General Neglect

Have you ever emailed a writer/blogger to never receive a response?  How about a small business?  A major corporation?  Me too.  Really, nobody expects a response anymore.  It’s a known fact that people are overwhelmed with email.  They’re “swamped”.  They’re “buried”.  They seem to be constantly “digging out”.  There are even consultants to teach you how to “process” your messages.

In reality, these non-responders are mediocre.  Their lack of response is expected. They’re unremarkable.

If someone takes the time to email you, do you respond or do you do what 95% of folks do?

Yesterday I sent Seth Godin (who I never met and he couldn’t pick me out of a lineup) an email  regarding the new iPod Shuffle.  Apple’s product page shows a Shuffle with “Small is the new big” engraved on it.  I shot it off to Seth, and, true to form, he replied.  Two lines and I wasn’t looking for anymore than that.  Actually I was expecting less.

He’s a remarkable guy that writes remarkable books.  Plus he walks the talk.

Do you?

“The worst year for publishing.”

Time Magazine published an article back in January, “Books Gone Wild: The Digital Age Reshapes Literature“.  Here’s a clip:

Fast-forward to the early 21st century: the publishing industry is in distress. Publishing houses–among them Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, HarperCollins, Doubleday and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt–are laying off staff left and right. Random House is in the midst of a drastic reorganization. Salaries are frozen across the industry. Whispers of bankruptcy are fluttering around Borders; Barnes & Noble just cut 100 jobs at its headquarters, a measure unprecedented in the company’s history. Publishers Weekly (PW) predicts that 2009 will be “the worst year for publishing in decades.”

To me, this is what the publishing industry has been waiting for.  Not the guys that want to continue what they’ve done for the past 20 years, but for the ones that believe it can be better.

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What Kind of Money Can You Make with a Blog?

Dan Lyons, aka: The Fake Steve Jobs, wrote a piece for Newsweek awhile back, around the idea that although blogs can do a lot of wonderful things, but making money is not one.

Dave Winer, the man behind technologies like RSS and podcasting, responded with a fantastic and honest blog post:

How I made over $2 million with this blog

It’s an attention grabbing headline, indeed.  But Dave takes a more rounded look at how a blog can drive income and reduce costs.  Not in a “get rich quick” kind of way, but looking at a blog as a core business component.  Just like someone would include a publicity department, marketing department, or mail room, a blog is a key spoke in the wheel.

Here’s the bottom line (from Dave’s article):

…and all I did was what any blogger does — talk about what I’m doing. And that’s the role of a blog, it’s a way of communicating what you’re doing. Companies, consultants and authors need to do a lot of communicating, and blogs allow you to go direct, and be more efficient, less diluted. People get a real feel for who you are and how you think and what you’re like as a person.

Can you still afford not to build blogs into your business?

Blogging Lesson from Jimmy Fallon

There was a lot of commotion around Jimmy Fallon’s first late night show.  Who were the guests?  How were his interviewing chops?  Does this show have a chance?

I think that’s how people look at their websites/blogs.  They get so caught up in that “first post” that it never happens.  Jimmy Fallon’s show will succeed or fail not because of his first show or first week, but because of the next 200 or 300 shows in the weeks (years) to come.

Your blog will succeed because you work on it everyday, not because you had a spectacular first post.

The Publicity Crunch

Book publicists are suffering.  There are less traditional outlets that have book review sections to solicit (newspapers, magazines, television shows).  Authors are more savvy and want the chair on Oprah or Charlie Rose.  The super-bloggers can’t be bothered with reading and reviewing a printed book.  They’re moving way too fast.

Some advice to stop the pain:

• Focus on smaller blogs with a few thousand readers. I run a blog called MBWpicks.com and have yet to receive a single solicitation from a book publicist or marketer.  It’s a very focused audience and the site gets around 4,000 visitors a week.  There are millions of blogs like this.
• Create your own platform. Why shouldn’t you have your own site?  Why shouldn’t you be a trusted authority on your topic?  It’s likely that you have more access to writers and the inside baseball stuff that people would love to sneak a peek at.
• Have a personality. Talk about your products, your job, your decisions. It’s seems simple but people will check out your site just because they like you.  I even check out the blogs of people that I know would be annoying and arrogant in real life.  Just don’t spew marketing bullet points and how you’d like to leverage your synergies.

Don’t Fear the “Skill Shift”

Working with folks of all computer skill levels has taught me that “fear” is the number one deterrent from getting going with something that could exponentially improve their work, lives, and productivity.  It could be a person that uses Microsoft Word on a daily basis, and, instead of trying Excel, they just make static tables in Word.  Kinda works (not really).

This behavior is especially strong now as the desktop applications become less important and web-based computing becomes more and more prominent.  There’s a nervousness in the air. There’s a “skill shift” taking place.

It reminds me of when corporate offices migrated away from typewriters over to personal computers, and away from hand distributed inter-office memos over to e-mail.  There was a core group that would give up their IBM Selectric typewriters when it could be pried from their cold, dead hands.  Today I bet you’d have a tough time finding a typewriter in most modern offices (I know there’s always the one guy/gal that keeps one neatly covered in the corner of their surrounding workstation and occasionally “saves the day” when a folder label needs typed.  Hoorah for them.).

