How authors can network on MySpace

MySpace is a great way for authors and publishers to network. There are several ways to find people on MySpace who might be in your target audience: by searching for murder mysteries, historical romance, self-improvement, organic food, or whatever niche you’re writing in or wherever else your interests lie.

Perhaps there’s a famous writer whose style you emulate. Once you’ve found potential friends, you can send a request for them to “add” you as a friend. The invitee can accept, decline, or ignore your request, though most people accept.
Once you’re friends with someone on MySpace, you can post comments on each other’s profiles and see each other’s full circle of friends, exposing more people to your book.

Here’s how to find friends and potential readership on MySpace:

-- Browse the Friends list of similar authors. Find the MySpace profiles of authors with similar books, writing style, and similar target audience as yours. On the right side, scroll down a bit to the link See All of [Name]’s Friends. Start sending invitations, and you’ll get many potential readers this way. For example, memoirist Josh Kilmer-Purcell invites fans of David Sedaris and Augustine Burroughs, who have similar writing styles—and every time he makes his MySpace rounds, he sees his Amazon sales rank spike for days afterward. Another tactic you can use is sending a Friend invitation to the other author and, when accepted, post a comment, which will appear on the bottom right of their MySpace page, giving you added exposure.

-- Search. Click on Search on the top toolbar on the MySpace home page. You can limit your search to certain areas such as Books Interest, Blogs, Music Interest, or others. Let’s imagine your looking for MySpace members interested in organic food. Click on Search, Book Interest, and enter into the box “organic food.” You’ll receive list of the MySpace members who’ve used the words “organic food” in their profile. Click through to read the context on their profile. You can use the same searching technique to search for subjects, genres, and author names. Also, use the “Affiliations for Networking” search tool a bit farther down the page. You can search the fields “Marketing” or “Publishing” using your keywords to find potential MySpace friends who could share book-marketing resources and tips.

-- Browsing for Friends. If you have a travel book or title of regional interest, it might be useful to browse for potential MySpace friends by geographic area. On the home page, click Browse and the “Advanced” tab. You’ll be able to view member profiles within a specified distance of Postal Service zip codes, as well as other criteria such as age, gender, religion, and income. Many MySpace members use this function to scout for potential dates, but it can be useful for publishers as well.

-- Browse comments on other authors’ profiles. Short comments are posted by Friends on the bottom right of member profiles. The most recent comments appear at the top, accompanied by the member’s profile photo. Members who leave these comments tend to be the most active and vocal MySpace users, and make good friends. In particular, seek out people who’ve posted thoughtful comments, like “Enjoyed seeing your profile and can’t wait to read the next book.” Skip the people who write, “You ROCK, Man!!!”

Using MySpace for book promotion and author publicity

MySpace is the Internet-age answer to a promotion tactic used by many first-time authors: selling books from the trunk of your car. It requires legwork, it’s time-consuming, and you might not see a results tomorrow or next week. But if you’re sincere, people will notice.

Here’s just a few examples of the types of friends you’ll be able to find and network with on MySpace:

-- Readers. People who read similar kinds of books—on the same topics, genres, or by authors with similar books or styles. You can search for these potential readers using dozens of possible keywords related to your themes and books.

-- Other authors. These can be great people to network with—creative types in the same boat as you, trying to find new readers. You’ll find many valuable ways to share resources and cross-promote with authors you meet on MySpace.

-- Agents and publishers. Book publishers want to find authors who already have a following, a platform that can be turned into readership and book buyers. One of the easiest ways to be seen is to be on MySpace.

Although most members use if in other ways, MySpace is a foolproof self-promotion tool. Any author, even those without computer skills, can easily upload photos along with artwork and sample text from their books. You can include links to buy your book from online retailers, publish a MySpace blog, and send bulletins about your public appearances and publication dates.

Big book publishers have also noticed the publicity value of MySpace, and sometimes slap together author profiles using canned marketing materials. Authors who actually get involved on MySpace tend to get much more mileage. You can’t fake participation and authenticity online.

