Would you let B&N bully you?

Some of the more loyal readers to Obie Joe note the, uh, primitive nature of our blogroll. In some ways, the intent reflects the loyalty to a few sites, and in another way, it's an avoidance of paying the devil its' due for return favors.

If you're an author with an involved site/blog intended to gather your audience and move sales, you've had to consider the bargain of referral links. As well as the balance of these referral links to your own e-commerce goals. Does the inclusion of an Amazon button take sales from your e-cart? Plus, the heavy-handed suggestion from B&N to include their button has worried several more of the entrepreneurial authors.

The answer is do a bit of both. To place your book in the most comprehensive marketing plan, it's best to include all buttons, including, Indiebound (to refer to a local bookstore to handle your sale). But here's the thing: make your deal the best. Grant the best discount (at least 40% off retail price), throw in swag (free bookmarks, gumballs or stickers), and decent customer service. Most people don't mind clicking on your shopping cart, if the price and convenience is about the same. So, go ahead, welcome all buttons, but make sure to make yours the prettiest.

Blackhatting your book on FaceBook

Technically, this could be another Tip from Mr. Obie Joe, but since it's just evil, perhaps not.

Tag the name of every one of your FaceBook friends on your book cover, and just like that, your book cover appears on hundreds of pages in FaceBook.

How cool! What little time needed on a nifty marketing technique.

Except -- leaving aside the possible revulsion your friends feel -- it's a get rich quick kind of promotion. If you're in the game of developing your career beyond one book, it's not a technique used for gathering an audience for keeps. Tagging doesn't cultivate your audience; other, more content-rich, individualistic techniques do.

Remember, most social media tools are only enhancements, not the thing. Use FaceBook to cultivate your already burgeoning audience (which probably got its start with your real-life F&F). FaceBook can't create your audience; only you can.

(The icon is from "booktag," a Shelfari type application in FaceBook, which might be a good way to build new FaceBook fans for your book.)

Swing by the Salon today, why don't you?

Obie Joe Media is sponsoring two panel discussions, both possibly essential, at the 14th annual Baltimore Book Festival. Check out these conversation makers on Friday, September 25:

Black Money-Why the Urban Genre is Remaking the Book Business
3:30PM - 4:15PM, Literary Salon
• Troy Johnson, founder, aalbc.com
• Christopher Herz, publisher and author, Canal Publishing
• Tracie Howard, Random House author, urban marketing expert
• Ellis L. Marsalis, III, founder, Obie Joe Media

• Will Online Save the Printed Word?
4:15PM - 5:00PM, Literary Salon
• Kevin Smokler, noted as a founding father of online book promotion, founder with WIRED editor Chris Anderson of booktour.com
• Ami Greko, digital marketing, MacMillian
• Brad Grochowski, Director of Baltimore-based AuthorsBookshop.com, a nationally acclaimed online bookstore, or alternative to Amazon.com, dedicated to selling self-published, independently published and small-press published books.

No time for a F2F book club?

At minimum, you as the author have received the advice from your publisher, publicists and friends: contact book clubs. Not only do clubs buy in bulk, the word-of-mouth generated by book clubs is unmatched in content and effectiveness.

The truth is, book clubs -- at least the ones of some stablilty and open membership -- are swamped by review requests like elephants to a pumpkin feast. Tapping the cane, Mr. Obie Joe asks you to open your eyes to other ways to promote your book in ways similar to a book club.

Susan Larson the inestimable book editor for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, compiled a list of sites where you and your friends can go into depth why your book is everything.
(Excerpt from 8/12/09 Times-Picayune)

GoodReads.com
This site is a great place to recommend books you've read and see what books others are reading.

It's easy to sign up, and one way to build your virtual bookshelf quickly is to rate the books you've read, from such classics as "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee to contemporary favorites such as "The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Nighttime" by Mark Haddon. In no time at all, I had a virtual shelf of 90 books. There are also categories for books you're reading now, and a place to list books you want to read.

