Sales, accolades, sales again

Recognition, gathered via awards from officious places, or premature death, always bring sales of your book.

Many authors spend their entire careers unjustly unappreciated by awards and/or sales. Trust that you are not alone, and that every sale is worth something. Mr. Obie Joe was intrigued to read of the book sales for the five nominees for the prestigious National Book Award:

(winner) LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN, by Colum McCann 17,200 copies
LARK AND TERMITE, by Jayne Anne Phillips 15,250 copies
IN OTHER ROOMS, OTHER WONDERS, by Daniyal Mueenuddin 8,750 copies
FAR NORTH, by Marcel Theroux 1,275 copies
AMERICAN SALVAGE, by Bonnie Jo Campbell 1,100 copies

Sidenote: A hearty congrats to McCann, a fav around Obie Joe Media for his book, Zoli, about the Romany, and the struggle to be left alone by the dominant culture. Best line: "I still call myself black, even though I have rolled around in flour."
(Photograph: Tina Fineberg/AP)

TIP: Fancify your online invites

Sure, fancify is only a word the littlest Obie Joe could conjure, but the intent for online invites is the same. How best to match the online invitation to your event? There are a fair amount of these services, and nearly offer the same points:
• Ease of design. Some offer more options in clip art. Most offer templates for any occasion; Constant Contact is known for their range.
• Tracking. Evite pings you by cell phone; all services notify you by e-mail as the yea/nay/maybe somedays roll in, as well as tell you how many opened the invite at all.
• Cost. Only Evite is free, and scrolling through the ads can annoy. Constant Contact does offer e-mail management; those authors with multiple e-mail lists arranged by niche audiences can find this service a life-saver.

We're also been intrigued by a new player, paperlesspost. Still in beta, and not offered for free (yet), there are aspects of using an online invite system that looks more at home with a wedding planner. When we received an paperlesspost invite from Love Is a Mountain author Mozella Perry Ademiluyi for appearances in London, we paid more attention because the look, and suspense of "opening" the invite gave a larger sense of exclusivity to it.

When designing your next evite, try for a personal, formal look. It might not work for an event in an institutional setting (library, bookstore), but for a more intimate setting (book club), where you want to guarantee close to 100% confirmation, something along the lines from paperlesspress might work.

Perhaps an author tour is worth the time...

Not a fan of Wal-Mart, and probably should know more about Mr. King, and yet this event located just miles from the Obie Joe Media home inspires much love for all involved. Hundreds of fans showed up to meet the man, many of whom camped out the night before.

Get out there and tour! Surprise yourself with the possibility of fans. Maybe not King-size, but surely well enough for building to the same.

(image courtesy of The Baltimore Sun)

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.

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.