Turning your blog into a book

Many blog writers turn their posts into a full-fledged book. Chris Anderson posted much of the content for his business bestseller The Long Tail on his blog by the same name.

There's even a word for it, blook, which means a bound book originally published serially on a blog, such as Julia Powell's Julie & Julia.

Since blogs became popular a few years ago, there have been several tools for converting your blog into a book, Blurb being perhaps the most well known.

Now another blog-to-book tool is entering the market, Blog2Print. It's billed as a "one-click" solution for turning your blog into a book. Then you simply upload a cover photo and confirm which posts should appear in what order. So far it works only with Google's Blogger platform.

Anyone who's actually written a book is probably skeptical of these blog-to-book services. Sure, a blog is great for generating and refining ideas. But pouring unedited blog posts into a book is a little like throwing table scraps into a blender and calling it a gourmet shake. Your dog might eat it, but you're not going to fool anyone else.

But just for the sake of argument, let's imagine someone does manage to compile a wonderful book from a blog. The pricing of these services is a show-stopper. Pricing at Blog2Print starts at $19.95 for a 20-page four-color book. It's about a dollar less at Blurb. A paperback with 300 pages costs $59.95!

These services might attract a small number of people who want to print a vanity coffee table book. But anyone who's got material for a commercial book will see too many downsides.

Q&A: Can Amazon Customer Discussions boost book sales?

QUESTION: I've heard that the "Amazon Forum" is a good place for authors to participate in discussions and help generate book sales. Is this true, and where can I find this forum?

ANSWER: Perhaps you're thinking of the Customer Discussions feature that appears on every book detail page. Since Customer Discussions appears near the bottom, it's not one of Amazon's most popular features. But there seems to be an uptick in activity in recent weeks.

For example, look at the bottom of this page and you'll see "Active discussions in related forums":

When this feature debuted about a year ago, it was rarely used. Most customers posted only to forums on popular or controversial topics such as religion, politics, parenting, etc.

Sometimes a forum pertains to the book displayed on the page, and other times it's a generic discussion displayed on all books detail pages in that topic area. There are some generic discussions about fiction genres too.

Lately, however, it seems Amazon Customer Discussions are becoming more popular because Amazon is cross-posting most of the generic content across wide topic areas -- for example, if a customer starts a forum on adoption, those postings will pop up on the page for every adoption book on Amazon.

Here's one of the most active forums on Amazon.

Certainly, if an author can find a discussion where they can contribute, the exposure can only help. I've heard from one author in the parenting field who said she's boosted her sales from participating in these discussions. You can add a signature to the bottom of your message giving your URL and book titles, much as you would in an e-mail or discussion board. Your posts will automatically include a hyperlink to your Amazon Profile, which contains your bibliography (if you're enrolled in Amazon Connect.)

The drawback to Amazon Customer Discussions is there's no apparent way for an author or publisher to delete inappropriate postings. I've reported some off-the-wall posts to Amazon, but it seems they won't delete anything unless it involves profanity.

There are other kinks. Often the cross-posted forums are completely unrelated to the book they appear with, but instead are linked to some random keyword. For example, look at the raging discussions about human evolution that appear with the business bestseller Everything Is Miscellaneous. How did that happen? Look at the first phrase in Amazon's editorial review: "Human beings are information omnivores..."

MySpace Top 40: The more friends, the merrier

There was no announcement, but MySpace now enables members to show a "Top 40 friends" list, doubling the previous limit.

The default had been a Top 8 friends list, with a maximum of 20 friends if you tweaked your profile.

I wasted no time in picking out an additional 20 author friends for my list, and you can take a peek at my posse on the right.

Does this feature help authors publicizing their book? You bet it does. Take a look at my No. 1 friend, author Marcy Dermansky. She creatively used her MySpace Top 8 to help promote her debut novel Twins.

Drawing from her 3,000 MySpace friends, Marcy found several with names matching the character names in her book -- like Lauren, Chloe and Smita. She moved them to her Top 8. For the more unusual names in the book, like Jürgen and Yumiko, she searched for new friends using MySpace’s search engine. She sent them MySpace friends invitations, and many of them were so intrigued they bought a copy of the book simply to read about namesake characters. Marcy says this fueled word of mouth for her book (which has received rave reviews).

You can see the Top Friends list for any MySpace member midway down the right column of their profile page, under the About Me section. By default, your Top Friends list includes the first eight friends added to your account.