In addition to its networking opportunities, MySpace is a wickedly good research tool for authors. It’s simple, for example, to find how many members say “Malcolm Gladwell” is their favorite author, and to find those members. Or you could quickly locate members in your Zip Code who are science fiction buffs. And MySpace is a great way for authors to find out what books their own friends and fans are currently reading.

Advertising in books: A bad idea

Call me a purist, but I'm very skeptical of advertising or paid placements in books.

I know it's increasingly commonplace these days, but I believe common sense argues against it.

Especially for niche books, it makes little sense. If you ask me, books are the last refuge for the truth. It's where authors are free to tell the truth, unworried by interference from advertising departments. Unfortunately, the truth is increasingly uncommon in most media these days, like TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. And that is why consumers don't trust "the media" anymore.

Here's my idea: disclaimers in books, saying something to the effect of:

“The author has no personal connection or financial interest in the products or persons mentioned in this book. There is no advertising or product placement in this book.”

Important for nonfiction, especially.

Otherwise, books are destined to be ignored like every other rag nowadays.

Google adds new Book Search features, interface

Google upgraded the "About this book" page on its Book Search service. It now includes hyperlinked Table of Content headings, previews of sample pages, and a list of related books.

More from Google:

Next, we designed a new browsing interface. You can simply scroll through the pages, or, for full view books, view them in two-page mode and flip through just like a book. You can zoom in, switch to full screen, and jump directly to the chapters that interest you. If the book is part of the public domain, you can comfortably read it on screen or download it if you prefer. For an in-copyright book, just follow the links to buy it or to find it in a library.

Amazon's negative book reviews and how to counter them

Almost as soon as it began selling books, Amazon decided to allow negative reviews on its site, a policy that infuriated publishers. Chief executive Jeff Bezos recalls:

"We had publishers writing to us, saying "Why in the world would you allow negative reviews? Maybe you don't understand your business--you make money when you sell things. Get rid of the negative reviews, and leave the positive ones."

Yes, negative reviews can hurt sales in the short term, but over the long term, allowing criticism builds credibility. Having negative reviews along with positive ones helps buyers decide, says Bezos: "We don't make money when we sell things, we make money when we help people make purchase decisions."

One of the best ways to counter negative reviews is to ask more people to review your book. The more reviews, the less likely that a minority view can dominate attention, and buyers will have a clearer idea of your book's quality.

Traditional book marketing strategies call for mailing hundreds of review copies to reviewers at magazines and newspapers. For a new author or an unknown with a niche book, chasing print reviews is more of a distraction than a strategy. A better way to launch your campaign is by finding 300 to 500 readers in your target audience and giving them your book. Ask them to post an honest critique on Amazon. This costs nothing more than mailing review copies to traditional book reviewers, but will have a bigger impact and nearly immediate results. Here's where to find review candidates:

-- Amazon users who have reviewed earlier books complementary to yours or by authors with similar writing styles.

-- From Amazon's list of Top Reviewers who regularly post reviews of books similar to yours.

-- Friends and acquaintances interested in your book's topic.

-- Participants in Internet discussion boards, forums, and mailing lists relevant to your book.

-- Registered visitors of your Web site or readers of your blog.

You can find more prospective reviewers by posting a message on Amazon's discussion board dedicated to customer book reviews.

Will giving away several dozen copies of your book to its likely audience hurt sales? It won't make a dent, unless your potential audience is very, very tiny. And these initial readers who enjoy your book will gladly recommend it to friends, and those new readers will recommend it to more. That's what book promotion is all about.

The growing importance of amateur book reviews

Successful books have lots of positive reviews on Amazon, and it’s no coincidence. It’s another point in the positive feedback loop: Good books garner good reviews, which encourages more sales. Good reviews on Amazon are particularly crucial for books by new authors and niche books.

