Eric Tomei – Author of I Miss My Dad
// May 13th, 2009 // No Comments » // Authors | Book Publishers
Archive for Authors | Book Publishers
Amazon.com and online videos for authors
// April 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // Authors | Book Publishers
There is a little website called Amazon.com – they sell a lot of books every day. Amazon also lets authors or publishers on their author’s behalf upload videos telling the back-story of the book right on the page selling the book. The buyers turned all might Amazon reviewers also have the capacity to upload a review video of their own – typically using a webcam.
What does this all means to you?
It is yet one more opportunity to let your authors meet your book buyers. One more way where they can tell what their book is about in their own words.
Word to the wise: there are few companies in the world who understand what works online to connect with buyers. Amazon is one of them. Actually it would be in the Top 5 by any measure. When Amazon says that authors should be uploading videos talking DIRECTLY to their readers and book buyers – you as an author or a publisher should be paying very close attention to that.
Online video is the present and future of book marketing on the Internet and Amazon just validated that.
It all begins with YouTube
// April 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // Authors | Book Publishers
You probably have a username with YouTube right now.
You might even have a dozen videos on it already.
But do you have a marketing plan to promote your YouTube channel to promote your current and upcoming book titles?
The big guys are all doing it or planning on doing it. They get the long term power of having 100,000 subscribers to your YouTube channel. It would insure that every title they are coming out with is instantly being seen by 100,000 and multiply this number by whatever you want once you factor in the emails these videos will get, the viral plays they will get when their subscribers like a video and embed it in their own blogs, Facebook and MySpace pages, go on Twitter and spread the word about it.
But we are already committed to our website? Why not invest in your own website? Why not work on building our website into a main attraction?
Because there are more people on YouTube in a single minute than there will be ever on your website in the next 12 months. YouTube has traffic. YouTube for majority of people online equals Internet video. Every other major video sharing website is not competing with YouTube – they are somewhere in the shadows, visible to the few. YouTube also comes with nifty little things that your book buyers can do once they are done watching the Authors Studio videos that we start producing for you. People can subscribe to your videos as new videos come out. We pop a video up. Everybody that subscribes to your YouTube channel gets an automatic mail notification. Your subscribers and everybody else can easily grab a YouTube link and email it to whomever they please. They can embed the videos in their own blogs by using the YouTube code. YouTube also gives them an opportunity to share their favorite author videos on all major social networks. Your subscribers can leave comments and their thoughts on your authors, even upload their thoughts in video. YouTube is also a native application on Apple’s iPhone – meaning you are instantly visible to 15 million and growing iPhone owners.
Best part about it that your bandwidth bill is not $100,000 per month because Google, God bless their infinite pockets, is paying for it all, as they own YouTube.
If you have other wanted to build ad passionate community of book lovers around your titles. YouTube is the answer. It is here where you can plant the seeds of a community around your Author Story videos.
Their attention is an asset
// April 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // Authors | Book Publishers
You just hired us to shoot an Authors’ Story Video for one of your authors. The video came out great and not only it is playing on your YouTube channel but we are also spreading it wherever book lovers are found on the Internet.
But if I am one of the hundreds today that watched your Author’s Studio video today and I am happy, entertained, and satisfied then ask me to join your email list. Not to send me coupons or “Corporate News” but ask me to join your email list so I can get a notification as soon as the next Video of the Week is up and running on your site or YouTube.
Use your videos not only to promote the titles are currently marketing but also for your next upcoming title promotion by creating a Video Of The Week offer with us.
Every time I asked to join an email is to receive a “Newsletter” I just want to yawn. I know what is coming in that “newsletter” – boring content, coupons, more news about things I don’t care about, and no entertainment value. I will subscribe to it may be to get to something they are bribing me with but my chances of actually reading it are slip. Shoving just a newsletter down your email subscribers list does not work anymore as well as it used to do five years ago. Second what is the point of sending a newsletter out that nobody or very few are paying any attention to?
Building a weekly “show” that your email list waits for because it not the same ‘ol, same ‘ol things but a new author, with new perspectives, with a new story is taking your buyers and turning them into your audience.
The 2 biggest mistakes in interviewing an author
// April 15th, 2009 // No Comments » // Authors | Book Publishers
The danger in shooting an interview with an author?
Making it look like amateur video would be one on the list. The temptation is to grab a cheap handheld camcorder and start shooting away but good lightening; excellent audio, tight camera angel and professional editing all help the video more viewable to a big audience.
Bigger danger on the list is to make a boring video but not asking the right questions, by not using professional documentary style interview techniques and not knowing how to professionally edit not just the video but create a flowing narrative that says a lot in three minutes or less. Thirty minute videos may be a norm on broadcast networks but online it is about keep it short, powerful and interesting on every single frame.
The camera matters. But the person behind the camera and the person interviewing the author who understands who to bring an interesting story out in a relaxed manner matters the most.
How NOT to annoy book bloggers
// April 15th, 2009 // No Comments » // Authors | Book Publishers
Bad Strategy: bothering a passionate book blogger with a press release about your upcoming titles release.
I cannot imagine for the life of me why a publisher would want to bother a blogger who writes with love and passion about the books she reads about plugging their next title with a mass emailed press release that is simply boring to pay attention to.
It is because it is the easiest thing to do? Type up a press release and email blast it to the every single book blogger out there? May be. But I do know it is the most obvious thing to do since everybody else is doing it in the industry.
But is it the right thing, the most effective way of getting the word out about your book?
Why not give the book bloggers the thing they would enjoy featuring and embedding in their blogs: a deeply personal, professionally shot and edited T.V. quality video that tells an interesting story about the story that created the book?
Something that will actually provide enjoyment to their blog readers and give them the incentive of embedding the video in their own blogs, on their FaceBook and MySpace account, go on Twitter and talk about it?
It is not the easiest strategy but it might be the most effective one today.