So if you're trying to get publicity for your book, it never hurts to engage in some name-dropping. And you can do the same thing with your MySpace Top Friends list. Take your most influential or well-known friends and move them to the front by scrolling down to the box labeled My Friend Space and clicking Change my Top Friends.

If you're trying to be popular on MySpace, don't limit yourself to just eight a Top Eight. Click Change my Top Friends, and on the top left corner of the screen you’ll see a drop-down menu where you can increase the number of Top Friends displayed on your main page to as many as 40. If you’d rather display fewer Top Friends, you can reduce it to four.

Seek out more authors or experts in your field, and request they add you as a friend. Move them into your Top 8, too. This is a valuable cross-promotion tool because it boosts your exposure among readers in your target audience.

Plug your book with a blog tour

If you haven't yet discovered Tom Masters' Future Perfect Publishing blog, you should pay a visit. It's a new blog, but Tom has already managed to come up with some great material. He's a Web marketing consultant and president of the Book Publishers Northwest, the regional affiliate of Publishers Marketing Association.

Tom interviewed me recently about blog tours (sometimes called "virtual author tours"), and you can read our conversation here:

I think a lot of people are catching on to this method of marketing, in the book industry and in other areas. Consumers just don’t pay much attention to traditional advertising anymore. You’ve got to show up at the places where they are already discussing something that matters to them, like blogs.

Plugging your book into social-networking sites

Here's a follow-up recent posts about tags, MySpace, and Amazon's Web 2.0 features like book recommendations and Search Inside the Book.

Everyone knows these fancy features help people discover your book on Amazon. But these features can help people find your book outside Amazon, too.

Here's an example from my experience:

A few months ago I noticed that my new title Plug Your Book! began surfacing on dozens and dozens (perhaps hundreds or thousands) of Squidoo lenses pertaining to MySpace. Here are three examples -- if you scroll down to the bottom of the page you'll see Amazon Associates links for my book:

Are you utilizing MySpace traffic?

MySpace.com Blogging - How To Do It RIGHT

Explosively Powerful Blog Marketing For Business Owners

I had nothing to do with these Squidoo pages, so I was surprised to see my new book being featured there. (Squidoo pages are written by independent experts and entrepreneurs, here's more information.)

So, how did my book show up on all these Squidoo pages? I knew darned well that most of these people didn't know about my book. MySpace isn't in the title or subtitle of my book, although it does figure prominently in one chapter.

An intriguing point: I had submitted "MySpace" as an Amazon Search Suggestion for my book but Amazon rejected the term with no explanation.

It was only after my book was indexed for Search Inside the Book that my book surfaced on these Squidoo pages. I doubt any of these people writing these Squidoo pages knew about my book. In other words, it's not a personal recommendation from them, it's just a feed from Amazon based on their keywords.

Having said all this, I'd be surprised if this exposure on Squidoo has generated more than a handful of sales. But I guess every little bit helps.

Q&A: Where is my book recommended on Amazon?

QUESTION: On the Amazon page where my novel is for sale, there are several other recommended books displayed under the heading, "Customers who bought this item also bought."

How is this list determined, and how can I find the other places on Amazon where my book appears?

ANSWER: The list is often called the "Also-Bought" list, and it shows the six other books bought most frequently by customers who also purchased your book. Amazon uses a process called collaborative filtering to generate this list, and it prompts quite a few sales. Here's a fuller explanation of how Amazon recommendations can publicize your book.

A Web search will find the other books your novel is being paired with. Start at Google's advance search page.

In the top box labeled "with all the words" enter your book title in quotation marks.

In the next box down labeled "with the exact phrase" enter this: "Customers who bought this item also bought" (no quotation marks are needed here).

A few levels down is a section labeled "Domain." Enter Amazon.com in the box.

Now you can click the gray button on the top right of the page labeled "Google Search" to get your results. Google will show you several Amazon book detail pages that mention your book in the "Also Bought" list for those other books. The results look like this.

At the bottom of the results, you may see a link labeled "repeat the search with the omitted results included." Sometimes Google screens its results like this to avoid showing "duplicate content." Go ahead and click the link to get all the results.

This is a nifty technique for discovering all the places your book is being shown on Amazon, and you can adapt it for several other purposes. For example, there's also a list on each Amazon book detail page headed "What do customers ultimately buy after viewing this item?" Just replace the "Also Bought" phrase in the instructions above with the "Ultimately Buy" phrase.

