Seth Godin is a brilliant guy. He does a lot of stuff…everything from writing bestselling business books and publishing books to blogging, speaking and running online businesses. And, I’m a fan. One thing I’ve picked up over the years is the importance of having a platform to share ideas. Aka: a blog. Over the years, I’ve pushed this idea on my clients whenever they are putting a site together and it’s also what ultimately led me to using WordPress as a primary development platform.
So, I put together some quotes from Seth Godin that I’ll point to over and over again in 2012.
Build an asset. Large numbers of influential people who read your blog or read your emails or watch your TV show or love your restaurant or or or…
Then, put your idea into a format where it will spread fast. That could be an ebook (a free one) or a pamphlet (a cheap one–the Joy of Jello sold millions and millions of copies at a dollar or less).
Then, if your idea catches on, you can sell the souvenir edition. The book. The thing people keep on their shelf or lend out or get from the library. Books are wonderful (I own too many!) but they’re not necessarily the best vessel for spreading your idea.
And the punchline, of course, is that if you do all these things, you won’t need a publisher. And that’s exactly when a publisher will want you! That’s the sort of author publishers do the best with.
#2: The best time to start promoting your book is three years before it comes out. Three years to build a reputation, build a permission asset, build a blog, build a following, build credibility and build the connections you’ll need later.
Permission is still the most important and valuable asset of the web (and of publishing). The core group of 50,000 subscribers to the Domino blog made all the difference in getting the word out and turning each of our books into a bestseller. It still amazes me how few online merchants and traditional publishers (and even authors) have done the hard work necessary to create this asset. If you’re an author in search of success and you don’t pursue this with singleminded passion, you’re making a serious error. (See #2 on my advice for authors post from five years ago, or the last part of my other advice for authors post from six years ago.)
Lifestyle media isn’t a fad. It’s what human beings have been doing forever, with a brief, recent interruption for a hundred years of professional media along the way. That interruption is fading away, and lifestyle media is resurging. People publish. Instead of denigrating user-generated content (what an obscure way to describe human stories), marketers need to understand that this is what we care about.
We shouldn’t be surprised when someone chooses to publish their photos, their words, their art or their opinions. We should be surprised when they don’t.
Here’s a quick video featuring some of the new features in WordPress 3.3. The drag and drop uploader looks like the juiciest change from here. I’m going to give the upgrade a go right about…now.
Seth Godin’s Domino Project is calling it a day with their latest and last release, “B“. In the last year, they produced 12 books. All bestsellers. In a time when publishers are howling about ebooks, search, and even piracy, how is it possible to have a 100% success rate?! In Seth’s latest blog post, he reveals the secrets to his publishing success. Since I’m in the web design/development business, I found number one very interesting:
Permission is still the most important and valuable asset of the web (and of publishing). The core group of 50,000 subscribers to the Domino blog made all the difference in getting the word out and turning each of our books into a bestseller. It still amazes me how few online merchants and traditional publishers (and even authors) have done the hard work necessary to create this asset. If you’re an author in search of success and you don’t pursue this with singleminded passion, you’re making a serious error. (See #2 on my advice for authors post from five years ago, or the last part of my other advice for authors post from six years ago.)
So, if you have a book, or are thinking about writing one in the next 3 years, start a blog today. It doesn’t have to be through me of course. But, before the end of the year (30 days?!), I’m going to give you some simple tools to start your own site if you’re a writer. The best platform in the business (WordPress) with a few themes designed specifically for writers. Stay tuned. It’s coming up fast.
When I published The End of Faith in 2004, I created this website as an afterthought. In fact, I remember feeling silly asking my publisher to put the web address on the dust jacket, not knowing if there was any point in doing so. While my website has since become the hub of everything I have accomplished as an author, it took me years to understand its utility, and I only began blogging a few months ago. Clearly, I am a slow learner. But many other authors are still pretending that the Internet doesn’t exist. Some will surely see their careers suffer as a result. One fact now seems undeniable: The future of the written word is (mostly or entirely) digital.
I’ve been a proponent of “every author should have a website” since I worked in the book publishing business. And of course, as a web guy that specializes in sites for authors and publishers, there’s nothing I’d like more than to have my inbox loaded with requests of “help me get started!”. But another thing I realized is there’s still a technology gap between those that blog and those that don’t. Guys like me need to make the process simpler and with less friction. The whole process from design to training has to be streamlined and painless.
Already with every WordPress site we ship, we include an hour or two of training either in person or via GoToMeeting. We also have a PDF handout that clients can keep at the desk in case something slips their mind. But it’s not enough. We tech folk have to make it easier for non-techs to take control of their sites and grow their own digital platforms with great content.