This is also a good place to post quotes, your own writing, or publicize literary events. GoodReads also sends out a monthly newsletter, and there's a group for almost every taste.

The top five "must read" books on Good Reads this week are "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," by Junot Diaz; "The Host, by Stephenie Meyer; "Living Dead in Dallas (Sookie Stackhouse No. 2)," by Charlaine Harris; "Olive Kitteridge," by Elizabeth Strout; and "Outliers," by Malcolm Gladwell." GoodReads also runs an ongoing, fun-to-follow poll of the best and worst books of all time; Stephenie Meyer's bestselling vampire novel, "Twilight," appears on both lists.

Librarything.com
I became aware of this personal book collection cataloging site during a visit from my old college roommate, who, like me, has too many books. Just type in the title, author or the ISBN number on the back of the book and the description will appear. Users can enter 200 books for free or as many as you like for $10 a year or $25 for life.

Currently, the site has more than 700,000 users with more than 40 million book listings. One user has more than 30,000 books listed. The top five authors on Librarything are J.K. Rowling, Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Neil Gaiman.

Shelfari.com
This Seattle site, founded in 2006, became so successful that it was purchased by Amazon.com in 2008 (so naturally, every entry features a "buy from Amazon" link).

Another virtual shelf-building site, it offers readers a variety of groups. Top postings on the current Shelfari blog are entries about children's summer reading, hilarious parodies of children's literature in "The Runaway Mummy" and "Where the Mild Things Are," by Maurice Sendup, and fond reminiscences of Frank McCourt and Walter Cronkite.

Bookcrossing.com
This site is for the booklover with a generous streak who wonders what to do with books that they have no room for in a permanent collection. "Help make the whole world a library" with more than 700,000 members in more than 130 countries.

Here's how it works: Take a book from your collection, put a note inside the cover about Bookcrossing.com, register the book on the Web site, and release it "into the wild" -- leaving it behind in a hotel room, airport waiting area, restaurant booth, park bench, wherever. Whenever I travel, I take books I can leave behind, and so far I've released books in Louisiana, Maine, Georgia, Florida and Texas. Happy reading, you lucky people who found those books.

You can also find out where books have been released in your geographical area if you want to go book-hunting. Currently there are 18 books "in the wild in Louisiana," 2 in New Orleans, and 8 in Pineville..

My Space and Facebook and Twitter
Those social networking megasites are also must-stops for booklovers. Many authors have their own pages now, and local bookstores such as Garden District, Maple Street Book Shop, and Octavia Books have online presences. It's fun to check out the stats of such best-selling writers as Anne Rice, who has more than 30,000 fans, and Rebecca Wells and Michael Lewis, who each have more than 400.

"Facebook is a networking tool, but it is not a substitute for the face-to-face communication with our customers which we value above all else," said Tom Lowenburg of Octavia Books, which also posts YouTube clips of author visits.

Twitter recently came in handy when Maple Street Book Shop only had a day's notice for a visit by best-seeling author Dave Eggers. "About 150 people follow us on Twitter," said owner Donna Allen. "We had a great turn-out."

TIP: Be a cultural filter

Several decades ago -- well, it seems so -- Ms. Obie Joe was a new parent, and unwise to procuring the good influences for children. As in, what were the actual good books for kids. Ones that entertained without pandering, intrigued without scaring, and soothed without boring.

This being the 90's, without the web, recommendations were gotten piecemeal from librarians, other parents, or something heard. Then Ms. Obie Joe got her hands on the Chinaberry catalog. It was, and remains, one of the best filters for the surfeit of children's books in the library.

Beyond reading with some satisfaction of the predictable drama of someone's life, most of us read blogs for the type of information that's a quick tip, a secret, a new crush. Like Chinaberry, your blog can be an essential filter for readers, inspiring them to return repeatedly. Tell readers about the new book, the best hat, the spiciest sauce.