November 13th, 2009, 5 Comments »
Can I get an amen?
That’s good news. I wasn’t looking forward to selling little USB drives at our book launch if the actual books got held up in customs.
They smell a little odd, if you stick your nose right in them (as I always do with pretty much everything). That’s probably just because they came fresh and direct from the printer.
November 3rd, 2009, 5 Comments »
As I mentioned, our book (see also Amazon) is coming out later this month. In celebration (and relief), we’re holding a book launch party on November 24. Here are the details:
Date: Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Time: 7:00pm - 11:00pm
Location: Autumn Brook Artists Gallery, 1545 West 4th Avenue (map, view from street)We’ll do a brief talk at some point in the evening, followed by a short reading from the book. We’ll also be available to personally inscribe the many, many copies you’ll surely be purchasing to give out as Christmas gifts.
Sundry details:
- Appetizers will be served.
- Convenient cash bar.
- Autographed copies of our book will be available for purchase for $20.
- There’s lots of street parking around, or you may want to consider parking on Granville Island and walking up to the gallery. Otherwise, the location is served by many lovely bus routes.
If you’re local to Vancouver, feel free to stop by. Please either RSVP to the Facebook event or, if you’re not the Facebooky type, drop us a quick email at rsvp@capulet.com.
October 28th, 2009, 6 Comments »
Our book’s release is imminent. We should have it in our hot little hands on November 20 or so, and it will be in stores virtual and actual shortly thereafter.
We’ve been doing some marketing for the book–mostly soliciting blurbs and reviews. However, we’re going to fire up our book blog for at least a couple of months (here’s the RSS feed), and have plans to make a short-lived podcast that will feature readings from the book.
We adapted our book site from our old ebook site, which is why it may look familiar to a few of you. My first blog post over there is about a lack of magic beans:
We can often, however, divide our students into two big groups: those who get it, and those who don’t. Those who get it nod when we talk about the exciting possibilities of Foursquare, and say they’re inspired by the case studies we share. Those who don’t tend to fret about and focus on perceived barriers like copyright and privacy. They look for reasons to discount social media as a viable marketing channel.
On a related note, we were debating as to whether we should set up a Facebook page for the book. I wonder if it’s worth the effort, given that we don’t have the bandwidth or attention span to make it a longterm, sustained online community.
On another related note, at BookCamp Vancouver, I participated in a panel with the lovely and super-smart Monique and Deanna. Somebody asked me why, when they visited this site, they couldn’t find any information about the book. Given that we were advocating that authors need to become more engaged online, they asked it with a certain amount of relish. I may have even seen them high-five their colleague at the back of the audience.
I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the way I answered the question, and wanted to give it another crack. To me, the stuff I promote on my site is a balancing act. I don’t want to inundate people with ‘asks’, so I generally try to limit myself to one item at a time. Before October 15, I was running a Blog Action Day badge. Now, on internal pages at least, I’m running a banner for TckTckTck.
Will I eventually stick up a little ad about the book? Yep, though if you’re a regular reader, you already know about the book. You’ll buy it, or you won’t, and the ad probably won’t change your mind. Besides–and I don’t want to sound ungrateful here–the book is just one project among a bunch of things I’m doing. So I don’t feel a need to pimp it more aggressively than I am.
September 10th, 2009, 7 Comments »
I was in a bookstore at Pearson Airport today. I was just killing time, and I noticed the usual display of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight novels with their stark black covers and gothic fonts. Er, hang on. I looked a little closer:
They’re an entirely different set of vampire werewolf novels by Kelley Armstrong. Is it me, or do those books look a little too much like the Twilight covers? Here’s the cover of Eclipse, the third Twilight novel, for comparison:
Right down to the wide kerning (or is that tracking? I never know) on the author’s name, eh? Doesn’t the design of Ms. Armstrong’s book covers seem like an incredibly cynical attempt to trade on Twilight’s success?
