Analyze the Web Site Before Paying the Ad Money

PageOneLit.com will say that it's:

• # 1 Literary Newsletters Website out of 1,770,000 (GOOGLE)


• # 3 Newsletter Website search out of 90,200,000 (GOOGLE)


• # 9 Author Interview Search out of 4,000,000 (GOOGLE)

Owner (I think) John Weaver will tell you that in a letter that his site was listed on the 2009 Writers Digest best 101 web sites (which it was, but more on that in a moment). At least that's a letter that he's been known to send to people who have forthcoming books. And then he notes that for a mere $250, he will offer:

A full personal interview page at Pageonelit.com PageoneLit.com and AuthorsPressReleases.com with your photo, bio, book summary, short book review, etc...This is a one time fee for long range promotional goals. Note: Your interview page will stay up forever. Note: Your interview page will stay up forever. This is your interview page to market your book as you like. Plus AuthorsPressReleases.com & Books-and-Authors.net

The claims seem to be accurate, and lord knows book authors want sales. But you're in business to get exposure and results, not to waste money, so let's get beyond the surface for a moment. Here's how Writers Digest described the site:

Page ONE is a one-stop shop for author interviews, contest news, inspirational quotes and writing resources.

That's significantly different from endorsing it as a way of getting people to buy your book.

Google rankings are fine, if the particular search term someone uses is what they might use to look for the book you are offering because, after all, search marketing is something that depends on specific intent of the audience, not a general nosing about. If your title would be of immediate interest to someone searching for a literary newsletter, then you're set. If not, then the search results aren't necessarily going to do you a spit of good.

And Google rankings aside, if you are appearing somewhere, then you want traffic flowing in, because only a small percentage of the people are going to be interested enough and motivated enough to buy the book. So what are the traffic rankings of PageOneLit? Not so hot. According to Compete.com, which samples large panels of Internet consumers for their surfing habits, since January 2009, the average monthly number of unique visitors has been around 1,000. That's a pretty damned small number. To put it into perspective, even my domain gets more traffic, and given that you either have to be looking for me or, more likely, something I wrote about freelance writing, that is a sad state of affairs.

Granted, the sample size for both is low, as noted by Compete.com, which measures U.S. traffic to web sites. But that, in its own way, is a clear statement as well. To triangulate, I also checked Alexa.com, whose "percentage of Internet users" going to a site depends on knowing how many users they think there are, but sill gives a potential comparison. That site suggests that my domain has been receiving almost three times as much traffic over the last three months, and, I cannot stress enough, that number is nothing to brag about, as Internet stats go.

To put it differently, PageOneLit.com gets hardly any traffic. If you've traditionally published and are making, say, $1 in royalties per copy, then you need to sell more than 250 companies in addition to what you would have sold to talk about the investment in "exposure" as offering a return on your investment. So the interview is up, maybe gets the majority of its notice in a month and then drops off radically in effectiveness, because that's how traffic works on the web. As in anything else, you get the biggest boost while you're top of mind. So let's be generous and say that the primary sales pull-through lasts for two months. That would mean you'd need to see 250 sales out of 2,000 visitors, meaning a conversion rate of 12.5 percent. In my experience in direct marketing, that is a total pipe dream.

Before you believe the come-ons of people preying on the desire of writers to be read, check the numbers. There are better ways to spend your time and money.

Cross Promotion on Twitter and YouTube

I'm mainly pointing to a blog post by web video journalist Robb Montgomery that should be of interest to any independent journalist or writer: How I used Twitter to get 9,000 views on YouTube. (He's @robbmontgomery on Twitter.) The headline gives you a good encapsulation of the topic, but what it fails to get across the detail in which he goes into how he actually drove traffic, building credibility in a specific search term (or trending hashtag) on Twitter so people would come to see him as a "credible source" and not a spammer. It may be that this step is more important when trying to tie into a topic on Twitter on the upsurge of popularity but of limited lifetime, like the tag referring to Obama's speech in Cairo. I suspect it may be different if you're posting regularly using an ongoing hashtag.

Because of his preparatory work and some lucky timing of comments by some people who could give him a boost, he got 8,901 views on YouTube in one day.

