The Book Marketing Network: A Free Network

I invite you to join the other 721 plus authors and publishers who have already joined the Book Marketing Network at ning.com. Visit here:

http://bookmarket.ning.com.

Update: Please note that another 51 people have joined the network since I last updated this page. We now have 721 people on the network. Yahoo!

For other interesting social networks you might want to join, see http://www.bookmarket.com/socialnetworks.htm.

Yahoo Sucks

MyYahoo at Yahoo.com really sucks. Something bad is happening with Yahoo. Their customer service has fallen by the wayside. What used to be an incredible service has become inept. The past month I've not been able to access my MyYahoo page more than half the time. It comes in and out. When in, it offers old data half the time. I can't access the TV listings anymore. Even though when I do get my sporadic access to MyYahoo, I click the link to the new TV listings and they don't show up.

Yahoo has to be going through some major shakeup to be offering such poor service. I've added a custom Google page which I have to use at least half the time to access the things I want to access. But all my RSS feeds are on MyYahoo. I'll probably have to switch them if Yahoo doesn't get its act together soon.

This is just not fun. If you're going to offer a service, you have to staff up to provide that service -- or not offer it.

Less Money, More Story

Seth Godin always has interesting points to make. In a recent blog post, he made the following point, one that I've been trying to get through to people for a very long time:

"The art of marketing is not finding more money to do more marketing. It's figuring out how to tell a story that spreads with the resources you've got."

So many self-publishers and new authors want to throw money at marketing or hire someone else to do the marketing for them when they should be spending the time creating great stories. By great stories, I mean, marketing messages that move people, get people talking, get people telling others about your story, etc.

Before you do anything else to market your book, decide what your story is -- what message will move people to act.

Great TV Commercial

I just saw a great TV commercial featuring various factory line workers and supervisors talking about how much they like making Tylenol, how important it is to them to be making a quality product, not just for your kids, but for their kids as well.

Real people talking about their pride in making something -- that's a good commercial.

How can you incorporate your authors, order takers, shippers, etc. in talking about the books you publish? Are they proud to work for you? Are your printers, typesetters, cover designers proud of your books?

What Publicity Is All About

I found this great comment by Howard Rubenstein in Levine Breaking News email newsletter. I agree with it:

PR is about far more than media events, publicity stunts or red carpets. Learning to maintain a high ethical standard is just as important as mastering media relations and client counsel.