Influential Women in Publishing

February 16, 2010 By 2 Comments

I always face this moment when I’m supposed to be blogging about the great and wonderful world of publishing. There are so many out there that speak so eloquently and engagingly that I have a hard time thinking my writing stands up in comparison. There is, however, one area that no one has yet entered (although I saw a different incarnation of the same idea on Terry White’s blog): influential women publishers. Last year I belatedly “attended” the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing, belatedly online. There I was introduced to Kassia Krosser, Angela James, Malle Vallik, Sarah Wendell, and Eileen Gittins. I set out over this year past to find out what I could about these women, cyber-stalking if you will on Twitter, requesting links through LinkedIn. It’s a really tough world out there and I figured my role models ought to be strong competent women.

This year Frances Pinter of Bloomsbury Academic is one of the keynote speakers at the Tools of Change for Publishing conference. Just reading the first line of the blurb “Living through a time of transition is exciting, stimulating, stretching and expensive!” causes excitement. This publisher embraces future trends “experimenting with open content licensing for scholarly monographs” while maintaining a comfortable position in tradition. This promises to be a great talk.

Another keynote speaker is Arianna Huffington, Co-Founder and Editor-In-Chief of The Huffington Post. Just recently I talked about the influence The Huffington Post has on the future of publishing (I wonder at O’Reilly’s skill in knowing exactly what I’m looking for). “Publishers just need to find new and innovative ways to reach these digitally-focused eyeballs.” As the publishing industry free-falls, Ms. Huffington steps up with possibilities in the brave new world.

I look forward to hearing Angela Bole, Associate Director, Book Industry Study Group, Inc. speak about the eBook consumer. Allison Belan Assistant Production Manager for Journals, Duke University Press and Maureen McMahon President & Publisher, Kaplan Publishing are joining together to explore “Change”, how to drive it and achieve real lasting change.

Lisa Shannon, Associate Publisher at Wiley speaks about the transition from ebooks into training. Christine Perey of PEREY Research & Consulting brings her “18 years experience working in emerging multimedia communications markets” to speak about “augmented Reality … mixing digital information and the real world in a highly interactive manner “. They are joined by Angelina Ward, Senior Acquisitions Editor at Syngress. Ms Ward is presenting a case study about a year growing her publishing business.

I’m always excited by Adobe, and I’m sure I won’t be disappointed by Julie Baher, Experience Design Manager at Adobe as she discusses the future of digital reading. Diana Childress, Senior Director, Content Partnerships at Blackboard Inc. and Carrie O’Donnell,President at O’Donnell & Associates, LLC talk about the digital reality and whether or not digital content eases research or not.

This sample of influential women is only from one day of the three day conference. And, just as last year, I am unable to attend in person. Thanks to O’Reilly I can view all the sessions online; I “attend” a little later than everyone else.

This promises to be a great conference. Hope you can make it.

Filed Under: From Shoshana, Uncategorized, women heros, women publishers Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Why is The Huffington Post Important to Today’s Publishing Reality?

February 14, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Arianna Huffington from www.ihavenet.com

Three years ago The Huffington Post, barely out of its incubator, was brushed off as a casual, digital hobby of Arianna Huffington.

By February 2010 The Huffington Post had 3.7 million unique visitors (Nielson Online). Technorati, the premiere blog search tool, has the Huffington Post as the second most linked to blog, second to TechCrunch.

The Huffington Post (The HuffPost in the colloquial) combines American “pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps” and “Horatio Alger entrepreneurship” with the ability to brand itself as “The Online Commentator”. So why is The Huffington Post, long on government administration critique, important to the publishing industry?

In part, the answer is The Huffington Post is redefining its role in the world as the “Internet Newspaper”, including various new fields, along with books.

As she is quoted by the New York Times, “when the posts are linked on the front page, the site provides a megaphone and gives authors some prominence. ‘We’ve been very successful in selling people’s books.’”