Good reviews on Amazon boost your book sales not only on Amazon, but everywhere people are buying books. What percentage of buyers at brick-and-mortar bookstores make their choice by reading a review on Amazon? It’s hard to say, and the only way we will ever find out is if someone like Barnes & Noble begins asking the question at their cash registers, and send us a report. Don’t hold your breath.

One of the reasons Amazon’s reviews are so effective is that they’re written by people who are passionate about a book and its topic. They’re seen as objective advice from someone with no ax to grind. In the case of a niche book, an amateur reviewer with the right expertise in the topic can provide a better critique than any professional reviewer.

You should encourage enthusiastic readers of your book to write a review on Amazon. Each time you see a new positive review for your title, "vote" on it by checking the "Yes" box under each review in response to the question, "Was this review helpful to you?"

But don’t ask for book reviews from people who haven’t actually read your book, not even your mother. The result will be an unconvincing review that will detract from your book’s credibility rather than bolster it.

Negative reviews

As much as good online reviews can help your book, negative reviews can hurt your book even more, according to a study published by the Yale School of Management. Multiple glowing reviews for a book can be dismissed by shoppers as "hype" generated by the author or publisher. But online book buyers pay close attention to negative reviews, because they tend to believe it’s honest criticism by a disappointed reader, the study found.

Buyers understand that no book pleases everyone, and that any book with lots of reviews will have its share of bad ones. Negative reviews hurt some types of books worse than others. Buyers often overlook occasional negative reviews of fiction, religious and political works, assuming that personal taste was involved. However, a detailed negative review of a nonfiction how-to book on Amazon can devastate its sales.

The study, The Effect of Word of Mouth on Sales: Online Book Reviews examined random titles from Global Books in Print and bestsellers from Publishers Weekly. The study found that Amazon tends to have many more reviews than Barnes & Noble’s Web site. Read the study in its entirety here.

Automated book recommendations: Effectiveness by genre, price

Online recommendations are more effective for certain types of books, according to a 2006 academic study, “The Dynamics of Viral Marketing.”

Recommendations for fiction books were usually the least effective, with only about 2 percent resulting in a purchase. Recommendations for nonfiction books dealing with personal and leisure pursuits were more effective, resulting in purchases about 3 percent of the time.

Recommendations for medical texts tended to be much more effective, nearly double the average rate. The researchers attributed this to the higher median price of medical books and technical books in general. A higher book price increased the chance that recommendations would be consulted and accepted.

Recommendations were moderately effective for certain religious categories: 4.3 percent for Christian living and theology, and 4.8 percent for Bibles. By contrast, books not connected with organized religions had lower recommendation effectiveness, including New Age (2.5 percent) and Occult (2.2 percent).

The researchers concluded that recommendations from family members or personal friends were much more effective for fiction and religious book categories than were online recommendations from strangers.

Some book categories, such as gardening, tended to have different recommendation effectiveness depending on how specialized the text and how widely the topic is supported by online communities. For example, books on vegetable or tomato growing had only an average recommendation effectiveness compared to other nonfiction. However, recommendation of books on orchid cultivation, which tends to be more specialized, had double the recommendation acceptance.
Book buyers become more likely to purchase a book according to the number of recommendations they receive for it, but become immune after a certain number of recommendations for the same book.

You can read the entire study here.

Tagging books: A new way of organizing, classifying books

Tagging is a relatively new but increasingly popular way for Internet users to organize things by giving them personal keywords. It’s not mainstream yet, but some are calling tags “the Internet’s Dewey Decimal System.”

For a book like Gone With the Wind, you might assign tags like “Civil War,” “fiction” “epic,” and “romance.”

Users create tags for their own reasons, but they can be used by anyone, and provide an effortless, accurate recommendations system among people with similar tastes.

Tags aren’t limited to books, you can assign tags to practically anything. The site that pioneered tagging didn’t involve books, but photographs: Flickr is a social site where users store, organize and share digital photographs. Instead of using categories to organize pictures, like a folder labeled “2005 Vacation,” Flickr users tag their photos with one or two words, like “waterfall,” “solar eclipse,” “Houston,” or “Joe.” This way, photos can organized and found in several ways.

