Harnessing Social Media to Promote Your Titles and Company

American Book Producers Association

ABPA Brown Bag - 

Harnessing Social Media

 to Promote Your Titles and Company

05 Mar 2013 12:30 PM • In Good Company, 16 West 23rd Street, 4th Floor

Susannah Greenberg, Matt Pantoliano, Sarah Christensen Fu, Nancy Hall.
March 5, 2013, American Book Producers Association Event.
Photo credit: Susannah Greenberg Public Relations

With

Susannah Greenberg, President, 
Susannah Greenberg Public Relations

http://bookbuzz.com

Sarah Christensen Fu, Founder 
Hey, Sarah!

http://www.hey-sarah.com/

Matt Pantoliano, Senior Digital Marketing Manager, 
Simon & Schuster Children's Division

http://kids.simonandschuster.com/

UPDATE: Click here to see the story about this event which was published in Publishers Weekly on March 6, 2013


(What follows is an account of this event written by Susannah Greenberg) 

Matt Pantoliano of Simon & Schuster spoke about a successful social media campaign for Young Adult Author Cassandra Clare, a "cover reveal" fueled by tweets. With each tweet more of the cover would be revealed. 


Below is a link to a campaign for a "chapter reveal" where more of the chapter of a Cassandra Clare book was revealed with every tweet.

We did it Shadowhunters! The first chapter of CLOCKWORK PRINCESS has been revealed! Show your Shadowhunter Pride and wear this badge with honor!

http://www.shadowhunters.com/clockworkprincess/

Matt Pantoliano spoke about the new S&S teen social media outlet PulseIt. Looks great! #ya #teens

Matt Pantoliano also mentioned a video chat events online service at www.shindig.com

Shindig | Video chat events

www.shindig.com

Shindig Video Chat Events for Book Tours, Release Parties, Presentations, and Q&As. On Shindig, you see all participants in a shared space. You move freely in and out of conversation with as few or as many as you 

and another one called Spreecast.  "Spreecast is the social video platform that connects people through video conversation."

Sarah Christensen Fu

Sarah Christensen Fu of hey-sarah.com spoke about bringing Mary Higgins Clark in closer rapport with readers by creating a Facebook page and then a video based on questions sent to the author through Facebook.  

http://www.facebook.com/maryhigginsclark?fref=ts

Mary Higgins Clark

Welcome to the Official Mary Higgins Clark Facebook Page.

Page: 275,138 like this

Greenberg recounted a social media campaign which launched a YA novelist who was self-published.  The campaign succeeded through buzz built by blogger reviews including The Pioneer Woman blog, online phenomenon such as Goodreads with its giveaways and quizzes and participating in Twitter chats on #yalitchat.  In addition, she referred to success in launching Albert Whitman Teen books and was able to make media placements on NPR and in the Wall Street Journal by reaching out to journalists through social media.  

She also mentioned online book pr tools: streaming video of events through www.ustream.com and internet radio talk shows for audio samples of authors on www.blogtalkradio.com

More on Social Media
by Susannah Greenberg

Top Social Media Include: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest, Blogger, Wordpress, Instagram, Foursquare and Tumblr. These are the key ones. Get to know them. Spend time on these sites familiarizing yourself.  It will be an important investment of time. 

Each one has a unique character or personality to it, a unique mode of communication and type of following.  For instance, Facebook encourages connections between friends and socialization. Twitter is great for following trends.  LinkedIn is good for business contacts. Pinterest is good for visual interest and images. Mobile and location based services like Foursquare are on the rise.  Foursquare is based on gaming incentives. Also look at customer review sites like Yelp! and shopping sites like Amazon.  Look to photo sharing sites such as Flickr.  For books in particular, Amazon, and Goodreads, a social reading site, are especially important.  

Build your platforms early and attract your following.  Get liked. Get followed. Get linked.  All your social media platforms combined will raise your SEO (search engine optimization) so that people can find you or your book when they search for you or your topic online.  You cannot have too many social media platforms with regard to improving your SEO.  It may be too many to manage if you are a small company.  If so, pick three or four which are most important, most likely that would be Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.  Build your email lists from your social media sites for direct email to your audience later when you are ready to launch.  