Take a look at the Huffington Post Book Review Roundup. Even using the conservative estimate of 10,000 viewers, a book reviewed on The Huffington Post is going to do very well.

As more and more people go to online blogs for information, Twitter for breaking news, and Facebook for recreation, The Huffington Post, avante guard of the publishing world, sets the new direction for any kind of information. Publishers, in the throws of electronic rights, in freefall as the traditional publishing world disintegrates, must pay careful attention to any innovation – especially one that is so successful.

Filed Under: From Shoshana, women publishers Tagged With: , , , ,

Online Games as eLearning Strategy

January 26, 2010 By 1 Comment

Anyone who has an account on Facebook knows about the games: FarmVille, Farm Town, Cafe World, MafiaWars, FishVille, YoVille, and so on. The opinions about the games are quite polarized, ranging from “I hate those stupid announcements. Ban the games.” to “I love those stupid announcements cause I get free prizes”. Of course, all interaction is virtual, all prizes are virtual. The only thing not virtual is the money some people spend to feed their ever-growing habit. Zynga capitalizes on a very basic fact. People really like to give and receive gifts. And just as someone buys a ticket at the fair to throw balls at rigged bowling pins in order to win a stuffed toy that falls apart in a few months, people buy food, land, animals, equipment, and guns that are all virtual.


I started playing games with my sisters so I could have contact with them on an almost daily basis. When they sends me gifts and notes I know they are ok for that day. A funny thing happened. Through gaming I discovered cousins that I hadn’t seen or spoken with for over 20 years. I discovered cousins that I didn’t know I had. And I really like that. Social Media at its best. Then I found old friends on the same games. It recreates the gaming atmosphere of my teens when we would sit for hours playing whist and bridge.  “It’s ok not to have a lot to say. Let’s play.”

Many management courses that I’ve participated in use the game model to get the point across. Whether it is trust, conflict management, accountability, there is a game to play. Granted, these were usually done offsite, all employees of a particular group or division, similar ranking within the company. I don’t know if offsite training happens as regularly as it used to. I suspect not. It is too costly. Training now takes place online.

eLearning and its counterpart, mLearning (mobile), open up training avenues that are cost effective, easy to manage, and easy to coordinate. The individual takes a course online, tests online, and has his/her scores stored online. Management gets instant, unbiased feedback, and instant progression scores. Great. Except the community aspect of training is gone. Synergy is gone.

My question to research this year is how can we take the goodness of gaming (look at Second Life as a prime candidate) and the goodness of offsite training, mash it all together and come out with effective eLearning and mLearning systems? Is there a way to create a learning environment that lives and learns as the employee “goes up in levels”? And is there a way to instill boundaries in those games so that gaming does not become the primary focus of the employee?

Filed Under: From Shoshana, online learning, online training, Social Media Tagged With: , , , ,

Book Model Variant 2

December 30, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Collaboration has been around since the first stories were told out over the campfire. Each story teller said over the basic story, history, morality play, and then added his own interpretations to the mix. It amuses me when people talk about book collaboration today as if it is a new idea, new invention. What’s different today is the amount of material being published and the available tools. Before the Internet/personal computer availability, authors on joint projects either needed to be within physical proximity or they needed a very good postal system and lots of time.

Each team approaches joint projects in a unique way, depending on the chemistry between the authors and the strengths each brings to the project. One person might be in charge of one theme which runs through the book while the others act a accessories, each contributing minor excerpts to support the main thread. Or the group might become decentralized where every author writes a chapter or section of the book independent of the other parts. Sometimes there are researchers and writers. The researcher finds all the supporting evidence and the writer mashes it, stirs it, and produces a cohesive final book.

Today there are books being written by many people, 144 characters at a time, on Twitter. Brandon Mendelson wrote The Falcon Can Hear the Falconer in Twitter. Instantaneous writing and reading. Ever sit on pins an needles waiting for the next installment of a sequel? Imagine the story is unfolding, tweeting out to your desktop, as your working. And these Twitter novels don’t have a plan, an outline, to speak of. How could thousands of people write to an outline, instantly, in 144 characters? The content reflects real time, it’s certainly not static. Current events make their way into the story as the event occurs. The downside to this is managing the contributors, writing time, and the danger of loosing the main theme.

