TIP: To PDF your clips, or not?

After a bit of time you'll have a section for the press appearances. Book reviews, feature articles, and radio/TV interviews, your community association newsletter.

For those press appearances in print, you have a choice on the format featuring these articles. The most familiar format are the links. But, if an author is technologically adept, Ms. Obie Joe recommends the PDF version. Too often links expire, or reference another article, but the PDF can be perpetually viewed on your site. See this site for an example. 

What a coincidence dancy!

You ever noticed the helpful nature of the 1-star and 2-star reviews of a book on Amazon? Not only do these reviews take delight in detailing the many flaws of a book, they go the extra mile, and suggest other books. Whose worth of course, is much better than the book reviewed. Ms. Obie Joe would classify this as a less-than-scrupulous book promotion method. 

(BTW, this book here, Lopsided, most certainly does not deserve anything less than 5 stars. Whether you're a survivor or not, this book's mix of humor, education and outrage is compelling. Plus, is that book cover not one of the best EVER?)

TIP: Your Google Alerts whisper secrets

Many authors seek that standard measure of success: a media hit. An article in a major magazine, spot on a TV show, or radio interview. Fine and well, just don't forget the other media: online. As in online content, and online references to mainstream media.

To see who's telling your secrets, of course, Google Alerts is your best tool.

A wonderful measure of success is how often your book, your name, or your attachment to an issue appears in Google Alerts. Particularly in the midst of a push for media, online and otherwise.

Google Alerts can be a bit messy, and to avoid flooding your in-mailbox, Ms. Obie Joe recommends:
• Sign up
• With each sign-up, make each term as specific as possible, and with quotation marks:
-- Book title
-- Your name, particularly with initials
-- Title of an article relevant to your book
-- The name of your site and/or blog.

Also, make sure to choose "comprehensive" for the type of Alerts; you never know if a media hit will come from news, blogs, sites, or groups.

Most of us choose once-a-day Alerts; but if you know you won't respond to a Alert frequently, set aside a time once a week to go through the Alerts to see which ones need a response.

Who has the best voice?

Each time Ms. Obie Joe drives through the tunnel under the Baltimore Harbor, on her way South, she thinks of Haven Kimmel. Now while any thoughts of Ms. Kimmel are welcome, rather it's the memory of Ms. Kimmel's audiobooks. The distinctive voice of Ms. Kimmel (think combination of North Carolina twang, stretched by Indiana flats) read She Got Up Off the Couch, and A Girl Named Zippy. There's this one story in She Got Up the Couch, where Haven's mother races to a university President's Tea, dressed in clothes 20 sizes too large, and on a bike not her own. As we listened to it, whatever we were looking at become seared with the memory of that passage.

Now that's what a good audiobook is capable of. And given that the sales of audiobooks are one of the few sectors in publishing with huge gains, there'll be more of us appreciating the vivid ride. Except, those audiobooks that fall short. Or cringe. I guess, when in doubt, go with the Read by Author designation.

What is your favorite audio book? And how can we inspire Mr. Obie Joe to lend his fine voice to the same?

Computer literacy will never replace book literacy

Libraries, like many other public spaces, should offer grand designs to support grand ideas. Walk inside the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue, and you glide with a purpose.

In the main branch in Obie Joe's hometown in Baltimore, there's this beautiful, 60's-style reference desk to greet all visitors. Well, used to be. Recently, Ms. Obie Joe walked into the main branch in Baltimore, and saw the desk now dwarfed by approximately 100 computers (not even Macs!), with dozens slaving over clicks-upon-clicks.

No surprise when your library director, one Ms. Carla Hayden, freely admits that:

BC: Isn’t it interesting that you’re talking about computers, but the library is full of books.
CH: What’s interesting is that when we talked about libraries in the past, books were the main vehicles for getting information and also for entertainment, but definitely for information, and now it’s beyond books in terms of getting information. Most of the entertainment types of literature are still in book format, like Harry Potter.