If, like me, you're addicted to Amazon stats, you'll want to bookmark Sales Rank Express, which shows you Also-Bought lists and a variety of other factoids about your book. On Sales Rank Express, after you input an ISBN, you'll see a button on the right labeled "Get Pairings." That will get you the top 10 "Also Bought" books for your title. You can check your stats on Amazon's international sites while you're at it.

And here's my favorite feature of Sales Rank Express: it shows you the number of copies of your book Amazon has in stock. You can't even get this information on Amazon's Web site. (Yet another stat to obsess over! I used to think I was going crazy checking my Amazon Sales Rank 18 times a day. Now I'm checking my "in stock" number every 10 minutes.)

SRE's proprietor is Aaron Shepard, the author of Aiming at Amazon, a great guide for anyone who is planning to write or publish a book. If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend it.

Q&A: Should I market my book on MySpace or a blog?

QUESTION: I've written a book about music, and I want to start promoting it on the Internet. The amount of time I can spend is limited. Where should I focus my effort -- writing a blog, or promoting my book on MySpace?

ANSWER: There's no reason you can't promote your book on MySpace and your own blog, even if you only have a few hours a week.

So first, sign up for MySpace and find the low-hanging fruit there. Find the MySpace members who are in your niche -- those who already belong to a Group that pertains to your book, or people who are friends of authors in your genre or topic area. This is your likely audience, and you can find them without too much digging. If you're unfamiliar, get specific instructions for marketing your book on MySpace here.

After a month or two of generating buzz on MySpace, you can shift your focus to your own blog at your domain. You can recycle some of your content you used at your MySpace blog. As you begin slacking off at MySpace, you can start generating original work on your own blog.

Why focus on MySpace first? MySpace has already cultivated a community that you can mine for readers. There are tons of MySpace members who are passionate about books and music. You're not inventing the wheel; people who are your likely audience are already there, looking for great content. It's free, and you can make it easy for these folks to find you. And once you get the ball rolling on MySpace and you have a base of friends, you'll start getting invitations from their friends, and you'll have momentum.

Attracting people to your own blog is more difficult; you're starting from scratch. Compared to MySpace, it's a much harder and longer process to get traction with your own blog. It can take a long time to see results -- much longer than on MySpace.

Even though it's a bigger challenge, there are strategic reasons for developing your own blog at your own domain. You have total control and flexibility. Someday you might decide MySpace doesn't fit your image. Or perhaps next week MySpace will begin charging fees you think are unreasonable. They could begin censoring content, or they could drop your favorite feature.

So use MySpace to help build your readership and get some easy initial sales. Try to convert your MySpace friends into visitors for your book blog. You can link to your blog from your MySpace profile page. Here's a tactic for driving traffic from MySpace to your own blog: Post the first three paragraphs of your blog posts on your MySpace blog, with a link to your own site. If your content is good enough, they'll come.

I am more bullish than ever about using social networks like MySpace for book publicity. In fact, as far as I can tell, most of the initial sales for my title Plug Your Book have been to people who found me on MySpace. As they say, the best advertising is free advertising.

Finding readers on MySpace is like shooting fish in a barrel. But be careful not to let it monopolize your time. You need to balance it with the control of publishing on your own domain.

My advice on this might be different six months from now because marketing books on social networks is a rapidly evolving scene. MySpace is still the 800-pound gorilla, and it makes sense to start there. But keep your eye open for other opportunities. For example, I just starting getting involved with Gather.com, which skews toward an older audience and, I believe, a more bookish member base. I think it could develop into a strong community for authors and readers. My sense is that Gather's center of gravity is its Books section, while MySpace's core remains music.

If Gather is successful at growing their membership base to, say, a quarter of the size of MySpace, it could become a no-brainer for book marketing. But who knows, in the meantime another site could pop up tomorrow and become "the" thing. Remember, although MySpace has more than a million accounts, it gained critical mass just a few years ago.

Tags vs. Categories: Which Amazon feature is more useful?

Which Amazon features are the most effective in encouraging consumers to buy books? Many people say it's book reviews and Search Inside the Book.

In a recent discussion, one publisher asserted that Search Inside is obviously Amazon's most effective feature. It allows browsers to mimick the same thing they enjoy doing at a real bookstore -- thumbing through pages.

What's the proof? Just look at Amazon's book detail pages, the publisher said:

Amazon has chosen to position Search Inside the Book at perhaps the single most prominent position on the book detail page, the top left corner. If it didn't help sales significantly, it wouldn't have that real estate.

You should think of Amazon's detail page as a huge, peer-reviewed, massively data-tested experiment in what content elements do the most to help book sales online. The evolution of the content and layout of the detail page reflects their learnings over time.