Collaboration takes another twist in an Agile environment. For those of you who don’t know Agile development, on one foot, it is development to small goals within a limited time frame, usually a week to three weeks long. Certain small goals are set and worked towards. Then the project is reanalyzed and new goals set for the next round or sprint. Writers have to adapt to a new writing cycle between themselves and among the Agile team. Publishing collaborative works follows the general model, if you don’t look too closely. The introduction of writing sprints changes everything. Publication dates become part of a sprint. The piece might be “published” many times before it reached its intended audience.

The next model is slightly more complicated. I’ll be looking a single sourcing information and its relevance to commercial publishing.

Filed Under: Book Model, Tools, Uncategorized, Understanding publishing Tagged With: , , , ,

Life Cycle of a Book: Understanding the Basic Book

December 13, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Books on a Shelf
Books on a Shelf

So many book models exist today. From the traditional write-and-publish to the eBook, with everything in between, the variations are staggering. This post is about the basic book model. Once the book life cycle is described I can then talk about the variations on the model. By enumerating the book models I can have a better understanding of how to create a flexible, living model that works for French Creek Press.

The basic model starts with the author. Ms. Author has an idea for a book. She has never published a book, nor has she published articles on the book subject. After carefully outlining the book, doing the research, writing the synopsis, and writing the first three chapters, she finds an agent. The agent then submits the book to a likely publisher. For the sake of our example the publisher accepts the book and pays a small advance to the author.

At this time the author retires to her little cubbyhole, chains herself to her desk, and writes the book. Since she is chained to the desk 8 hours a day, she actually finishes it according to schedule. The day finally comes when she writes, either literally or figuratively, “And they lived happily to the end of their days. The End”. She lovingly wraps the manuscript, after all, this is her six month in creation heart and soul, and ships the manuscript to the publisher.

When it gets to the publisher it is sent off to readers. The manuscript is ripped apart and put back together according to the publishers needs. Requests for change are drawn up, and everything is sent back to the author. Please fix. Maximum revision time? Four months.

keyboard
keyboard

While the author is revising the book, the publisher sets the publishing process in motion. The publishing schedule is set; the book cover is commissioned; the book layout is designed. When the book returns to the publisher, all revisions accepted, the book goes out to proof, offset printing is scheduled, then to the printer for pre-publication copies (ARC-advanced reading copies), and then to the pre-publication reviewers. Then the first print for publication is run.

In this basic model the publisher is established. The books are sent to the distributor, possibly accompanied by the pre-release reviews. Bookstores order the book, and the book is shipped and placed on the shelf in a brick&mortar bookstore.The book remains on the shelf for some period of time. The books not sold become “remaindered”.

That’s the simple life cycle. Next in the life of a book, I look into publishing variations for printed books.

The pictures displayed here are from two different public domain libraries:
Keyboard by Petr Kratochvil
http://www.public-domain-image.com/site_map.html

Filed Under: Book Model, From Shoshana, Understanding publishing Tagged With: , , , , ,

Doom and Gloom or New Beginning?

November 24, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Everyday I receive an article talking about the demise of this publisher or that book store chain. This morning The Independent out of the UK lamented the Borders UK non-agreement-that-would-save-the-day. The managers’ buyout does not seem to be happening, or they are too little too late – Borders UK is not taking online orders. It will be a few days before Borders UK is either “saved” or goes into receivership. Stories like this are all over the news: little stores folding due to Amazon/Target/Walmart price cuts, publishing houses closing or shedding imprints that don’t generate “big bucks”.