Seven Tips on Using Twitter Hash Tags

I'm no expert in Twitter, but I've learned a few things in the last few months, and one thing is the importance of learning how to work with hash tags. When you see something like #topic, someone is flagging the post for people who might be interested in "topic." Hash tags can become a powerful way to use Twitter, whether you're looking to promote your work, find sources, or even just get a sense of what people are discussing. So here are some pointers that you might find helpful:

• If you're promoting something you've written via Twitter, be sure to add all the relevant hash tags you can think that might apply (and that fit within the 140 characters). That will get the post in front of potentially thousands of people who might be interested.


• Don't assume that all hash tags will work. You want to search on a hash tag before you use it, to be sure that it's in general use. On the Twitter site, point your browser to search.twitter.com and type in the hash tag (remembering the # in front) and see what comes up. If nothing does, you know it doesn't make sense to waste the characters on that one. If you're using a software app like TweetDeck, then take the appropriate steps to search on the hash tag.


• When you've found a hash tag that gets attention, start going through the posts, not only to be sure that you're directing your message appropriately, but to see what other hash tags people use in their messages. This will generally suggest other tags that you might consider yourself.


• If the topics you cover vary, then keep a spreadsheet or word processing document with potential tags to use. If you're working in few enough predictable areas, group them together, so you have the hash tags for a parenting story or the ones for your pieces on scuba diving.


• Check out hashtags.org. You can look at trends in hash tag use, see who is using them, and even find a directory of hash tags. The trend info is not only useful for marketing, but for looking at the state of the virtual zeitgeist, which then becomes fodder for topics you might pitch or for evidence to an editor that something is cooking and that an article on the topic might be just the thing to assign.


• Confused about exactly what a tag is supposed to mean? You can use Tagalus or Hashtag Reference might help. They let you search to see if there's a definition that's been assigned to the tag and, if there isn't one, you can create one.


• Be smart about how you incorporate hash tags. If you're using the term in your post, include the hash there instead of repeating the term and wasting characters. For example, you could write "read a good #book" instead of "read a good book #book".

Using Twitter for Non-Hype Reasons

If you're a working writer and not already using Twitter, you should really consider trying it - not for the ooooh-I'm-gonna-get-famous reaction that many seem to have, but for some solid reasons:

• You can have useful conversations with peers. I just tried the weekly Twitter gathering called #editorchat and found it interesting, and noticed that Wall Street Journal senior technology editor Julia Angwin will be a guest host this coming week, 4/22, from 8:30pm to 10pm eastern. (Learn more about it at the Editorchat blog.) There is also a chat called #journ2journ for journalists and an occasional one called #queryday, during which book agents and editors (one of my favorite book editors, Michele Wells at McGraw-Hill, was active in the last one) will offer tips and answer general questions about what makes pitches and proposals successful. A little investment in time can deliver valuable information not easily garnered any other way. For example, do you know how comparisons between a proposed book and existing titles differ from how new/previous comparisons of scripts and concepts comparisons are used in the movie industry? I do, now.
• Promoting a Twitter presence seems to be much easier than promoting other types of online activity, like a blog, if you're interested in building an audience. For example, I find myself with 345 followers since mid-December -- not a remarkable number, but given that I haven't lifted a finger to gain attention other than putting my Twitter link (@ErikSherman) in a Twitter journalist directory and on my BNET profile, it's also not bad. Consider how long it might take for you to get 345 subscribers to a blog for perspective.
• Twitter does not have to be the time sink that many assume it automatically is. I spend a few minutes a day posting links to stories that I've written and that I think will have some wide interest, pointing to interesting tweets from people I follow, or simply posting some strange thought that comes to me, and occasionally check what others are posting. That isn't a reason to use it so much as an explanation that what may seem a barrier doesn't have to be.
• This becomes an easy way to keep in periodic touch with a number of colleagues and gain some of the interactivity you might have if working in a newsroom and tossing remarks over the walls.
• You can learn of things that otherwise might not have come to your attention. (Here's one that I had retweeted, meaning a link passed on from someone else: the financial reality of being a New York Times top 20 bestselling author.
• This I pass on from having heard it from other journalists, though I haven't used it myself: you can find sources by looking for people with particular backgrounds or in specific situations.
• Depending on who you follow, Twitter can be, as they say in my neck of the woods, wicked amusing. If you avoid the people overly intent on promoting themselves and focuses on those who let some of their personality and humor through, you can get see some great insights and get a few laughs in the process.