Tags are a form of metadata, which means, literally, “data about data.” Tagging creates a folksonomy, a bottom-up method of categorization or labeling. By contrast, a taxonomy is more top-down system used to show hierarchical relationships. Folksonomies are one way to combine topics and find connections that aren’t obvious through categorization.

Tags aren’t necessarily a replacement for top-down classification, but a supplemental means of organization and order. People can use their own tags and tags of others, as a way of tapping collective human intelligence. It’s a way for people to find the kind of niche content they’re looking for in from among the sea of available choices, and discover it in a democratic way from peers, not gatekeepers.

You can also tag books on Amazon and LibraryThing, a popular social-networking site for bibliophiles.

Getting Amazon Associates book sales from other Web sites

Once your book achieves a modest Amazon Sales Rank, you have clout outside Amazon too. For example, you can pursue affiliate sales on Web sites that feature content related to your book. Many sites are affiliates of Amazon or BarnesAndNoble.com and have a “Bookshelf” page. Here’s an example of a bookshelf page, with affiliate links to books in the column on the right:

If you wrote a book about wine and it was featured here, you’d undoubtedly get extra book sales from visitors who noticed the link to your book on Amazon.

Likewise, the owner of this Web site would be pleased to feature your book here because he or she will be raking in more affiliate commissions on sales of your book. You shouldn’t sit back and hope that the site owner discovers your book on his own and adds it to the Bookshelf page—suggest it yourself. Point out that your book fits perfectly with the content of the site and will generate affiliate revenue for the site based on its Amazon Sales Rank. If your rank is stronger than other books featured on the site, point this out too, giving added incentive for the site to add your book.

How can you find sites like this to feature your book? As an example, we’ll use the imaginary title How to Grow Organic Strawberries:

-- Go to Google’s “Advanced Search” page.

-- In the box labeled with all of the words enter this text, including the quotation marks: “In association with Amazon.com”, bookstore, strawberries

-- Scroll down to the section Domain and change the pull-down window from only to don’t. In the blank on the right, enter Amazon.com

-- Click the gray button on the top right, “Google Search.”

The results will include Amazon affiliate sites with content pertaining to our book keyword “strawberries.”

We might be able to find more relevant sites by tweaking our search. Instead of using only the keyword “strawberries,” we’ll try these combinations:

Organic strawberries
Growing strawberries
Strawberry growing
Organic gardening
Healthy food

Some of the sites you find probably won’t be book-affiliate sites, or they might be inappropriate for other reasons. For the rest, you might contact the Web site owner via e-mail or via telephone from contact information from the site. If there’s no contact information listed, there’s often a Webmaster e-mail address near the bottom of home pages. Sometimes a site’s “advertise with us” link will provide the fastest response—although you won’t be offering to pay for advertising.
A personal note to the Web site owner works best. Explain who you are and why you think the site’s visitors will appreciate learning about your book.

Driving more sales to Amazon through its affiliates will further boost your sales rank and continue the positive feedback loop, with more people discovering your book, and adding more weight for your title in Amazon’s recommendations and search results.

Amazon takes cue from eBay, asks customers directly for book reviews

One of the biggest strengths of Amazon over its biggest e-commerce rivals like, eBay and BN.com, has always been its automated book recommendations, the vast amount of product information it displays, and customer reviews.

Realizing this gap, eBay this year has begun paying people to write book reviews on its site.

It looks like Amazon wants to stay in the lead. Twice in the past week I've gotten e-mails asking me to write a customer review, the first time Amazon has ever prompted me to write a book review:

From: "Amazon.com"
Subject: Review your recent purchases at Amazon.com!

Thank you for your recent purchases from Amazon.com.

We invite you to submit a review for the products you purchased. Your input will help other customers choose the best products and help Amazon.com continually improve the customer experience.

It's easy to submit a review--just click the Review this product button next to the product.