In the process of reaching out, you will and you must find your community.  Find your niche.  Target the right media.  Microtarget.  Narrowcast. Find your most likely constituency first and build out from there to expand and grow your audience, your customers, your readers and book buyers.

Find your voice.  Be real.  Be responsive to feedback.  Look at your data for insights. Facebook offers insights on pages.  Google Analytics helps you analyze traffic. Blogger.com gives you detailed stats on how many page views your blog posts receive.

With regards to voice, remember that when you use social media for marketing and pr, you are speaking to more than one audience.  You are speaking to b2b and b2c, that is you are speaking to the trade, the customers, the media and the general public all at once.

It is and will be increasingly important for Book Producers and Literary Agents as part of a selling package to sell a book or project to a publisher to have the author and book platform and following established before the publisher buys the project. It is a marketing asset for the sale of the book.  It is equally important for book producers and agents and any independent entrepreneurs to build their own businesses through social media outlets and channels.  It is becoming how we do business.

Help yourself along in your social media efforts by having a social media campaign checklist and a timeline.  Plan ahead.  Stay with it.  Short but frequent efforts and consistency are important to keeping your community and followers engaged.

Integrate traditional and new media into your campaigns. As much as social media counts, so do traditional media outlets. Do not forget them!  NPR still counts.  So does the New York Times, the Today Show, CNN, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and MSNBC.  But now also look to online news web sites of import including the Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Book Riot, The Millions, Gawker, The Daily Beast and more.  

Analyze and strategize.  Data is available quickly and for free. Look at Alexa web rankings to see how much traffic a web site gets.  Look at what is trending on Twitter to discover social trends.  If you are launching a campaign for your company, Google yourself, and search for yourself on Twitter.  See what comes up on Google.  See what people may be saying about you on Twitter. Look at the same for your competitors. Look at which pages have the most likes on Facebook in your areas of interest. Google keywords related to your subject matter.  Sign up for Google News Alerts on your subject matter.  Try out Google Analytics.  Look into free online services such as bit.ly and ow.ly which help you book mark and track visits and traffic on specific links you create.

Explore the possibilities of online advertising. Facebook advertising and Google Adwords,   for instance, are cheap, effective, targeted and easy to do compared with old school media advertising and the results are far easier to monitor. 

Keep up and keep learning about social media.  It changes almost daily. Expand your book trade reading from publications such as Publishers Weekly, Publishers Lunch, and GalleyCat, to include tech oriented publications such HuffPo Tech and Mashable. Read David Pogue's column in the New York Times. Follow the groups Digital Book World and Tools of Change.  Keep up with technology trends in terms of books pr and marketing and ebooks and apps.  Use Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other social media to scan them for information on your trade as well.

Finally, remember that social media is only a tool.  Your expertise, experience and "real life" social networking are still critical to the life of your business and books. Do not undervalue your experience and knowledge when faced with the glories of the newfangled. You still must remember old rules such as have good ideas, be creative, write well, be succinct, and have an eye for design and aesthetics.  Also, remember that it is important to find good partners or team members to work with to complement the skills you have or don't have.




MORE RESOURCES:

The #1 Top Social Media Marketing Book on Amazon:

Likeable Social Media by Dave Kerpen 

In this book, Likeable, Kerpen notes how a book can be interactive and includes links (hyperlinks in the case of the ebook) where you can contact the author with questions and comments.  I clicked and contacted Mr. Kerpen through Facebook to let him know I'm reading his book and to thank him for it. He practices what he preaches with regards to responsiveness to customers through social media.  He wrote me back to thank me almost immediately! He also encouraged me to contact him with any questions I might have and asked me to write an Amazon review if I liked the book. Gracious, attentive, and also LIKEABLE marketing are all exemplified in this response I think.

Also of Interest:

Free: How Today's Smartest Businesses Profit by Giving Something for Nothing

by Chris Anderson

According to the Social Media Examiner Readers

The Top Marketing Sites for Social Media Marketing Trends

Sites, blogs, and newsletters for learning the latest about social media marketing trends.