This one just went live last week. It was a big job for an important subject: The McGraw-Hill Research Foundation. Sometimes deadlines are just random and sometimes they are very real. This one was very real. It had to be ready in time to launch with the announcement of the 2011 Prize Winners and a couple of whitepapers that were getting covered in the press. It had to happen and on that day. And that day was just over 3 weeks away. In that time we did:
Site map/architecture
Wireframes
Design
Coding
Production & Content Migration from another site
Testing
Training
Not bad, right? Weekends and sleep are for suckers. Here’s the end result:
Here’s a bit about the Foundation:
The McGraw-Hill Research Foundation’s mission is to support organizations, projects and activities that are advancing global education and knowledge in the 21st Century. To further this commitment, the McGraw-Hill Research Foundation will educate, inform and raise awareness about:
New methodologies to improve student and teacher performance
The use of technology to improve student and teacher performance
The need to improve financial literacy
Emerging societal issues and trends impacting the global community, including green building and energy issues
Built on WordPress, the site was built in just a couple of weeks. Plus, since we used WordPress, the content was loaded and edited while we made changes here and there to the theme. It’s such an easy to use interface, it’s perfect for clients that just want to focus on the content rather than the technical aspects of the site.
Here’s a little bit about the OSEO project:
March 2012 sees the launch of a major new publishing initiative from Oxford University Press –Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (OSEO) – the first phase publishing online the complete text of more than 150 scholarly editions of material written between 1485 and 1660.
Oxford Scholarly Editions Online will provide an interlinked collection of authoritative Oxford editions of major works from the humanities. This content constitutes the cornerstone of research in the fields of English Literature, as well as Philosophy, History, and Religion. Each title within the collection presents the full text of the work, as established by an authoritative editor, accompanied by the editor’s record of important variations in that text, and interpretative and explanatory notes. Most also have introductions placing the work and the author in a historical context, and explaining the editorial principles and the history of the text.
More to come before the end of July on the Projects front!
It seems like just last week the WordPress folks dropped version 3.2 on us. Wait. It was last week. Anyhoo, now 3.2.1 is available. I upgraded a bunch of sites this morning and was shocked at how quick it went.
Turns out one of the features of 3.2 was the ability to do incremental upgrades. So instead of trashing your whole WordPress install and popping in a completely new set of files, WordPress just got a lot smarter. Now it only upgrades/updates the files that changed. I’d imagine this will let WordPress release patches and updates on a more frequent basis since it’s not such a big deal to run an update.
So, if you’re out of date, haven’t upgraded since 2.9, or are afraid to pull the trigger because everything might break, now’s a good time to get over that fear. Make sure you backup your files (just grab them all – just in case), and back up that database (here’s a handy plugin that makes backing up the database easy and automatic) first, then go to it.
When clients first get set up with a new site or blog, I get a common question, “what if I get bad or mean comments?”. Putting anything out in public opens you up for criticism. The Internet is loaded with geniuses, just like in real life. The only difference is that you’re open to a greater quantity of them and from all over the planet. Since being right all the time isn’t feasible, there’s a good chance you’ll catch some shit somewhere. I imagine the guys that think they’re right all the time have the most trouble creating anything online.
You can let that eat you alive and keep you tucked safely away in your office, or you can come to grips with it and do what you know you have to do despite the critical eyes that may try to rip your work apart. Do me a favor and just move forward with the work.
Here’s the thing… There’s probably going to be somebody, or maybe a bunch of people, that know more or might even be better than you are at something. You’ll find the thing that makes your work special. The tone? The presentation? The thoroughness? The tools you use to get the message across? The hard thing to take might be that what you do or think might not be so special. What is special is how you deliver it.
So let’s get on with the work and drop the fear of whats lurking under the bed. Because really, when you get down to it, there’s a pretty good chance that the snarky genius that just tried to blow holes through your work is a big do nothing that is scared shitless to create anything of her own.
John Wiley and Sons needed a site that was easy to use, but also let contributors post by location. I put together a WordPress site with a mashup mapping plugin that made adding a location as easy as popping in a city and state. We went from idea to live in under three weeks, with plenty left in the marketing budget.
“. In the last year, they produced 12 books. All bestsellers. In a time when publishers are howling about ebooks, search, and even 
It seems like just last week the WordPress folks dropped version 3.2 on us. Wait. It was last week. Anyhoo, now 3.2.1 is available. I upgraded a bunch of sites this morning and was shocked at how quick it went.
