Publishing Trends has a multi-part series focused on the new world of book reviews online. I don’t know that I am being too bold or boastful to say that the romance blogs that offer reviews do as good of a job as any Publishers’ Weekly or Romantic Times’ review of a romance book.

"I see promising signs of creative and intellectual life everywhere I turn these days," says Mark Sarvas, editor of The Elegant Variation and also a reviewer for the New York Times Book Review and the Philadelphia Inquirer. "I think we’re already at the point where the quality of what’s available online matches all but the best print publications." Jane Ciabattari, NBCC President, agrees: "There is no dearth of passion, no lack of book coverage. I suspect the best approach for publishers is to find individuals with finely honed critical voices and keep them well supplied with advance galleys." What else can publishers do, and where are book reviews headed?

This is a pretty interesting series although some of the sections were too short for me to gain valuable insight.

Kassia Kroszer blogs over at Romancing the Blog that publishers should start thinking of readers instead of Amazon in determining when to release an ebook and at what price.

The FTC has decided that in order to adequately protect consumers, bloggers must start disclosing payments, whether cash or freebies, for reviews. The specific text has been revised as follows:

For purposes of this part, an endorsement means any advertising message (including verbal statements, demonstrations, or depictions of the name, signature, likeness or other identifying personal characteristics of an individual or the name or seal of an organization) that consumers are likely to believe reflects the opinions, beliefs, findings, or experiences of a party other than the sponsoring advertiser, even if the views expressed by that party are identical to those of the sponsoring advertiser. The party whose opinions, beliefs, findings, or experience the message appears to reflect will be called the endorser and may be an individual, group, or institution.
…

Endorsers also may be liable for statements made in the course of their
endorsements.

The FTC Guide gives an example of when disclosure must be made:

Example 8: A consumer who regularly purchases a particular brand of dog food decides one day to purchase a new, more expensive brand made by the same manufacturer. She writes in her personal blog that the change in diet has made her dog’s fur noticeably softer and shinier, and that in her opinion, the new food definitely is worth the extra money. This posting would not be deemed an endorsement under the Guides.

Assume that rather than purchase the dog food with her own money, the consumer gets it for free because the store routinely tracks her purchases and its computer has generated a coupon for a free trial bag of this new brand. Again, her posting would not be deemed an endorsement under the Guides.

Assume now that the consumer joins a network marketing program under which she periodically receives various products about which she can write reviews if she wants to do so. If she receives a free bag of the new dog food through this program, her positive review would be considered an endorsement under the Guides.

The guide references “positive” reviews more than once. Certainly a negative review wouldn’t be construed as an endorsement. In the future, all C reviews and below will have the disclaimer: The FTC made me do it. I would link to the Guide, but it has been taken down for some reason.

Forgot to add this link. Bookslut interviewed Ron Charles at the Washington Post. Recall that Ron Charles won the RWA Veritas award for one blog post. Charles indicated that all of the reviews they’ve ever received at the Post has contained these words, either at the beginning or the end: "Well if you like this kind of crap, you’ll like this-"

Charles indicates that they are trying but really cannot find someone who can review romances intelligently at the Post.

“We keep trying. We have had a little more luck with Historical Romance, it’s more like Historical Fiction. Sometimes we do find someone who is sympathetic and can review it from the point of view of people who do like and do know something about it.”

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1. Monday Midday Links RoundUp: EC Rumors, HSN, and Branding
2. Wednesday Midday Links RoundUp: Big Changes at Simon & Schuster
3. More Evidence On the Unreliability of Amazon Reviews

We realized that the settlement was not really a settlement at all, in as much as settlements resolve acts that have happened in the past and were at issue in the underlying infringement suits. Instead, the so-called settlement would create mechanisms by which Google could continue to scan with impunity, well into the future, and to our great surprise, create yet additional commercial products without the prior consent of rights holders. For example, the settlement allows Google to reproduce, display and distribute the books of copyright owners without prior consent, provided Google and the plaintiffs deem the works to be "out-of-print" through a definition negotiated by them for purposes of the settlement documents

In business news, LJ Dawson reports that Bowker will be reducing the price for ISBNs.   Individual ISBNs are quite costly for small publishers and this reduced price will help in making sure that books, no matter the size of the publisher, can be catalogued and recorded properly.