French Creek Press is a new, fledgling company. In a marketplace full of publishers that know the ropes, have been around for decades, have scoped out the marketplace, how could French Creek Press stand a chance? I’ll answer that with another question. How, in times when stores and publishers are closing, can Harlequin open an new digital only division, Carina Press, headed up by Angela James? The answer is, at least, twofold. An all digital press means publishing is only electronic. There is no need to pour money into thousands of books because no book is produced. All the preprint costs are minimal compared to the print and distribution cost. Yes, there is still distribution, but there is no heavy transport cost. This is the ultimate “on demand” product. The book is produced once in a particular format. Then it is sold multiple times, on demand, with no inventory charge

French Creek Press goes one step farther. Instead of investing tens of thousands of dollars in traditional marketing, the decision to use Social Media as the primary tool was made. Viral Marketing combined with on demand printing means French Creek Press can take a risk on new authors. The cost to French Creek Press is much less than the cost to publish a book through one of the old stalwarts. While we are not exclusively producing digital books (we do print books) we cut costs to the point where we can publish authors, sustain the cost of publishing through its lifecycle, market the books, and stay in business.

I was taken to task for following Harlequin’s move. Since the books are a bit, a little bit, risque, and my lifestyle is the antithesis of risque, what am I doing looking at Harlequin? I can’t afford not to. And neither can any other publisher. Harlequin is taking some very drastic steps to stay open and competitive. By adding Angela James to their team they have increased their survival rate multi-fold. Check out what Smart Bitches, Trashy Books has to say about Carina and you’ll see why this is a brilliant move.

I have roots in the computer industry where revolution takes place on a regular basis. Change with the newest, latest, greatest technology that just made all the equipment I bought six months ago obsolete, or die. By keeping to the principle of on demand production and viral social marketing French Creek Press has the opportunity to grab a piece of the action while producing high quality products. In the meantime, I’m keeping my eyes on the big guys that are adapting to the new reality. And I’m keeping my eye on the women publishers that make a difference in the industry.

Filed Under: From Shoshana, Print On Demand, SMM, Social Media, social media marketing, women publishers Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

An Author Platform Sells the Author

November 2, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I heard an interesting statistic the other day from another publisher. They were trying to setup an online store with one of the leading online bookstores, but were being frustrated in their attempts because they could get no support from the online store. Every time they called or emailed they got the same response: “I’m sorry, we’re so busy we are only servicing our top 50 clients”. This publishing company was not among their top 50 clients so no service.

Agents, publicists and publishing companies do the same with their authors. The author gets time if s/he is a best seller. The author may also get time by being a squeaky wheel, but that is only effective until the recipient recognizes the author’s phone number and doesn’t answer. What can an author do to put him/herself forward? Create an online author’s platform.

The concept of an author platform has been around for many years. This is just another name for a resume, a beefed up resume, but still a resume. The author must not only write well (sometimes I think some popular writers must have become popular because they are good marketers – their writing stinks), the author has to speak well, photograph well, display well in video recordings, and generally be an all-around good package to sell. This is a difficult pill for a budding author to swallow. When an agent/publicist/publisher wants to buy, they are not just buying a book or an idea, they are buying the author and the way the author reaches people. Many new authors focus solely on writing their books, dreaming of the Pulitzer, thinking they can work on their platform after the book is published. Unfortunately, the business doesn’t work that way. An author can’t wait until the book sells to build a platform, because the platform is what helps sell the book.

Did you follow that? The platform sells the book. It sells the book to the agent who must decide to take the risk with the author and throw time and money into getting the book in front of the publisher. The platform sells the book to the publicist who must find the right venue to market the book. And the platform sells the book to the publisher, who sees not only book sales, but speaking tours, book signing engagements, book trailers on YouTube, and a myriad of public, television, and radio appearances. The platform tells the publisher that this author has value outside the book.

The platform, the online resume, is either a web page that hangs from the publisher’s website, or it is a website dedicated solely to the author. The platform must include a clear focus on the targeted market. An author that writes children’s stories is not going to target computer engineers. Once the market is defined the rest falls into place. Press releases, blog entries, articles, pictures of events, music, anything that is related to the author can go on the platform. After the initial construction of the author platform, weekly maintenance can keep the web site/page current, active, and changing, which results in more traffic to the author platform, better SEO, and more potential money making contacts.