Hayden then goes on to describe how her library system now emphasizes the ease of the digital: free DVDs, filling out government forms online, using the computer as a replacement to a doctor, and every way except this point: that a library fosters ideas via guidance to a literacy not considered by the patron.

Small wonder this library director picked "Solutions and Delights" as the logo. Of course.

Deep, deep, sad, sigh. Since when is a library, ideas, books, literacy about delights?!

(Photo credit. Look! Desks with no computers!)

A suggestion for Mr. Obie Joe

Ms. Obie Joe is mighty impressed with this dress. Isn't her birthday coming up?

TIP: Google drilling into your subject

Finding your audience online is an essential element of any publicity effort for your book. Particularly for nonfiction titles. But lots o' luck finding, via Google or any other search engine, the discussion group, blog or site specific for your subject. Type in, say, coal mining tools, and you'll have to sift through sites for equipment, unions, history, and so on and on.

Here's a tip from Ms. Obie Joe: Be more specific. "Oh, really?," you'd say. Like this:
Instead of: "coal mining tools."
Try: "coal mining tools discussion groups."
Or try: "coal mining tools blogs."

Once you start to collect sites of use, bounce off each site's links, or blogroll. When you google, type in: www.(the link):the site.com. Or via Yahoo, it would be: www.search.yahoo.com, and then enter link:http://www.thesite.com.

Of course there's also the personal approach: e-mail the site's author and ask them for best links to sites that love...coal mining tools.

TIP: Why blurbs don't always matter

'"Fantastic! The best since the Magna Carta!"
"Words previous to your brain will fall out once you read this book!"

Ah. The book blurb. Often on the back cover, on the jacket leaf, and sometimes, before the title page, blurbs are designed to pimp the sale.

But do book blurbs work? And what kind? Ms. Obie Joe counsels authors -- who can get more wound about blurbs than their publishers -- to think about what KIND of blurbs one would seek:

Log-rollers: You liked her book on the murderous mother-at-home, and now she likes your book on murderous stay-at-home dads. Tit for tat, these are the type of blurbs from authors closely connected by genre, friendship, agent, or other. These type of blurbs can be a bit inauthentic, reflecting less of the blurbist's true feelings about the book, and more about noting a favor completed.

Celebrities: While some celebrity blurbs can make a cover pop, the truth is, unless the blurb has good content, the blurb is often limited to, "Great book! Must love!" Plus, the time suck of chasing after celebrity endorsements is ridiculously out of proportion for the worth.

If You Like This, You'll Love This: We have to confess, these are our fav type of blurbs. If I see a blurb by Thomas Friedman on an obscure book of microeconomics, or Elizabeth Berg on a women's fiction title, I will try the book. Though these blurbists are often well-known, the difference in the depth of connection.

Frenemies: The blurb that hurts the book rather than hurts. Now who would do that to a book? A publisher, with a book that got lousy pre-pub reviews; the only option then is to run the glowing blurbs from the author's last successful book. See Amy Tan. Jennifer Weiner. And a whole bunch more authors who seem to be flailing with their mid-career books. (Sorry, but we love you gals, and it's killing us what has happened).

Never Too Many: Hardback editions usually get no more than 3 blurbs on the back cover. Paperback editions? They get all of the love: cover, back cover, inside, and even at the end of the book. As Eat, Pray and Love proved, many times the paperback editions outsell the hardback, so don't be shy in loading up the praise.

Or, for that matter, asking for a blurb that matters. Course, there's always the option to blurb your own book. What? You think it's not done?
"Packed with good things, like ink, full stops, and paper with words on it." (Spike Milligan)

To those who make fun of those with mental illness

Few writers have affected those in the Obie Joe family as did the writer David Foster Wallace. Today's news is a reminder of the wretched toll mental illness takes. Treatment is difficult, and often fraught with inconsistent progress. Many of those who suffer shirk from treatment because of the shame factor.