Five by Five PR: Online publicity tips and tools, especially pertaining to books, authors, and the publishing industry.

• Read Write Web: “Is the iPhone the Ultimate eBook Reader?” - 2/14/08
• San Francisco Chronicle: “NOTE TO READERS: Changes in Chronicle sections” - 2/23/08
• The Los Angeles Times: “Eaten alive in the studio jungle” - 2/13/08
• Newsweek: “A Book of Blogs?” - 2/15/08
• Bookseller.com: “Canada’s book market ’stagnant’, warns government” - 2/19/08
• Freep.com: “New Borders more than just books” - 2/14/08
• The Times-Picayune: “$20 million gift planned for Gentilly” - 2/21/08
  (”The founder of Barnes & Noble bookstores will spend $20 million from his private foundation to build and renovate homes in devastated Gentilly[, Louisiana.]”)
• The Sydney Morning Herald - “eBook - fact or fiction?” - 2/20/08
• The Guardian - “Self-publish boom challenging old order” - 2/20/08
• The Norman Transcript: “Books, reading can change communities, NEA official says” - 2/19/08

photo by Zsuzsanna Kilián

A few days ago, I gave thumbs up to the ladies at Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books blog in my post, “Ain’t It A Bitch.” I also emailed Sarah and Candy, the bloggers behind SBWLTB, to let them know. Sarah had some additional advice to share about a sudden increase in web traffic due to publicity:

“[W]e didn’t expect the AP or the NYT to pick up the story - I said the day before we launched the news that the Seinfeld plagiarism cookbook scandal would probably get more press, and was I wrong! - and once they did, we had to scramble, removing a lot of the slow-loading content from the site, talking to our hosting company to get more server space as fast as possible, and adding the “Looking for Cassie?” content to the top of the sidebar. I figured a lot of the clicks would be curious readers who aren’t really interested in romance novels, just in the Cassie Edwards content.”

I also got some great comments from visitors who had suggestions for handling the Cassie Edwards scandal, including Ivana Taylor of the marketing blog Strategy Stew. She was one of Anita Campbell’s “partners in crime” in rounding up contributions to “Top Experts Dish with their Best Kept Marketing Secrets” at the Small Business Trends blog and is doing a series on her own blog where she expands on some of the marketing secrets that commenters added to the list. You can see the post where she wrote about my idea here. (I saw incoming traffic from this post on my web stats and that’s how I met Ivana, by the way!)

Here’s what Ivana suggested:

I’d love to see someone do something really honorable and dramatic - like re-print the novel and insert an introduction by Cassie Edwards that says that much of the work is pulled from the following books and authors (with references in the text). The I’d like to see them actually take the proceeds from the book and pay the references a fair amount as a royalty. By doing this, those readers who are interested in the subject matter (in this case the Lakota) will have references they could follow for further reading - if they want to. Most won’t care and I don’t think her sales would be affected.

Steve Weber also dropped by and left a comment. His book, Plug Your Book!, is a great read. I highly recommend it for any authors trying to learn online publicity tactics for themselves. Like I told Steve, I’ve been doing online publicity for years, but I still took pages of notes when reading this and I really want to read through it again. An interesting side note: Steve O’Keefe of Patron Saint Productions, where I worked for years and still do some freelance work, wrote the foreword!

I love this post at Business and Blogging called “What Eleanor Roosevelt Could Teach You about Blogging for Business.” Liz Fuller’s analysis is right on the mark and her entry has some great tips for blogging.

She hits on a pet peeve of mine, too:

Clarity - Eleanor wrote for a widely dispersed audience with varying levels of education and life experiences. She made sure that her articles could be understood by farmers, businessmen and senators alike. She did this by writing with no pretense and no jargon.

Yes indeed, Liz!

It’s really important to monitor your online reputation. One easy tool to accomplish this is Google Alerts. I also subscribe to numerous Google Alerts for various topics I’m interested in, including online publicity in general and the publishing industry.

If you’re like me and you’re also suffering from email overload, you might want to check out Google’s new blog search feeds. They aren’t as comprehensive as Google Alerts — yet, at least — but it’ll help you decrease the size of your inbox a little. I check my Google Reader frequently throughout the day anyway, so this is doubly great for me.

To find the feeds, just use Google’s Blog Search and scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and look for a link like this:

A weekly round-up of publishing industry news.

1. 2008 nominees for The Edgar Awards from The Mystery Writers of America

2. NPR: “Bookseller Amazon Building on Review Function”

3. Ars Technica: “Publishers warm up to ‘Net, sell chapters, give away books”

4. Mark Nelson: “Cashing in On Electronic Books”

5. The New York Times: “A Tight Grip Can Choke Creativity” (J. K. Rowling v. RDR Books)

I visited some online writers’ forums this past weekend, doing some research about the kind of self-promotion questions that new authors might have. One of the discussion threads I found dealt with whether or not there was a point to having a blog and/or a website, or even registering a domain name, before a writer had actually gotten a publishing contract.

My answer to this question is, “Yes, it’s worth it. Start early.” Why wait until your book is published to start building an online presence for yourself? Getting a jumpstart on a website full of content relating to your book is going to help your online publicity in the long run. Don’t wait until your book hits stores for the search engines to start finding you. (This is by no means advocating keyword spamming. I’m talking about good, strong, natural content.)

At the very least, go ahead and register your domain name(s), including www.YourName.com. With domain name registrars like GoDaddy, who frequently offer discount codes, domain registration for a year usually runs less than $10.

Rachal Donadio published an article in The New York Times a couple of weeks ago that focuses more on general marketing buzz for books rather than specifically talking about online publicity, but I think what she writes only adds to my point:

[…] publishing still relies on a time-honored, time-consuming sales strategy: word of mouth. […]

“It’s not only buzz, it’s a product introduction — but with nothing like the advertising or marketing budget that a piece of soap would have,” said David Rosenthal, the publisher of Simon & Schuster. With the Internet and blogs, word of mouth travels more quickly today, but there’s a glut of information. To help a book break through the static, publishers have to plan months in advance.

Ana [last name removed*], an employee of marketing company Digital Axle, apparently sent an email to numerous top bloggers a few days ago, trying to engage them in conversation about a recently released promotional video for Bluetooth’s Jawbone headset.

One of her contacts, Lee Odden at Top Rank Online Marketing Blog, criticized Ana’s methods in a post entitled, “You Make Me Sick - Viral Video Response.” In the post, Leo posted the majority of Ana’s email to him and blasted Digital Axle for their involvement with such a “sick, racist and violent” video.

According to Bruce Carlisle, CEO of Digital Axe, Ana was merely trying to engage fellow bloggers in a discussion of the video, which Digital Axe has no affiliation with, and was doing so for the purpose of promoting the Digital Axe blog. Many commenters at Lee’s blog are still adamant about calling Ana’s email a pitch, despite Bruce’s pretty transparent explanation.

There are definitely lessons to be learned from this minor fiasco. Here are my Top Five:

1. Email Is Not Private

Never assume that an email you send privately to someone will remain private. Emails get forwarded all the time. Emails you send to online media could get posted publicly in part or in whole. It’s happened to me.

Personally, I would never post someone else’s email in entirety without their permission. I’ve seen other bloggers do it and I think it’s an unfair practice. If I did post someone’s email without permission, I wouldn’t include identifying details.

As a side note, never publicly post someone else’s email address without their permission. If you do, be sure to mangle the address to deter spambots.

2. Transparency is Key

In her email, Ana should have immediately disavowed herself and Digital Axle from the Bluetooth video. Furthermore, she should have just stated her purpose for sending the video link to Lee in the first place.

When you’re writing to a blogmaster in order to solicit a review of your book, for example, just be up front about it. Being coy or forging a fake friendship is not the way to go about it. If you exchange a couple of emails then drop the review bomb on them, it is not going to go over as well.

3. Respond to Negativity

I applaud the Digital Axle CEO for commenting on the blog post not once, but twice. By including his explanation on the original blog post, he made sure that all future visitors to the site would see his side of the story. Simply posting an explanation on the Digital Axle blog would not have been as effective.

By the way, I hope someone at Digital Axle is monitoring their Google Alerts in order to properly address any future criticism on this issue, particularly any posts that do not give the full story.

I encourage clients to respond to all online mentions of themselves, even negative ones. In some cases, especially negative ones.

4. Admit You’re Wrong

After Digital Axle’s clarifying comments, the original blogger, Lee, edited his post to draw attention to what Bruce said. In Lee’s own comments on the blog post, he still asserted that Ana’s email was misleading, but did acknowledge that there was new information which made his initial allegations not quite as harsh.