1. Mashable earned the top spot with 82%
2. Techcrunch followed with 61%
3. AdAge earned the third spot with 54%
4. emarketer – 44%
5. Brandweek – 36%
6. MarketingProfs – 27%
7. SmartBrief for Social Media – 26%
8. Altimeter Group – 26%
9. MarketingSherpa – 21%
10 ClickZ – 20%

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/top-20-social-media-marketing-articles-2012/


Susannah Greenberg thanks her co-panelists Sarah Christensen Fu of Hey, Sarah! and Matt Pantoliano of Simon & Schuster and the hosts of the event at the American Book Producers Association including the moderator Nancy Hall of Nancy Hall, Inc., a full service book producer, ABPA Board Member Valerie Tomaselli of MTM Publishing, also a book producer, and the President of the organization, book producer Richard Rothschild of Print Matters Inc.

Where Are The Women CEOs In The Book Industry?

Where are the Women CEOs in the Book Industry?

By Susannah Greenberg  

Three recent news stories and the subsequent media coverage of them have me thinking about gender equality in the workplace and more specifically in the book industry: 

Pioneering Woman Astronaut Sally Ride's passing and posthumous coming out; 

Marissa Mayer's appointment as CEO of Yahoo at 37 years old and pregnant;

and Anne-Marie Slaughter's article in the Atlantic Why Women Still Can't Have It All.

How far have we really come nearly 50 years after the passage of the Equal Pay Act in 1963 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned sex discrimination at work? How far have we come from the days of Sally Ride's flight into space, the first for an American woman? How far if it still makes headlines that a woman, a pregnant woman, is made CEO in Silicon Valley? How far if it is still a matter of heated debate in the wake of the Atlantic article as to whether women can work and be mothers?   

  

My thoughts then turned to our own industry, which I am proud to be a part of, but it is not above the fray. Is there a glass ceiling in the book world? Do women in the book industry have an equal chance to rise to the top? How many women as they mature, gain experience and qualify for more senior management positions are forced to drop out, or start their own small businesses, because of the gender pay gap, the pyramid effect, or the lack of affordable childcare? Where are the women CEOs? Are women proportionately represented among the CEO ranks in an industry mostly populated by women?   

  

To be sure there are women CEOs in some key leadership roles in book publishing: Gina Centrello of Random House, Marjorie Scardino at Pearson, and Carolyn Reidy at Simon & Schuster, come to mind.

    

However, the Publishers Weekly Salary Survey of 2009, the most recent available online, shows a serious pay gap between men and women, and also that although women are the majority (85%) of the employees at the entry level, they do not hold the majority of leadership positions.

  

Publishers Weekly Salary Survey of 2009:

• Women avg. pay: $64,600
• Men avg. pay: $105,130
• 85% of employees with fewer than three years of experience were women. The only area where men outnumber women is in management, where the highest paying jobs are found.

What can be done? For one thing, women in publishing must be encouraged to keep up with the digital revolution transforming the book industry, from ebooks to Internet book selling, to social media marketing. This is one reason for the panels on digital books and online book marketing which I have been organizing for the Women's National Book Association New York City Chapter since 2009, (like this one in March 2012 which was written up in Publishers Weekly) which not only provide valuable information but also hold forth the role models of women succeeding in the digital realm within our industry. For another, while progress is being made, we should not become too comfortable and complacent with women's achievements in the book industry. We need to be vigilant and to continue to demand more progress or risk losing more ground. Battles can and are still being fought for women's equality and won; like the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009.

The full moral and spiritual transformation toward justice that will allow equality in the workplace, including the book industry, equality that will benefit women, men, and families--equality for women, for gays and lesbians, for minorities, for people of different races, religions and cultures, for the disabled, for parents, for aging workers -- is slow in coming. Until then, organizations like the Women's National Book Association fulfill an important mission for women's equality, one WNBA has been fulfilling since its founding nearly 100 years ago: women helping other women succeed in this book business.