Contact French Creek Press services at services@frenchcreekpress.com for information about our author pages.

Filed Under: author platform, new author, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

First Books Published

September 14, 2009 By Leave a Comment

My first ever publishing experience was in grade school. I learned how to make paper. Then I learned how to bind it into a book using thread and glue. Only after the book insides were ready was I allowed to draw, color, paste, and print my story. It was kind of backwards, creating the book and then filling it in. The priority was on making the book, not creating content. Fast forward to high school where I, as a very frustrated, fluent writer, had no outlet for my creativity. My school was so small that there were only 17 girls in my class. The other classes were slightly bigger, but no class had over 25 girls. Due to lack of demand or perhaps lack of energy and guidance, we did not have a newspaper nor a literary magazine. The yearbook was the only creative outlet.

In my Junior year, at age 16, I decided to publish a literary magazine. Of course, I decided this after all funds were allocated to other extra curricular activities, so there was no money even to seed this venture. Over five months I learned how to put together a team of editors, con teachers into sitting on an advisory panel, and how to judge poetry, short fiction, and artwork. I also learned how to beg, I mean, raise the money needed to print the book. I had many encounters with printers and learned a great deal about paper, ink, and size of books.

By May of that year our magazine, Ginko Lines, published its first edition. After I submitted the book to the printer I went back to the dormitory, collapsed on my bed and started to cry. One of the teachers came in to my room and explained the emotional upheaval I was experiencing. She even said, “It’s like having a baby. You just had a baby.” Well – that’s not a good thing to say to a teenage girl in an all girls school.

The next year, my senior year, I went through the process again. The difference in planning ahead financially and emotional was tremendous. I made it through the process to publishing and distribution without crying or breaking. That was the end of my budding publishing career – until now.

I have in front of me the proof copy of the first book published by French Creek Press Ltd. All my experience as a project manager, engineer, editor, book doctor, and layout artist came into play along with the extraordinary talents of the French Creek Press staff. This time I felt like jumping up and down, running down to the street and stopping everyone there to come and look at this baby, book. Excitement replaced tears of exhaustion. Age tells. Experience tells.

Keep looking in this space for the announcement of our newest book.

Filed Under: new author, Print On Demand Tagged With: , ,

Information Brokers

August 29, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Chris Brogan in his three hour talk at the Tools of Change 2009 Conference made several thought provoking statements. Aside from being a very funny guy Chris pointed out the obvious. It is so obvious that it escaped my attention. And if he had to remind everyone in the room of the same fact, it must have slipped under their radar as well.

Chris very pointedly states, “This is the business value of this stuff, the blogging and the social media stuff. There’s a business value to understanding and building the relationships around the product. There’s a real business value in having people understand and have access and build affinity to people…[There is a] new currency in the world, currency of attention, currency of trust. And you need to worry about how you are going to get in front of people to actually care about your thing.”

This introduction to Social Media touched on many subjects which I won’t go into here such as understanding books as eco systems and book clubs as the new tribal system. What really caught my ear was when Chris began speaking about distribution and the Mafia. Books are a distribution problem. eBooks add to the problem even though they command a small piece of the market. Normal channels have a book traditionally marketed, carried by the brick and mortar places along with Online stores. The book is printed and distributed to outlets, bought by the customer, and then shipped. eBooks jump the queue. They are often sold directly from the publisher or even the author.

Just as the Mafia took over distribution systems to deliver basic services to the villages in the face of government corruption, albeit with their own interpretation of the law, the Mafia continued forays into society in other distribution channels. Their choice to distribute alcohol, drugs, slaves, and cigarettes may not be the distribution problem of a publisher, but today’s publisher needs to understand the basic common element. Publishers are not in the book business. Publishers are in the information distribution business. And anytime the distribution is bogged down by bureaucracy, “mafia-style” elements step in to ease the problem.