November 23rd, 2008, 4 Comments »
I’m currently writing the chapter on YouTube in our forthcoming social media marketing book. I’m puzzling over a pretty basic phenomenon of the new media world: the stealth marketing video. Common examples include:
The process usually goes like this: These videos are posted with only obscure or oblique references to the brands they’re promoting. They’re remarkable and amazing feats (either real or CGI) make then viral hits on YouTube. Sooner or later, the companies behind them disclose the videos’ true origins.
As in the case of the Cardo Systems video, the company sometimes replaces the video with a new one promoting their brand. Alternately, as in the Ray-ban video, they add a link to their website.
However, in other cases–Levis and Guitar Hero–there’s still no indication on the video page that the video isn’t a legitimate, user-generated and unaffiliated with a corporation.
So why bother? The only tangible, measurable result that I can think of is the free media the companies earn when they go public with the revelation. Of course, this only pays off if the video itself is a success. How many of these corporate stealth videos never get revealed because they only received 8700 views?
There’s considerable value in that earned media. However, this article indicates that “Bike Hero” required four weeks worth of production by an ad agency. That’s quite an expense for what I imagine to be fairly middling media exposure.
As far as I can figure, there isn’t much of a brand awareness gain. After all, the videos usually don’t promote specific brands–that only appears in the subsequent media coverage. And “Bike Hero” isn’t effective unless you’re already familiar with Guitar Hero, the game.
There’s also the question of possible damage to the brand when it’s revealed that the videos are, in fact, from lame corporations. I don’t think that matters very much in the fluid world of YouTube, but it’s worth considering.
So what else do these brands stand to gain?
September 22nd, 2008, 2 Comments »
As I mentioned, we’re heading off to Tofino for a bit of a writer’s retreat. I’m not sure how much I’ll blog this week. It may be as per usual, or the posts may be few and far between. We’ll be back into town on Friday night for BarCamp.
September 9th, 2008, 13 Comments »
I’m not a huge fan of “The World is Flat”, but I’m keen to read Thomas Friedman’s new book, “Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution–And How It Can Renew America”. And not just because Seth recommends it.
I’m buying more and more audio books these days. I’m choosing audio books because I can consume them while I’m exercising or walking from place to place. Plus, of course, it eliminates the environmental costs of manufacturing, packaging and shipping the book to me.
I went to iTunes to purchase the “Hot, Flat and Crowded”, and was a bit shocked at the price. Then I compared it with Amazon.ca and Chapters:
iTunes: $45.95
Amazon.ca: $19.50
Chapters: $23.52
I’m usually happy to pay a ‘green tax’ for more sustainable options, but this is a bit ridiculous. I’d have to pay more than twice the hardcopy cost for, ostensibly, less value. It’s ironic, too, given the subject of the book. Why do you suppose the audio book is priced where it is?
April 11th, 2008, 1 Comment »
On the trip into Vancouver yesterday, I finally got time to watch a video of Clay Shirky’s excellent talk associated with his book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. If you work with or have a passing interest in the future of the Web, find forty minutes to bask in the shadow of Shirky’s big brain. You won’t be disappointed.
April 9th, 2008, 7 Comments »
As regular readers will recall, last winter we wrote and self-published a 100-page ebook on social media marketing. In terms of our goals for the project, it’s been a success.
Thanks to Kris, we kind of accidentally met a literary agent who liked the ebook and wanted to shop it around. We wrote a (mercifully short) book proposal and the agent went to work.
Two weeks later, we had interest from No Starch Press, a San Francisco publisher with the slogan, “the finest in geek entertainment”. They have American distribution through O’Reilly Media, one of the giants of tech publishing.
We’ve since signed a contract, and have until the early fall to basically double the length of our ebook manuscript. It’s going to be a busy summer, but it’ll be cool to have a real dead-tree edition to wave around.
We’re going to change the title of the book, though we haven’t decided on the new title quite yet. We’ll probably blog more regularly on our ebook blog, writing about the process of expanding the book and possibly posting new draft material.
February 19th, 2008, 2 Comments »
I don’t post these link lists very often, but I’ve got a bunch of tabs I’m keen on closing: