land full of redundancy and duplicity. And we’ll discuss how in a future post…

Amazon, self publishing

Am I a best-selling author? Part 3

I’ve said in the past that I use my own books as “guinea pigs” for the self publishing services we offer to authors.  If I am successful doing something, it is reasonable to think that someone else can be successful, also. If something I do doesn’t have the positive impact I was hoping for, I adjust and try again.  And if something fails, well then we know to either avoid suggesting it or to make an effort to advise our authors against it.

Such was one of the blog postings I made in 2005 on my old blog about Kirkus Discoveries, and it was one of the blog postings that led to an interview with the New York Times.   At the time I believe Kirkus Discoveries was charging $350 for a “review” of self-published books. Recently they charged $400 or more, and very recently, I hear the future of Kirkus Discoveries seems to be in jeopardy entirely.

However, at the time in 2005,  I had seen several of these Kirkus Discoveries reviews, courtesy of our authors, and came away with the feeling that this was not serving the best interests of self-publishing authors, in general.  So I said in my blog this was something I wouldn’t recommend to our authors. And our Marketing COACH suggested our authors think twice about doing it.

Anyway, back to the story — another experiment I tried with one of my books was the so-called “Amazon Bestseller Campaign.” There are people out there charging thousands of dollars for this concept, but here it is for free: Contact as many people as you can (suggestions range from 500,000 to one million people) via email.  Get as many people as you can to buy your book on Amazon all on the same day. Provide them with incentive to buy your book by offering them other products or services that have a value much greater than the cost of your book itself. 

Conducting this campaign has its pros and cons. It also has its share of people firmly entrenched in the “this is good” camp and others firmly entrenched in the “this is evil” camp.   All the “downsides” to this campaign contribute to the reasons we don’t currently offer it as a “service” for our authors — because a lot of our authors inquire about it.

Furthermore, pulling this off is easier said than done. Who knows 500,000 people they can email? Nowadays there are companies that charge thousands of dollars to implement this sort of campaign on behalf of the author. 

Personally, I didn’t need to pay anyone to do it for me because I had access to lists, and I knew other industry professionals who would support my campaign. But it did take a lot of my time orchestrating, and in retrospect, it may have actually been more cost-effective and efficient — and perhaps even effective — for me to just buy it as a “package” from someone else.  But, nevertheless, when Sell Your Book on Amazon was published, I conducted by own “bestseller” campaign as a test.

And it worked.  My book reached #29 on the overall Amazon Sales Rank on March 27th, 2007. Below is a chart of my book’s Amazon sales rank that day. Notice that I have to change the SCALE of the chart 3 times in order to keep the chart from being 10 feet tall. Also notice that the ranking starts at 15,000.  It would have done the same exact thing if it had started at 150,000 or 1,500,000.  The initial ranking is important though, because it implies Amazon’s “true” valuation of the book. Which means after the “campaign” is over, your book will mostly likely return to roughly the level it started at. But in the meantime, you may have acquired a few more reviews, a few more tags, and a little more activity around your book — and that helps support your longer term marketing tactics on Amazon.

Click for a larger view (opens in a new window)

Was that an exciting day? You bet. Did I become a millionaire overnight? Of course not. I didn’t even reach #1. In fact, I didn’t even reach #1 in my category, which is the whole point of the campaign. I reached #2 in my category, because some HUGE best seller was #1, and I couldn’t knock it off.

As I mentioned in a previous post, best sellers are more a product of marketing than sales, just like Oscar winners are often more a product of marketing than quality.

self publishing

Am I a best-selling author? Part 2

Let’s all conduct an experiment together. Go find a copy of Stephanie Meyer’s Eclipse paperback and look at the back cover. If you cannot find at least one copy lying around the house you either a) are not a woman or b) don’t know any women. This book is amazingly pervasive. Every woman I know has either read the Twilight Saga or is reading it (again).

On the back of the paperback edition of Eclipse it says:

The #1 New York Times Bestseller
The #1 USA Today Bestseller
The #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller

Hmm, I guess Little, Brown — the publisher of Eclipse — prefers the single-word lexicon “bestseller” rather than the two-worded version preferred by Webster. But that’s not the point. The point is that there are multiple “best seller” lists. Eclipse promotes being the #1 best seller on 3 different lists from 3 different newspapers. Granted, in this case, these are highly respected lists.

But the fact is, nearly every major metropolitan newspaper has a “best seller” list, and most major booksellers or chains have their own best seller lists, too. The cynic inside me assumes that when a book promotes itself as being the “#1 bestseller” without specifying a list, it is because the best-selling list on which the book appeared #1 is NOT the New York Times, USA Today, or the Wall St. Journal.   But book marketing is book marketing and those publicists and marketers are doing whatever they can to draw attention to that book and that author in a very competitive environment. And the fact is, that book DID appear on some best-selling list, somewhere.

“Best-selling” status becomes even more questionable when you realize how the lists are compiled.  Are booksellers really pouring over weeks and months of data, comparing sales receipts against sales returns, and arriving upon a list of books that truly reflect higher sales compared against all other books?  Or, is a sales manager hastily completing a survey every week/month that rewards top-of-mind recall more than actual data?  This would make marketing and promotion the true factor involved, rather than actual sales, just as marketing and promotion is the true factor involved in the Oscar race, rather than performance/quality.