I think this gives Amazon far too much credit. I'm also a fan of Search Inside, but as far as I can tell, there is no rigorous testing of consumer behavior before the company rolls out new features or prioritizes existing features.

Take this one example: Tags and Categories. The Tags feature appears prominently on Amazon book detail pages, three levels above Amazon's most popular feature, book reviews.

I'd bet far less than a half of one percent of Amazon customers know what a Tag is, and fewer have ever used the feature. Many consumers who have used Tags on Amazon have done it in a counterproductive way (such as tagging a book "Grandma's Xmas present). The most prolific users of tags on Amazon are authors, who spam the feature with redundant or inappropriate tags. In my opinion, this feature's utility for consumers is practically zero.

On the other hand, Categories are familiar to everyone who's ever walked into a library or bookstore. But on Amazon this feature languishes near the bottom of detail pages, with many (perhaps most) books categorized incorrectly or incompletely.

Where are the Categories, such as Books > Fiction > Mystery? Scroll way, way, down near the bottom, past several advertisements and half-baked, unused features like Amapedia wikis and "Customer Discussions" and you'll find Categories.

I buy a lot of stuff on Amazon, and I'd probably buy a lot more if Amazon invested more in classifying products into browsable categories so I could find what I want.

The Amazon employee who is in charge of the Tags feature would probably assert that customers will do a better job of classifying books using Tags than Amazon employees can by working in its catalog department. But at the rate it's going, this could take 50 years.

EditRED, a Web 2.0 network for aspiring authors

The Internet has made it simple for writers to publish, yet it's harder than ever to get a book contract or quality credits for your work.

If you're an aspiring writer, you should check out the EditRED writing community, which can help you break into traditional publishing. Basic membership is free, and allows you to upload writing samples, connect with other members for critique and feedback, and access the publishing directory and other features.

Founder Alan Emmins began the network in 2005 when he signed his first book deal and realized the value of peer feedback for new writers. "Although I had published lots of stories in publications like the The New York Post, Time Out and Penthouse in my seven years as a freelance journalist, I had never really had any feedback on my work," he says. "I would get the odd, 'This is really good', or if the publication was late paying me, 'This is the best thing you have ever done for us', but never anything I could use."

When he got his contract offer, Emmins turned to two writing friends to critique his story and expand it. "The fact that I had two talented writers on hand for debate and critiques proved invaluable to me as a writer.” The trio envisioned a Web 2.0 network for writers to offer the same kind of support for other budding writers.

The process is simple: upload your writing, workshop it with your trusted network of peers, then build your publishing credits.

A new feature called "My Bookshop" helps independent authors promote their books by providing access to shorter works. "As more of our members started getting book deals and entering into self-publishing, we realised that we need to help them sell their books," explains Sean Merrigan. "One of the things independent authors continually overlook when promoting a book is the short story, or short content like blogs and reviews. The bottom line is that people are more likely to read a free short story than buy a book, especially from somebody relatively unknown."

'My Bookshop' strategically places advertisements for a member's books every time that member uploads a new story, or blog, or review. And it allows authors to control how they sell their books. If they want to sell through an online retailer like Amazon, they can make the 'Buy Here' link lead directly to their book product page, including their own affiliate code. Or authors can sell both hard copy and eBook editions directly to readers, bypassing Amazon and its commission.

Using short pieces to help sell a book is an effective tool, Emmins says. "It is a tactic I have used over and over, and that always generates extra book sales. The point is, people generally don’t buy books the first time they see or hear about them, especially from unknown writers. So use short pieces to win readers over, show them you can write, and entice them to buy your book."

Emmins' book is Mop Men: California's Crime Scene Cleaners, released in the UK and Japan. The Independent said it was "A gruelling indictment of modern American culture". The Times called it a "Salty, sassy, non-stop running off at the mouth commentary!" and The Guardian said it held "...ghoulish fascination and educational value".

Q&A: How can I get prepublication reviews on Amazon?

QUESTION: My book has a publication date of October 2007 and it's available now for pre-order on Amazon. I'm interested in getting early book reviews on Amazon.

I've contacted a few Amazon Top Reviewers by following your instructions, and they've agreed to read advance copies. However, there isn't a "Write a Review" link on my book's Amazon page yet. Do you know if it's possible to to submit a prepublication review on Amazon?