  

Of Related Interest:

CATALYST: Statistical Overview of Women in the Workplace
United States Department of Labor: Myth Busting the Pay Gap
New York Times: In Google's Inner Circle, a Falling Number of Women
Cover Story: 50 Top Women in Book Publishing. Book Business honors leading female executives who are helping to shape the industry
Book Review. The New York Times. Business Day. OFF THE SHELF. 'Good Girls' Fight to Be Journalists
The Washington Post: Marilyn Ducksworth, Former Penguin Employee, Sues Publisher for Age Discrimination

Susannah Greenberg is a past president and past publicity chair of The Women's National Book Association of New York City, and columnist for The New York Bookwoman. She is the president of a book publicity firm, Susannah Greenberg Public Relations. She can be reached atpublicity@bookbuzz.com, Twitter @suegreenbergpr, Facebook, LinkedIn or via her blog:http://bookbuzzbysgpr.blogspot.com. Susannah recently read: The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson. (Reviewed below by Fatima Shaik.)

Please get in touch with Susannah at publicity@bookbuzz.com with your comments on this article or if you can point to more data which shows what percentage of CEOs in the book industry are women. Continue the conversation on Twitter with hashtag: #wnbadiscuss.  

This article was originally published in the September 2012 New York Bookwoman, the newsletter of the Women's National Book Association New York City Chapter.  

"HOME GROWN AUTHOR NIGHT", July 21, Oaksterdam University: ANNOUNCING: "HOME GROWN" Author Night, July 21, 6 ...

"HOME GROWN AUTHOR NIGHT", July 21, Oaksterdam University: ANNOUNCING: "HOME GROWN" Author Night, July 21, 6 ...: General Public Release Tuesday, June 19  OAKLAND, CA. ------  The public is invited to Oaksterdam University, Saturday, July 21, from 6...

This event includes author Greg Campbell, author of POT INC.: Inside Medical Marijuana, America's Most Outlaw Industry.

 Greg Campbell.  Photo by Eric Bellamy.

A review of POT INC. :
http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/three-books-on-illegal-or-not-drugs/2012/05/15/gIQAFi3kSU_story.html

Media interested in arranging an interview with Greg Campbell, or receiving a review copy, may contact me, Susannah Greenberg, Public Relations at publicity@bookbuzz.com.

BookExpo America 2012: Beyond The Hunger Games: YA Book Marketing and Public Relations Strategies

BookExpo America 2012: 

Beyond The Hunger Games: Young Adult Book Marketing and Public Relations Strategies

Tuesday, June 5, 2012, Javits Center, NY, NY.  The panel I organized and moderated at BookExpo America 2012 on Tuesday morning was standing room only and the panelists were outstanding!

Photo by Publishers Weekly 

Panelists were (left to right):

Becky Anderson, Anderson's Bookshops;
www.andersonsbookshop.com

Derry Wilkens, Sourcebooks;
www.sourcebooks.com

Michelle Renaud, Harlequin;
www.harlequin.com

Michelle F. Bayuk, Albert Whitman.
www.albertwhitman.com



Back row, standing:
Susannah Greenberg, Susannah Greenberg Public Relations, moderated and organized.
http://bookbuzz.com

My own report on this panel to come.

Publishers Weekly covered it:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bea/article/52455-bea-2012-ya-marketing-digital-vs-physical-.html

In GalleyCat! (June 11, 2012):
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/5-ya-marketing-tips-from-publishing-professionals_b52745

My photos of the Sourcebooks exhibition booth on the floor of BookExpo America:

Audies Gala, New York Historical Society, June 5, 2012, Photos

BookExpo America 2012: 

Audies Gala and Awards Presentation 

Below are my photos of the Audie Awards Gala for audiobooks, on June 5, 2012, at the New York Historical Society, New York, NY.   

This year I had the honor of being an Audie Award Judge, helping to select the Audiobook of the Year.The winner of the Audiobook of the Year was Bossypants by Tina Fey. The other finalists were American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition by Neil Gaiman, read by Dennis Boutsikaris, Daniel Oreskes, Ron McLarty, Sarah Jones and a full cast; Go the F*** to Sleep by Adam Mansbach, read by Samuel L. Jackson; and Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, read by Dylan Baker.