Most importantly, as new digital formats and capabilities proliferate and diversify, end-users (consumers) must be able to differentiate one digital product form from another during discovery and the digital point of purchase, particularly when differentiated usability, access rights and functionality are key considerations to be made during a purchasing decision.

Tor.com is putting out a book via Print on Demand.   The work is an anthology titled Year’s Best Fantasy 9.   It will be available through online vendors.    Fascinating.

Index//mb, a Candanian publishing blog looks at what cloud computing can mean for publishing.   Essentially, mb divides out cloud computing into three categories: cycles, services and APIs and suggests that the power rests in control over API.

Sarah Weinman takes a closer look at the 17 book deal signed by James Patterson through 2012. Yes, that’s 17 books, 3 years.   Sarah breaks down the numbers for you.   I have offered myself up as a collaborator who a) tweets about my collaborator’s progress and b) offers up encouragement but weirdly no one thinks this is sufficient to meet “collaboration” requirements.

While not specifically book related, I thought this article on Huffington Post regarding Jimmy Fallon’s huge web presence not supporting his television efforts sufficiently was really interesting.

NBC hopes that those who see Fallon light up the stage in one of these clips will eventually find their ways over to the network at midnight. Whether these video clips make people more inclined to watch the show – and for NBC to see the accompanying advertisements – is left to be seen. In my experience, liking a segment here and there does not translate into getting behind the whole, larger product. Whatever praise is thrown Fallon’s way for embracing the online market must come along with skepticism about whether it’s a recipe for long-term success or just a series of profitless gimmicks.

Kay Sisk sent me a link to the Wall Street Journal article about Amish romances being hot.   Business hot, not content hot.   We actually discussed this briefly in a post a couple of weeks ago.

Most bonnet books are G-rated romances, often involving an Amish character who falls for an outsider. Publishers attribute the books’ popularity to their pastoral settings and forbidden love scenarios à la Romeo and Juliet. Lately, the genre has expanded to include Amish thrillers and murder mysteries. Most of the authors are women.

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1. Google Book Settlement News
2. Google Reaches Settlement With AAP Over Google Book Search
3. Author Alert: Are Publishers Requiring Authors to “Opt In” to Google Book Settlement

Wendy, the SuperLibrarian, wonders if bloggers can actually make a book. Wendy says that publicists can’t expect this of a reader and reader bloggers shouldn’t play into that mentality (hear, hear).

My response to this was that if Avon was waiting for the day when a blogger was going to be solely responsible for “making” a book, they’d be waiting a long time. Listen, I’m a librarian. I can tell you in no uncertain terms that there are two ways to “make” a book. 1) The publisher’s PR department puts in a lot of long hours and 2) Oprah picks it for her book club.

…

The minute reader bloggers begin losing sight of what their purpose is, and why they got into the game to begin with, is when they start feeding a corporate machine. Most of us started blogging for one reason, and one reason only. We wanted to connect with other readers who loved the romance genre as much as we do.

Even Jeff Bezos thinks that there are things on sale at Amazon that aren’t worth buying. Gawker takes a look at Jeff’s Amazon reviews and uncovers a one star review.

Sorry if this seems harsh, but I just don’t want anyone to buy it unknowingly.

Publishing is notorious for its lack of market research. Bowker’s is trying to fill in this gap by offering it’s first Consumer Focused Research Report for the Book Industry. The report costs $1,000 but the press release in the previous link includes some data points:

– 57% of book buyers are women yet women purchase 65% of the books sold
in the U.S.
– Mystery books are the most popular genre for book club sales, with 17%
of all purchases of mystery books coming directly from book clubs
– Generation X consumers buy more books online than any other
demographic group, with 30% of them buying their books through the Internet
– 21% of book buyers said they became aware of a book through some sort
of online promotion or ad
– Women made the majority of the purchases in the paperback, hardcover
and audio-book segments, but men accounted for 55% of e-book purchases

Book Depository has opened its US store front online at http://bookdepository.com/. Book Depository has free shipping (no need for Amazon Prime membership) and the prices are very competitive.