ANSWER: Registered Amazon users can submit prepublication reviews, even though there isn't a "Write a Review" link on your book's detail page yet. Here's the link to give your early reviewers:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/
customer-reviews/write-a-review.html?asin=1594489505

Customize the link above for your book by replacing the series of digits on the end with your book's ISBN. Also, put the entire string of characters in one line -- I had to break the line here so it would fit in this column.

Using this link, your reviewers will be able to submit their reviews just as if the book were already selling. But the reviews won't show up on your book's product page until Amazon is actually selling copies of the book.

So you won't know what those early reviews say until the publication date. But there is a way to find out if you're getting positive or negative prepublication reviews on Amazon: Search for your title, and if there's at least one review already, you'll see something like this in the search results:


This book, with a publication date of March 2008, already has at least one review, which you can see from the star rating. But of course the text of the review(s) aren't displayed on the book's Amazon detail page yet.

Editor's Note: Since this article was written, Amazon has introduced a formal program for prepublication reviews from approved reviewers. Read more about Amazon Vine.

One word of caution: Some Amazon shoppers are skeptical when they see several glowing reviews were posted before a book's release. For example, check out the top two reviews for this book, which allege that early reviews of the book were phony. Here are some ugly highlights:

I am highly dubious of the reviews written in January and February in 2004 in particular - the book wasn't published until March 9 of that year.

... It is because of this abuse of Amazon feedback that I gloss over the positive feedback and read the one- and two-star reviews to get to the ugly truth.

Now, as far as I know, those prepublication reviews were completely legitimate. (I've read the book and recommend it highly.) My only point is that something didn't smell right to a vocal minority of reviewers, who blasted the book with two-star reviews chock full of nasty accusations. Then those two negative reviews were voted "most helpful" by Amazon shoppers, propelling them to the top of the list. Now those negative reviews are the first bit of independent information Amazon shoppers see about the book, and I'm convinced it has discouraged sales of the book.

In the case pictured above, Phantom of the Night appears to have at least one one-star prepublication review. In that case, I guess the author should be suspicious.

NY Times: Growth slows for online book sales

Growth in online sales of books and other merchandise has slowed dramatically, according to a report in today's New York Times.

Online online book sales will rise an estimated 11 percent this year, compared with nearly 40 percent last year.

EBay reported that revenue from Web site sales increased by just 1 percent in the first three months of this year compared with the same period last year.

Other highlights:

In response, a so-called clicks-and-bricks hybrid model is emerging, said Dan Whaley, the founder of GetThere, which became one of the largest Internet travel businesses after it was acquired by Sabre Holdings.

The bookseller Borders, for example, recently revamped its Web site to allow users to reserve books online and pick them up in the store....

Barnes & Noble recently upgraded its site to include online book clubs, reader forums and interviews with authors. The company hopes the changes will make the online world feel more like the offline one, said Marie J. Toulantis, the chief executive of BN.com. “We emulate the in-store experience by having a book club online,” she said.

LibraryThing launches early book-review program

Here's a bright idea: LibraryThing is going to provide advance copies of books in exchange for reviews. So far the Early Reviewers program includes just Random House, but it will expand to more publishers this fall.

"You get free books, and share your opinions with a wide audience," the social-networking site for bibliophiles says. "LibraryThing makes everyone happy and keeps everything free and fair."

And here's the brilliant part: LibraryThing's matching algorithm will match books with readers based on which books those readers have in their library. The best-case result will be favorable word of mouth for new books -- assuming the program finds enthusiastic readers for the participating books.

But in the end, it all depends on whether the book is any good or not. LibraryThing's algorithm won't guarantee that a selected reviewer will like the book, only that they're a good candidate to review the book.

The first batch of books are:

• The River Wife by Jonis Agee
• Forgive Me by Amanda Eyre Ward
• Peony in Love by Lisa See
  
• Keeping the House by Ellen Baker
• Away by Amy Bloom

New Web site catalogs author book signings

I'm sure you've heard of the nightmare scenario for a book signing: You get to the bookstore, and not a single customer shows up.

A new Web site, AuthorsTrack, aims to prevent that by publicizing author book signings from across the United States. It seems to be well populated with events, and I'm sure it will become richer as the site gets publicized.

AuthorsTrack isn't limited to book signings, it covers all sorts of events, including lectures.

On YouTube: Amazon's new design 'screws' book reviewers

Amazon's top book reviewers are still angry about the new design for product pages.

As noted here earlier, reviewers believe the new design gives short shrift to book reviews, especially recent reviews.

The new design is being rolled out during the next two weeks. I case it hasn't hit you yet, Amazon Top Review Daniel Jolley gives a rundown in this video.