As a judge, I received an invitation to this elegant soiree and a nice white ribbon to wear to signify that I was a judge.  


I also came to appreciate the pleasure of the theater, music and poetry that audio brings to books. What a wonderful experience it has been to become a part of the audiobook world.

Among my photos below, pictured first is Adam Boretz of Publishers Weekly who was covering the event for Publishers Weekly.

See the story Adam Boretz wrote about the Audies Awards in Publishers Weekly here:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bea/article/52406-bea-2012-tina-fey-s-bossypants-wins-big-at-17th-annual-audie-awards.html

Audies were also covered in the New York Times Artsbeat Blog:
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/06/audie-awards-celebrate-great-voices-not-famous-faces/

and the Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/06/tina-fey-audie-awards_n_1572753.html

The complete list of Audies Winners and Finalists:
http://www.theaudies.com/

Those pictured below include: "Neil Himself," Neil Gaiman, author of American Gods, one of the narrators in the full theatrical cast version audiobook of American Gods, a presenter last night, and an audiobook champion and enthusiast; actor Dylan Baker, narrator of the audio version of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson; Michele Lee Cobb, President of the Audio Publishers Association; and Audies Judges Committee Chair,  Ellen Myrick.

Adam Boretz

Neil Gaiman

Ellen Myrick

Michele Cobb

Cool book purse!

Dylan Baker, left. Neil Gaiman on right.

Jo Reed, left. Robin Whitten, AudioFile Publications, right.

The crowd before the Awards Ceremony began

Neil Gaiman

Megan Fitzpatrick, Associate Director, Marketing & Publicity at Hachette Audio/Hachette Digital

Dion Graham, Actor, Audiobook Narrator

Dylan Baker, Actor, Audiobook Narrator

Peter Berkrot, Actor, Audiobook Narrator

BookExpo America Panel on Tuesday, June 5 at 11 AM: Beyond the Hunger Games: Young Adult Book PR & Marketing

Beyond The Hunger Games: 

Young Adult Book Marketing & Public Relations Strategies

A BookExpo America Educational Panel

11 AM - 11:50 AM
Date: Tuesday, June 5, 201211:00 am - 11:50 am
Location: 1E09
Javits Center, New York, NY


Young Adult books are a huge growth category in the book industry.  Hear from experts in the field about the burgeoning of YA book publishing and successful tactics for reaching the YA demographic.  


A generous amount of time will be allotted to interactive discussion amongst the panelists and with the audience. Please bring question.


The distinguished panelists are:


• Becky Anderson, Owner, Anderson's Bookshop, http://www.andersonsbookshop.com/ 
• Michelle F. Bayuk, Director of Marketing, Albert Whitman & Company, http://www.albertwhitman.com/content.cfm/teen
• Michelle Renaud, Senior Manager, Public Relations, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, http://www.harlequin.com/ 
• Derry Wilkens,  Publicity Manager, Children’s & YA, Sourcebooks, http://www.sourcebooks.com/


Susannah Greenberg of Susannah Greenberg Public Relations is moderator and organizer. Susannah helped launch the Albert Whitman Teen line of books in 2011 making media placements in the Wall Street Journal and on NPR. 


She publicized the indie press Middle Grade book Saltwater Taffy by Eric DelaBarre, getting him placements on NPR, in Scholastic Teacher magazine, and Wired Magazine's Geek Dads column. DelaBarre's book recently won the Silver Nautilus Book Award. http://www.whatagreatbook.com/


Greenberg represented the debut YA paranormal novel, The Veil by Cory Putman Oakes getting her dozens of book blogger reviews including one in The Pioneering Woman blog which has over 500,000 visitors per month.  http://www.corypoakes.com/


Greenberg was a featured guest on the subject of YA book pr in an online Twitter chat with hundreds of YA writers and readers on YAlitchat,  a membership organization for those interested in fostering the advancement of young adult literature worldwide. It hosts a weekly live chat on Twitter and  has over 2500 members worldwide who are readers and writers of YA literature.  http://yalitchat.wordpress.com/


More about Susannah Greenberg Public Relations here:
http://bookbuzz.com


I will blog about the panel afterwards here in this blog.  