So, how do you deal with the skill shift?  You just start.  Launch your web browser and sign up for a Twitter account.  Subscribe to some people.  People you’re a fan of, or friends with. It’s easy to say, “Don’t be afraid.”  But really… don’t be afraid.  You’ll be shocked at how easy using things like Wordpress, Facebook, and Twitter can be.  Next thing you know, you’ll scrap your Word docs for accessible anywhere Google Docs. Then you’ll be teaching the guy beside you how all this stuff works.

Take the first step today.  It won’t hurt that bad.  Plus if you need help, your pals at Thicksole aren’t hard to find.

10 Things Amazon Could Do Over the Weekend to Make the Kindle Great

I bought the Kindle 2 on the day it was released and received it last week.  Since then, I’ve bought and read two books on it and am starting a third.  Remarkable pace for me (a guy that used to read 3-5 books a year).  When not reading, I had some ideas that would make the Kindle even better.  Plus, Amazon could do these things next week – no need for hardware redesign or huge R&D.  Here goes:

1. Kindle Friends - Let me see what my friends are reading and where they are in the book.  Also a way to discuss or message them about the book.
2. Kindle Clubs - Wider sweeping than “Friends”, Kindle Clubs center around particular genres or titles.  You don’t only have to have a giant Oprah club, but you could have a club for marketers, or organic gardeners.
3. Note Sharing – Ability to share all or select notes with everyone or Kindle Friends.
4. No books over $9.99 – This is the one thing that’s driving me nuts.  I know all about the price of content, but publishers should knock the prices back on all titles.  Everything.  Some books you may actually take a hit on, but there are others that are pure cash cows and you’ll more than make it up.
5. Book rentals – Almost like a for pay library.  The longer you take to read a book, the more it costs.  If rentals are .50 a day, then after 20 days, you’d just own the book.
6. Consistent samples – The samples you can download range from pages and pages of endorsements to a chapter and a half.  They should standardize the sample.  Maybe just make it Chapter 1 and 2.
7. Best sellers by price – or a bargain bin – When I flip through the Kindle Bestsellers, many of the titles are free or well below the $9.99 price point.  What’s that tell you, content creators?  Would be great to be able to sort through these gems separately from the full priced (and some over-priced) titles.
8. Kindle University – A derivative of the “Personal MBA“, Amazon could create lists of titles that would provide beginning, moderate, and advanced coverage of specific topics.  How about a series on woodworking, or a series on marketing?
9. Zoom in on a cover in the store – Easy enough.  Let us see the cover in the full screen.
10. With “page count” also show “locations” – In books, you read page by page.  With the Kindle, readers track their progress through % read and “locations”.  For example, instead of “page 30″, it’s “location 235 out of 3765″.  Kindle users will eventually start to think in locations rather than pages, so help the conversion by listing both in the book description.

There you go.  Something to work on over the weekend, Amazon!

Great time to be a “content creator”

There’s a lot of doom and gloom in the news how this is the “worst year for books“.  Personally, I’m trying not to buy in to the bad news.  If you watch this interview with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, you’ll learn that 10% of all books Amazon sells are through the Kindle.  That’s a remarkable number for a few reasons.

1. The publishing folks I know quickly disregard the Kindle (thought this was DOA)
2. I’ve only ever seen 2 Kindles “in the wild” (mine was one)
3. It’s an expensive machine ($359 before you get your first book)

Despite this, I’m proclaiming it a success.  We don’t know how many units have been sold, but if you read reviews from folks that own Kindles, they quietly rave.  Why quietly?  Maybe it’s because they are dropping close to $400 on a device that really does one thing really well (displays text).  That might be a little embarrassing (especially if you’re a techie that shows off how his/her iPhone can do back flips).

Plus, it’s centered around reading.  You won’t see an iPod-esque, action-packed ad around a guy reading Stephen King’s UR.  In fact, one spastic colleague I told about my Kindle blurted out, “That’s so dumb!  You read books?!”  Took him a few seconds to realize what he said, but it eventually sunk in and he went on to declare how many websites and manuals he read each day.  Apple’s Steve Jobs even told us that “the fact is that people don’t read anymore.”

Despite these opinions, still, 10% of all books going through Amazon are direct to this device.  Plus, now you can get your Kindle books on your iPhone!

So, who’s the big winner?  I think there are a few:  Authors, Amazon, publishers, and entrepreneurs.  If this device continues to spread…

• Publishers will see an increase in existing sales
• Authors will have a real option in self-publishing
• Amazon gets deeper control of the whole distribution chain (and are a sneeze away from controlling production)
• Entrepreneurs have another option for spreading their message(s).

So, don’t get caught up in this “worst year ever” stuff.  There’s a ton of opportunity out there!

Hello world. The inspirado.

There’s no easy way to start a new blog.  Sure, you should have an idea of the topic you’re going to cover, and maybe even a keystone piece in your back pocket.  It’s not even breaking the ice and putting up the “first post.”  Really, it’s knowing that you’ll have to do it everyday (or at least every week) in order to eventually find success. Are you ready for that kind of commitment?  Hell, am I?

I’m Paul and I’ve been working in the “tech” business since 2000:  building websites, advising individuals and business on everything from hardware & software choices, and helping the “technically challenged” get plugged in to the technology that is right for them.  Prior to that, I worked in the book publishing industry.  For 10 years.  Through the “dot com” boom.  After the bubble burst.  And during the emergence of “Web 2.0″.  One thing about publishing, though everything was changing at around it, it pretty much stayed the same.

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