Am I questioning whether Eclipse is a #1 bestseller? Absolutely not!  I’m sure it is. As I mentioned, every woman I know owns a copy (and bought two more as gifts for other people last Christmas).   But I am saying that acquiring “best-selling” status is easier than it might appear and in many cases, might not even relate to actual sales volume.   And, there’s the rub; the moment something becomes “easier” to do, it receives less respect.  That’s one of the issues we face today with self-publishing.

But everything has a range of difficulty.  It’s easier to not write a book than it is to write one. So, right there, people who write a book deserve some level of respect.  Of course it’s easier to self-publish a book than it is to get a book traditionally accepted and published. But it’s even easier to not publish a book at all. Doing nothing is always easier than doing something.

And so it goes: writing a bad book is easier than writing a good one.  Writing a book that does not appear on any best seller lists is easier than writing a book that does appear on one or more best selling lists. Writing a book that does not earn a million dollar advance is easier than writing a book that does.   But are these black and white classifications?  Is a book only respectable IF it earns a million dollar advance, earns best seller status on the New York Times, and is published traditionally?

Certainly those accomplishments are worthy of admiration, but so are other accomplishments. Does someone choose not to respect Eli Manning because he’s not Peyton Manning? Even though publishing a book is becoming “easier” and becoming a “best selling” author is becoming “easier,” accomplishing these feats is still “hard” in the overall scheme of things. Any published book and any bestselling status is worthy of some level of kudos. 

If you are thinking about writing a book, don’t let anyone stop you. And if you are thinking about publishing a book, don’t let anyone stop you.

And with that prelude, the question remains: Am I a best-selling — or is it bestselling, or best selling– author?  Let’s examine that question further in an upcoming post…

search engine optimization, writing tips

Am I a best-selling author? Part One

I’ll start this topic by referencing a previous posting where I was considering adding “best-selling author” to the name of my blog.  The purpose is to add another applicable keyword phrase that people who may have interest in this blog could conceivably type into a search engine. I’ve already discussed in the past how blog names and individual blog post titles are important to consider for SEO purposes.

But, as I mentioned, adding “best-selling author” brings up a host of considerations, the first of which I’ll dissect now.

1. Keyword optimization is already complicated, and is made even MORE annoying by words and phrases that are – or could be – hyphenated.  At Outskirts Press, we run into this issue all the time within our marketing and IT departments regarding “self publishing” because you see it hyphenated just as often as not, and when considering topics like SEO, you are wise to support what people might do, and not necessarily what is correct.  That’s why pay-per-click bidding on common misspellings of popular keywords is almost as competitive as bidding on the correctly spelled words.

At any rate, adding “best-selling author” to my blog name raises one issue solely based upon the hyphen.  Without any other considerations, would it be better to say “best-selling” or “best selling” or “bestselling?” 

Hyphenation is often subjective, and everyone has an opinion. Other writers and editors are particularly apt to point out your foibles if you do something they don’t agree personally with — so there’s one can of words, right there,  raising the ire of my target audience. What can you say about a language where there are multiple manuals of styles — Strunk & White, A.P., Chicago– all equally credible, but often different in their approaches?  Officially — which means, in my humble opinion — “best-selling” should be hyphenated because you are linking a modifying adverb that doesn’t end in “ly.”  Other examples of this include “ill-favored” and “well-known” and… yes … “self-publishing.”

So, if one believes that little dose of English 201, one agrees that “best-selling” with the hyphen is the way to go.

But here’s the problem. The whole point of adding “best-selling” to the blog name is to optimize this blog for search engines, not to toot my horn!  Well, okay, maybe it is to add a small amount of additional credibility — but we’ll address that later, too…

The fact is, the majority of people don’t type hyphens into search engines. In fact, a surprising number of people often don’t type spaces into search engines, particularly in the case of potentially hyphenated or compound words like “self-publishing” or ‘best-selling.”

So, that logic would suggest that “bestselling” is the way to go.   But you know what? “Bestselling” isn’t a single word according to either of the dictionaries I use as a resource –where, often, compound words will be spelled differently depending upon the dictionary.  To add further complexity, of course Bill Gates and Word thinks “bestselling” is just fine; so who do you believe? Webster, who has been dead forever, or the richest guy in the world? It’s a tough choice, and Word for Windows has let me down before… I think we’ve all become too reliant upon its “spell check” and “grammar check” functionality that we sometimes eschew true copyediting due to time constraints or resources. Word is fairly competent when it comes to correcting misspellings, but less capable when it comes to correcting incorrect word usage. For that reason, when submitting a book for publication, I would recommend utilizing the services of a human copyeditor and not relying solely on a computer’s functionality.

Back to the story of what to do with this “best-selling” quagmire.   All decisions should be made by weighing all the pros and cons. And that requires understanding more of the issues.  Am I a best-selling author?  There’s more to that answer than just a hyphen, so more on that in the near future…