Social Media works like the Mafia – it sets up new paths, new mechanism to deliver information to the people who want it. And it’s not as complicated as drug traffic-ing. Information brokers need to do things in a “ridiculously different way”. Chris suggests mass customization based on shopping preferences and other information gathered about a customer. Product placement or settings in books can be used to draw people in, and it can be used to enlist outside forces in the marketing campaign. Social Media presents opportunities to work with potential routes that are not traditional marketing.

I choose to reorient my position in a “grassroots” movement instead of the Mafia. Social Media is not as coordinated or structured as the Mafia. It is, however, the perfect expression of the average person grouping together with other average people to effect change.

French Creek Press is starting a social media campaign September. I’ll be writing about this effort and any tips that I can pass along as a result. In the meantime, check out Chris Brogan. Who knows, maybe he’ll do a standup comedy routine to augment his salary.

Filed Under: Social Media, social media marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Open Access and Print on Demand Model

May 31, 2009 By Leave a Comment

At the beginning of 2009 I worked for a technical writing company. We, the staff, started a blog ostensibly to tell the world about technical writing. Each contributor added entries about topics that tickled their fancy. I stumbled on the Open Source philosophy in my search for inspiration. At that time I dipped my toe in the ocean, so to speak. Yehuda Berlinger and Joseph di Paolantonio set about to correct my thinking. Since then I have worked (a little) with open source tools, but I had trouble finding a project that captured my imagination. I struggled with how I could “give back” when nothing really struck me. That is, until I started French Creek Press Ltd.

The French Creek Press model for non-academic publishing is print on demand. We provide editing services to any author, we lay out the books, and then print each book as it is paid for. Yes, the per unit cost is higher than the per unit cost of offset printing. The benefit of print on demand reveals itself when the book sells in small quantities. No author should be forced to pay for 500 books if only 100 books will be sold. Is there a place for 100 books? Absolutely. Everyone has a voice. The beauty of print on demand is that the book can easily transition from the print on demand model to the offset print model, when the book becomes a high seller.

My passion kicked in when I began to tackle the academic publishing problem. The traditional model of academic publishing is the author writes a book; it then goes to a paid peer review panel; after peer review the book is revised and then published. Debt is incurred along each step of this model. The author most likely writes the book in his/her spare time. Each member of the peer review panel is paid a fee to review the book. The author then takes more time to revise the book. It may go back for more review and revision. Finally the book is printed; but the author is obligated to buy 500 copies of his book. Marketing doesn’t even enter this picture.

At French Creek Press Ltd, our academic division, Kenwood Academic, pursues a different model, Open Access. Open Access means free online access to articles that have traditionally been published in scholarly journals. Users can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles. Articles are crawl-able for indexing, can be passed as data to software. The articles can be used for any lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, is to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited (from the Budapest Open Access forum and from Wikipedia). French Creek Press Ltd, Kenwood Academic Press division, fully supports Open Access review.

I can across two videos that underline the benefit of Open Access. These are from the Public Library of Science.

Barbara Stebbins, Middle School Science Teacher from Open Access Videos on Vimeo.

Ida Sim, Physician Scientist from Open Access Videos on Vimeo.

To market any of our literature published under French Creek Press or Kenwood Academic Press, Pixel/Point Press utilizes all social media outlets. In the same vein that publishing can be affordable, we believe that marketing published works can also be affordable. All the social media marketing tools are Open Source. It is up to the user to invest time and effort using these tools to market the information. At Pixel/Point Press we either create and manage the marketing campaign or we teach the author how to market his/her material.

I have found my place in the Open Source family. Through French Creek Press Ltd, Kenwood Academic Press, and Pixel/Point Press, I hope to contribute back into society. As my partner, Kelli Brown, says, “A rising tide raises all ships.”

Filed Under: Open Access, Print On Demand Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
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