The Making of a Bestseller: Success Stories from Authors and the Editors, Agents, and Booksellers Behind Them (Purchased on 08/31/2006)

Lumiscope 204-008 Dual Head Stethoscope (Purchased on 08/14/2006)

Q&A: How can I get my book reviewed by Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and Kirkus Reviews?

QUESTION: How can an author get a book review in the major trade and library journals?

ANSWER: Most newspapers and magazines have reduced space for book reviews in recent years, even as the number of books published has skyrocketed. Many reviews today are syndicated by national writers, leaving little opportunity for new authors to get reviewed, even in local media.

These long odds haven’t deterred many authors, and traditional media outlets are being bombarded with self-published books. Most old-media reviewers simply won’t consider reviewing a book unless it’s from a major trade publisher.

Sometimes feature sections of newspapers -- such as the Lifestyle, Home, or Business sections -- are more likely to feature a book, particularly one by a local author.

One drawback to distributing review copies is that many of the books will quickly appear for sale on Amazon Marketplace, even if you stamp "Review Copy, Not For Sale" on the front cover. Although Amazon’s policies prohibit the sale of review copies, it still occurs, and of course you’ll receive no revenue from such sales.

You certainly don't want to refuse a legitimate request for a review copy. But a more realistic strategy for obtaining reviews in print media is to target specialized magazines and trade publications in your niche. You can find such publications by consulting Gale Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media, available in many larger libraries.

If more than three months remain before your book's publication date, you can submit it for consideration in these trade review publications:

Booklist:
800-545-2433

Kirkus Reviews:
212-777-4554

Library Journal:
212-463-6823

Publisher’s Weekly
212-645-9700

Midwest Book Review
608-835-7937

Self-published authors get special consideration from Midwest Book Review, which also gives special preference to small presses and members of the Publishers Marketing Association. If your book is selected, its review will be posted to online retailers, relevant Web sites and forums, and included on an interactive CD-ROM provided to corporate, academic, and public library systems.

Increasing your book sales using Amazon's book publicity network

The more your book sells on Amazon, the more frequently it's shown and recommended to more customers. Books that sell well on Amazon appear higher in search results and category lists.

Let's imagine your book How to Grow Organic Strawberries outsells a competing title, Idiot's Guide to Growing Organic Strawberries. When Amazon customers search for the keyword "strawberries," your book will appear on top -- customers will see it first, and notice it before competing books.

More benefits result from your Amazon sales: Your book will move up in category lists, providing another way for potential readers to discover it. For example, your title on organic strawberries would appear in this Amazon subcategory:

Home & Garden > Gardening & Horticulture >
Techniques > Organic

Because your book is on top, readers browsing this subcategory list will find your book faster. It's a bestseller list for your niche. Thirty-five top-level categories (like Arts & Photography; Business & Investing) are each divided into dozens more subcategories on Amazon. Unlike general bestseller lists like USA Today's bestseller list, Amazon's category lists show what people are interested in at the niche level, where passions run deepest.

Amazon's subcategories are discrete enough that, with modest sales, your title can be at or near the top, providing more exposure. In our example, the subcategory of Home & Garden > … Organic, your book could claim one of the top three spots with only two or three sales per week on Amazon.

Once you've bubbled up to the top of your subcategory, it becomes a positive feedback loop. Amazon acts as a huge filter, funneling thousands of readers toward your book.
If your book continues selling for six months or so, Amazon can assign it to more categories, making it even more likely browsers will find you. Books that sell moderately well eventually can be assigned to 10 or 12 categories, the same as if your book were shelved in a dozen sections of a brick-and-mortar bookstore simultaneously.

To see your book’s current subcategories assignments on Amazon, find the section on your book’s product page called "Look for similar items by category." Clicking on those links takes you to a list of the subcategory’s bestsellers.

Sometimes persistent publishers can talk the folks at Amazon into assigning their books to additional categories. Research other books in your niche, and see which categories they’re displayed in. Narrow a list down to 10 categories and send your list, ISBN, and contact information to Amazon. First you’ll need to complete publisher contact information which is for use only by the publisher and author. Find the form here.