If information comes that changes the sentiment of a blog post, it’s perfectly ok to edit it. Edits should be made as additions to a post, however, not actually deleting things. Always document these edits within the post in some way. Usually, simply adding a line at the top or end of the post like “Edit: blah blah blah” will suffice.

5. Write About It Yourself

I’m not sure why Ana chose to ask other bloggers to write about something in order to promote her own blog. It would have made a lot more sense to write a great blog post about the Bluetooth video herself, then invite her peers to the Digital Axle blog to discuss it.

Why give the traffic to other blogs?

Update 2/25/08: Check out Lee’s additional comment for another good pointer. By the way, Lee took out identifying details from his original post, so I’ve followed suit and removed Ana’s last name from my original post.

[Jawbone video screen cap credit: Lee Odden]

Although I’m not necessarily a fan of romance novels in general, I’m a huge fan of the blog Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. One of my favorite things about this blog is their series of book cover snarking.

On January 7, SBTB posted allegations of plagiarism by romance writer Cassie Edwards, citing numerous examples of text from her novels that were strangely similar to works by other writers in various genres. Bummer, Cassie.

Four days later, the Associated Press picked up the story and The New York Times wrote about it one day after that. Both stories mention SBTB and link to the site. Way to go, ladies!

If you visit Smart Bitches, Trashy Books now, you can see how they are taking advantage of this publicity. In the upper right corner, the first thing you’ll see is a link to a PDF file entitled, “A Centralized Document of the Cassie Edwards Texts.” A little further down, you’ll see where SBTB aggregated links to all relevant posts they’ve made on the subject.

This is a great example of how to respond to sudden increased exposure of your website or blog. Make it easy for new visitors to find what lured them to your site in the first place.

These Smart Bitches are smart. Very smart.

I do wonder how this negative publicity will affect Edwards’ sales and fan base. She’s been very popular through the years, writing over 100 romance novels. Or at least putting her name on the cover. According to The New York Times article, some fans are calling for a boycott of her work. Her publisher, Signet Books, is also investigating the claims.

If you were Edwards’ publicist, how would you deal with this backlash? It’s not often that crisis management really comes into play when representing authors.

If you use WordPress, be sure to install the latest update, which is an “urgent security release” according to the WordPress blog. It also fixes some minor bugs.

As with any software update to your blog, be sure to back up your data before you install the patch. There is no need to upgrade if your blog is hosted directly on the WordPress site.

Get some help on the upgrade at the WordPress site at this link, or  search the support forums.

DreamHost, my webhost provider, has a very candid approach to their corporate blogging. Many of their customers seem to love the down to earth style of communications. Other customers, however, don’t appreciate the humor when it comes to big mistakes the company has made.

Last month, there was a huge billing error to the tune of millions of dollars. DreamHost’s automatic billing system accidentally overcharged many customers. DreamHost CEO Josh Jones wrote an apologetic blog post, infused with the silliness that is DreamHost’s signature. After reader comments like, “For such a vast problem, I don’t think the jokey tone really serves you well. I usually don’t mind it, but in this case, it is a bad idea,” DreamHost issued another apology via their blog.

Comments on the blog seem split nearly 50/50 with customers who either are offended by DreamHost’s humorous style, or those who stay with DreamHost for exactly that reason. There were similar reactions about a year ago when there was another big problem. (See: Anatomy of a(n ongoing) Disaster and Anatomy of a Disaster, Part 2)

The lesson here is to use appropriate tone on your blog. Sometimes you might forget that people are reading. Although you may not have many readers when you first start, remember that nearly everything you put on the Internet can exist forever, even once it’s deleted. The archiving power of the Internet has only grown. Geez, I can still find discussion group postings I made nearly 10 years ago when I was selling on eBay to help pay for college.

For what it’s worth, I’ve been a DreamHost customer for over 5 years now. Thankfully, I was not affected by the billing error since I seldom enroll in any automatic billing plans. But I can remember the days, not too long ago, when a billing error to my debit card — even if only a couple hundred dollars — would have made rent checks bounce or left me without money to buy groceries, as other DreamHost customers have complained.

I will stay a DreamHost customer. My tech support requests have always been met quickly and efficiently. And I will never forget how DreamHost gave a full year of free hosting to customers in the New Orleans area right after Hurricane Katrina. It was certainly nice to know that I didn’t have to worry about paying for webhost service while trying to replace everything I owned. To be honest, I don’t think they ever blogged about that.