TIP: Bringing strangers to your book

Use of steroids in tennis?
Have you ever had a blinking light as a thank-you from a faery?
Are you a shaman?
How do you avoid a Facebook "suicide?"

One of the first tasks in the use of social networking to promote your book is contacting your real-life friends and family, and to build from that base. Well, sure, it always helps to start from home. At a certain point, though, your book needs to make friends with strangers. Such as, Troupes vs. Dance Companies. Or, the answers to any one of the questions above. That's the wonder of Tribe.net, a very popular site for all kinds and causes. At the very least, have fun with the search engine on tribe.net:
• Healthy food for lazy people (4987 members)
• Burning man (20,000+ members, but you already knew that)

Tribe.net strives to connect to all resources on a topic -- blogs, commerce, news -- so be prepared to take a bit of time to drill to a group that is active, and is about one topic of interest to your book. Try e-mailing moderators; not only are they responsive, they'll know exactly which tribe is home for you.
(the hand of purple is from loop.pool, a tribe.net project by Rick Walker's Abstract Electronic Live Looping Project)

Just like the Alien vs. Predator fight, we don't know who will win in the Amazon vs. Wal-Mart fight to sell bottom-priced books. We do know the loser: those who love books. Sure, the price wars are limited to the blockbusters, so what's the damage for 95% of the other books?

Lots. Those blockbusters also shore up the independent bookstores, authors, and the publishers by subsidizing the more modest sales. That's Mr. Obie Joe's opinion. Pudd'nhead Books found a few other opinions, including the first comparsion of books to pork chops.

"It's a totally different market. If Wal-Mart started selling pork chops for $1.79 a pound, they're not going to put Whole Foods out of business. There is plenty of room for everyone."
Barbara Meade, co-founder of Politics and Prose, Wash., DC

"I'm tickled pink (that Wal-Mart and Amazon.com are fighting), and I'm hoping that they lose a lot of money."
Jane Kessler, owner of Appletree Books, Cleveland Heights, OH

"Bestsellers are not the strength of independent bookstores," Klein said. "We don't live and die by the bestsellers. . . . What goes on between Amazon and Wal-Mart affects them more than it affects us."
Richard Klein, co-owner of Book Revue, Huntington, NY

"It's the chain bookstores and the readers that are going to be hurt by this the most. Chain bookstores can't do what what independents can do, not can they pay their bills by selling toothpaste and electronics. Readers will suffer the most, however. If the general public learns to expect cheap books, publishers won't be able to afford to take a chance on new writers, so quality, story, research and expertise will slowly disappear from new books, and we'll only have those most commercial and bland books to choose from. Again, you get what you pay for."
Nikki Furrer of Pudd'nhead Books, Webster Groves, MO

TIP: Memorize these terms

Ellis Weiner's new piece, "Subject: Our Marketing Plan," would be funnier for Mr. Obie Joe had we not realized we knew most of the terms used in marketing books the modern way. Even tab-skimming your blog's comments.

Sigh. (And the image is inverted to push the point.)

How u doin', MySpace?

At this point Mr. Obie Joe wonders if the old becomes the new in the ever dizzying swirl of social networking tools. All of advertising appeals to the fantasy within, and we are driven by similar desires by choosing which social network to use for ourselves and our book.

So, Facebook is in, MySpace is out. Facebook is for younger, hipper, richer, more active people. MySpace? Sniffed one social media researcher to NPR this morning: MySpace is too brown and too poor. How does she know this? "Because, she says, low income people are more likely to click on ads, in MySpace," notes NPR.

If social networks are like our neighborhoods -- welcome to only those who live there -- then how to expand your book's presence within social networks? Well, for one, don't believe the balderdash of these "social media researchers." There are a few teenagers in the Obie Joe family, and judging by the average 1,000+ count of friends on their Facebook accounts, we'd say teens are a lot more open to new ideas and friends than we think.

So, start up a MySpace page. Use MySpace's wonderful capacity to post calendar, audio clips, and segments of your book. Granted, it's more difficult to filter in MySpace to find your prospective readers (try typing in names of your favorite authors to see what MySpace groups they are placed in), but not impossible.

Plus, you know those fickle teenagers: if you think they'll be on Facebook by graduation, they have a Tweet for you.

Biting the hand

The good and bad about the latest throw-down over what is the new paradigm of book publicity is found on Huffington Post by Jonathan Fields, whose new book Career Renegade benefited from his techniques.

Best closing line: "There's a new world order in arena of buzz and it's called conversation."

Best comment: Left by Time correspondent and author, "Going on Leonard Lopate's radio show in an hour. I've decided to make book publicity a full-time career."

Worst use of comment section in article about clueless nature of publicists navigating online publicity: "Authors? Contact me!"

TIP: Managing your Facebook popularity

In using Facebook as a publicity tool, many authors prefer to keep their publicity among their friends. Which is an admirable, but limited goal.

Keep your friends, and keep up the creative talk on your personal page, but also create a Fan page. An aside: there is a difference between Fan Page and a Group Page. Mr. Obie Joe is of the opinion a Fan Page might work best for a book, as membership is unrestricted. That said, authors should consider building a Group Page, because the discussions on these type of pages are more involved, and the chosen members more willing to help you with your viral marketing.

OK, here's what a Fan Page can do for you and your book(s):
• Manage, at a more professional level, those announcements distinct to your book.
• Expand your circle to include other Friends whose influence might help your book in different ways, and independent of whether they've your "friend." This would include reviewers, book clubs, libraries. Asking another Fan Page to join your Fan Page is easier than Friend2Friend.
• Increase the focus: on a Fan Page there's no talk of "OMG! I saw a bluebird." Instead, it's about you, and the book.
• Allows you to let almost everyone in. For the most part, the focus eliminates nonsense, and you don't have to worry if you do, or don't know, the new Fan.
asked you; on the other • Even though you might want to share the same info. from your Friend page to the Fan, it's best to keep the content feeds separate. Friends don't want to what strange Qs the bookclub had, your Fans would thrive on that tidbit.
(the pic is of Ms. Meyer, because she holds the record for the number of Fan and Group Pages)

TIP: Put your books in the trunk

But don't drive them off the cliff.

Having a few copies of your book is an essential marketing task, whether you're the author from a big or little or no publishing house. Best of all, these techniques are evergreen, and can be done well after the book's publication date. A few ways those books will come in handy:
• Sell-outs at a reading. Particularly if it's a non-retail setting, i.e., library or reading series, chances are the few copies the venue pre-bought might not suffice.
• Chance conversation with a co-worker who knows someone in charge of booking that killer venue you've been seeking.
• You ran into Jonathan Yardley in the grocery store parking lot and he agreed to review the book. True story.
• Last-minute inspiration to put on the preacher persona, and hand-sell your book at the Farmer's Market. Or along a traffic jam. At a subway station.
• On a day-trip, see that cozy independent bookstore, and decide to drop off 5 copies on consignment.