It's definitely worth trying, and free to boot. During this week I'll be posting a Twitter tip or two that I've learned -- and if you have any yourself, please email me, and I can put unique ones together into a separate post.

A Must Read for Book Authors

I literally just finished going through the Businessweek article, The Online Fan World of the Twilight Vampire Books, and cannot reccomend it strongly enough to anyone writing fiction or nonfiction books. This is a story of a woman who used online intelligently and imaginatively:

Meyers success isnt due simply to her vivid imagination for vampire romance. She also figured out before almost anyone in the book industry how to connect with readers over the Internet and inspire them to build on her work. Since Meyer published the first Twilight book in 2005, she has reached out to readers on social networking sites, such as MySpace (NWS), and participated in online discussion groups. Fired-up fans have championed her books on Amazon.com (AMZN) and set up their own sites, such as Twilight Lexicon and TwilightMOMS. That has helped propel sales of the series to 7.5 million books. "Other authors have pockets of fans online, but nothing to this extent," says Trevor Dayton, a vice-president at Indigo, Canada's leading bookseller. "Stephenie Meyers Twilight series is the first social networking best seller."

To be fair, her publisher, Little Brown, saw the possibilities and got behind her first novel, as it paid $750,000 for a three-book deal. But that could have flopped. And it's not as though she was a trained marketeer. Instead, Meyer started taking up opportunities that presented themselves. Will every book pushed online do this type of business? Absolutely not. Run quickly from any "silver bullet" solution to your marketing needs. However, the example shows how it is possible to go beyond what the publisher alone can or will do.

Book Promotion 2.0

Author Dennis Cass has a funny video on Youtube.com about an author hopelessly trying to get with internet promotion of his work. So smartly depressing that you can only laugh.

Using Sweepstakes in Your Marketing

I've worked on just enough sweepstakes promotions in the past to know they're a pain in the rear. But recently a colleague, Rachel Weingarten, had posted something on a writers' board about having run a contest to promote her own book. Rachel, a marketing and PR pro, got a lot of inquiries from writers who wanted to do the same. She realized that many probably didn't appreciate the legal requirements. Here's a blog post she put together at my request about some of these considerations.

Keeping Quiet About Your Problems

Gawker has had a couple of pieces recently that have been making the rounds on the writers boards. One is about a New Yorker writer looking for donations to pay for rescuing his digital images from a crashed hard drive. The other concerns a writer who allegedly used a pseudonym to keep touting the glories of his own writing to Gawker.

It amazes me the types of habits and predilections a writer will advertise in public. The New Yorker popular music critic has this request for up to $5,000 in donations posted on his home page - and he wasn't going to send individual thanks to the donors, though he's willing to post an "honor roll" of those who got his data life together. How the hell does he think people in the industry, including his bosses, are going to see this? Here's a clue: corporations often do things like running background and credit checks to make sure employees or job applicants aren't going to be tempted to steal or sell off inside company information.

As for promoting via a fake email address, don't writers read news stories about authors getting outed for posting anonymous reviews on their own books? Do such people really not realize that they're not as clever as they think? That many people don't know how to uncover subterfuges unless the perpetrator is unusually skilled in technology?

But before you scoff as these displays, consider what you might be doing without realizing it. Have you ever posted on a writers' board asking whether you could get away with something that might be seen as in an ethical grey area? Ever asked about something that you wouldn't want an editor or client to know? Depending on the discretion of strangers is unwise, and you never know when that editorial client might also have access to the same board.

There's nothing wrong with being ignorant of one thing or another. (If there were, we'd all be in constant trouble.) There's nothing wrong with asking for help or in asking "dumb" questions. And there's no value in pretending to be more than you are, because the truth generally works its way out.

However, there is such a thing as being too forthcoming. You hopefully wouldn't go around telling everyone in sight about your problems in relationships, money, and self-control. Why ever would you do the same for professional weaknesses? Develop relationships with colleagues you can respect, learn which ones you can trust, and ask what you need to ask so you can learn to improve. But don't take out the online equivalent of full page ads showing you dressed in fool's motley. It's a way of building and promoting a questionable reputation ... which isn't smart business.