Building the Buzz for Books - The New Book Publicity

Pictured from right to left are Susannah Greenberg, Patrick Brown and Jim Milliot, speaking  with attendees at uPublishU at BookExpo America, after their panel presentation on book publicity for the self-published author, "Building the Buzz for Books."

Building the Buzz for Books - The New Book Publicity was the name of the panel I moderated, organized and spoke at yesterday, Sunday June 3, 2012 at the new education event for self-published authors called uPublishU as part of the major annual book trade show BookExpo America, now underway at the Javits Center in New York, NY.  I will be posting the text of my presentation here soon!  The key points for book pr in my view are: 1) Advance planning is critical 2) Story is paramount. Create a mediagenic narrative about your book.  The media want a news story. 3) Be a media junkie.  Get inside the head of the journalists, producers and bloggers, to know who is interested in what and how they work.  Other tips included building your online presence  on social media and the internet, and to take advantage of the pr opportunities afforded by seasonal roundups like beach reads, holiday gift guides, Jewish Book Month and National Poetry Month.   More information about Susannah Greenberg Public Relations at http://bookbuzz.com

Patrick Brown, Community Manager of Goodreads, the social reading site, the largest community of readers online, spoke after me.  The growth at Goodreads is exponential he said with 9 million members now and 42,000 authors. He said ideally self-published authors should print advance review copies to try to get reviews on Goodreads, and they need to do this well in advance of publication date.  E-galleys are not yet accepted.  He said the measure of success or your goal should be the number of people who add your book to their virtual shelves on Goodreads and to get as many people as possible to review your book.  Every mention or review helps potential readers and book buyers to find your book.  The mentions and reviews also go to update feeds on Facebook and are deeply integrated with Facebook.  Goodreads also pushes reviews to other online media of bookstores and libraries and further, many bloggers cross post their reviews from Goodreads to their blogs.  The site also has an algorithmic book recommendation feature but that feature only starts when a book has several hundred reviews.  The new erotica New York Times best seller which Berkely just bought, Bared to You by Sylvia Day, was boosted in part by becoming linked algorithmically to 50 Shades of Grey, and receiving some 2500 reader reviews on Goodreads.  He concluded by recommending advance giveaways of ARCs (advance reading copies), to do the giveaways well in advance of publication date, to give people a long time to respond to the offer of review copies and to give away as many copies as possible, although there is no requirement for that and you may give away even only one copy.  More information on giveaways, (the service is free by the way), can be found at www.goodreads.com/giveaway.   Greenberg added it was an important first step for authors early on to also build their author profile on Goodreads, join and participate in relevant groups on Goodreads, and to take to look at all the opportunties offered in the Goodreads author program.

More information here:
http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/new

http://www.goodreads.com/author/program

Jim Milliot, of Publishers Weekly and PW Select, an advance review service spoke next.  Publishers Weekly is a 135 year old book trade magazine, now available on line as well at www.publishersweekly.com and also via the blog PWxyz.  The magazine and PW Select still prefers print galleys to e-galleys, and needs them three to four months in advance of publication date.  Their reviews are seen by the book trade including CEOs at companies such as Random House and Barnes & Noble, agents, distributors, librarians, media and more.   PW Select is a four times a year self-published book announcement issue.  For a fee of $149.00 you receive a listing guaranteed, and 25 to 30% chance of receiving a review.  You are not guaranteed a good review though.  They are in the process of becoming more flexible about the lead time necessary for review recognizing the changes in the book printing and production process and plans are in progress to begin reviewing e-galleys in the future.  Another benefit of PW Select reviews are that their reviews are licensed to 30 licensees and carried by them on their sites, including Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Apple and more.  In the future, they will be reviewing more eBook originals as well. The price of the PW Select listing also includes a six-month digital subscription to Publishers Weekly, and you’ll receive a print copy of the PW Select issue that features your book.

More information here:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/corp/DIY-FAQ.html