Selling books on your Web site

Offering your book for sale directly on your Web site can provide the highest profit margin since you don't have to cough up discounts to wholesalers and distributors.

For those who sell downloadable books from their own site, the purchase price is nearly 100 percent profit, the only other direct costs are those of collecting payment, such as credit-card merchant fees or PayPal fees.

But many authors who sell directly on their Web site also offer a range of other options, like buying links to Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Some people are just more comfortable buying from a "big name" like Amazon. Some customers want to buy multiple books and get a shipping discount, or may have a loyalty membership with one of the retailers.

You can improve your sales by giving customers several choices. Authors who want to encourage sales through their own Web site can do so by offering something a bit extra –- like signed books or free shipping -– available only on orders placed directly on their Web sites.

Google Checkout

PayPal has been a popular tool among Internet merchants for years, but in 2006 Google launch its own payment service, Google Checkout.

Checkout has the potential for revolutionizing sales of books and other items over the Internet, since purchases can be made from any participating vendor using a single Google login. Google Checkout payments are fairly easy to add to any Web site or blog, using cut-and-paste buy buttons. Google Checkout also works with Google's search advertising program, AdWords, giving advertisers an easy solution for attracting customers and processing the resulting sales.

Google Checkout could also undermine one of Amazon's key advantages, checkout convenience. Amazon gets many sales simply because buyers are already registered with their shipping address and payment information. If Google's checkout system is widely adopted, suddenly there could be 10,000 more Internet bookstores, all of them supporting the same one-click checkout system.

eBay Stores

An eBay Store can serve as an effective storefront for booksellers. Although it's best known as an auction marketplace, is 2006 eBay launched a fixed-price marketplace called eBay Express, which focuses particularly on new books, music and video. It remains to be seen if eBay will capture some of the market share Amazon has with books.

If you have an eBay Store, you can insert a link back to your Web site, which can boost your site’s authority with Google and other search engines.

Q&A: How does your domain registration impact Search Engine Optimization on your author site?

QUESTION: I've heard that the length of your domain registration can effect how well you show up in search results. Is this something I need to worry about with an author Web site?

ANSWER: It's hard to find concrete evidence on this, but I think you're right, the length of your domain registration can have a big impact on your search engine optimization (SEO). And of course that directly impacts how many people find your site and end up buying your book.

Many factors influencing how much juice your Web site has in search-engine results are outside your immediate control. For example, new domains -- those registered within the previous year -- are often shortchanged by search engines. One theory among experts, Google Sandbox, purportedly explains why new Web sites have a probationary period before they gain visibility.

Why would Google penalize new blogs and Web sites? Certainly a new site is just as likely to have valuable content as one that's been around a while. The answer, according to some experts is that it's the search engines' way of dealing with spam Web sites, which has been a growing problem in recent years. Fly-by-night companies erect Web sites using stolen content, and can make a bit of money with them until their Web host gets complaints about copyright violations and shuts down the site. So spammers only register their domain for the minimum, one year, since they know they won't be doing business there for very long. They don't want to pay registration fees for years in advance when they know they'll probably be closing up shop soon, involuntarily.

How can you take advantage of this? By letting Google and the other search engines know you're not fly-by-night. Instead of paying the minimum registration fees on your domain -- usually $9 per year for the following 12 months -- pay for 10 years in advance. It's an investment of $90, and it can worth a tremendous amount more. Google doesn't have an official policy about this, nor do the other search engines. But anecdotally, bloggers and Webmasters often report a huge increase in search-engine traffic a few weeks after extending their domain registration beyond one year in advance.

After hearing of this myself this past summer, I changed my domain registration on this site to expire nine years from now instead of during the next 12 months. Less than a month later, the traffic volume of folks coming here directly from Google search results went from approximately three people per day to about 85 people per day. Coincidence? I don't think so.