Christina Dodd tweeted a link to a post about writing that she called “the best article about writing [she had] ever seen”. The blogger writes that authors are not vessels:

The most pernicious thing about this myth is it implies the author does not own what he or she creates. The muse did it. The author just took dictation. Authorial intent is all but dead in critical circles anyway. This effacing of the authorial self is bizarre and laughable on its face–of course the author did it. They planned it all out. Miss Eat, Pray, Love planned it all out, however she wants to talk about her vessel-ness. An author is not empty, they are not driven by embodied characters to write things they would not otherwise write. These are metaphors for brain processes–but talking about them as literal realities makes us all look a little flighty and a little crazy. And indirectly leads to the awesome I’m-an-artist-and-I-can-drink-all-day-and-fuck-whoever-I-like-because-I’m-an-artist-and-I-need-to-court-my-muse. Vomit.

Pimp My Novel was a link tweeted by Carolyn Jewel. Pimp My Novel is a blog run by a marketer at a major publisher. The blogger provides some fascinating insight into the business of selling books. This blog is so interesting that I added to my blogroll.

Related posts:

1. Midweek Links of Interest
2. Thursday News Links: More Digital
3. Daily Links Round Up: Authors Losing Their Shit & FREE Kindle Books

Related posts:

1. Slave to Sensation by Nalini Singh, a blogging experiment
2. Wanna Win an ARC from Nalini Singh?
3. Borders Breaking Up with Amazon

Let’s talk about the experiment. First, we made sure everyone knew it was an experiment. I didn’t want to mislead anyone unlike other successful but questionable viral marketing campaigns. I cribbed the idea from Anne Frasier (aka Theresa Weir) who is currently running her own viral blog marketing scheme.

Frasier blogged about her dwindling print runs and wanted to engage 100 bloggers to blog about her book. I then read Tess Gerritsen’s blog post about marketing. Gerritsen was stalking a reader at a bookstore and engaged the reader in conversation. The reader said that “three times” is her rule of thumb.

I was once in a bookstore where I saw a woman eyeing the paperback rack. My book, BODY DOUBLE, was there. When she picked it up and looked it over, I couldn't help asking her, “have you heard of that author?”

“I've never read anything by her,” she said. “But you know, I've heard her name about three times in the past month. So I guess I should buy this.”

Then she told me that “three times” is her rule of thumb. That's how many times she needs to hear about a product before she'll try it out.

I then saw the post about Lauren Barnholdt’s Reality Chick Buzz on Karen S and Angie W’s blogs.

Cobbling together those ideas, we came up with the Dear Author viral blogging idea with the question of whether bloggers could have an effect in real world sales. Sylvia Day, at Alison Kent’s blog, commented one day that she thought online reviews had very little affect on real life sales. (I would link to this but I can’t remember which article it was by Kent). Nora Roberts commented Monday that there are millions of readers not online (which seems to dovetail with Day’s comments).

I remembered Alison Kent’s viral marketing blitz and thought it sounded too hard. I liked the idea of getting 100 bloggers to read a book and then blog about it but that sounded formidable. First, could I get Singh to give away 100 copies of her book? and Second, would 100 people actually read and blog about the same book within a 2 week time period? Essentially, I am a very lazy person and I assume that most people are lazy like me. I had to make the contest as easy as possible. I thought 100 blogs seemed ambitious and was surprised when we creeped up past 50. The Viral Factory touts its Ford ad that is on 200 websites.

I chose Singh because I really loved her book. I thought it would have mass appeal: paranormal, alpha hero, strong but damaged heroine, very sexy. Plus, Ms. Singh did not do any bus tour, bookstore signing or in person promotions. The majority of her promotional activity concentrated on things that could be done online, with a small amount of print advertising and other non-internet promotion.

This experiment did not affect everyone positively which was to be expected. Two posters at AAR thought that this was annoying:

Most of my favorite blogs have participated in this “experiment”, and what really bugs me about it is that none of the bloggers seem to have actually read the book. It’s one thing to rave communally about a book everyone loves, but a mass blog about a new, unread book is just an ad. It’s an interesting experiment, sure; but I hope it doesn’t become a trend.

I’ll also comment that seeing the same copy on every site I visit has actually soured me on wanted to read the darn thing…

Diana Peterfreund posted:

People want original content on blogs. They don’t mind if you are taking excerpts from other blog posts and riffing about them yourself, or pointing out blogs to them that they should read and providing your own commentary, or what. Just make it NOT be the exact same wording they see on a dozen other blogs. It’s the blogging equivalent of the AP wire, and it gets old pretty quickly.

May believes there is a saturation point at which viral blogging will be like spam.

On the other hand, Alyssa Goodnight said that it worked for her:

Now I’ve seen Nalini’s name in five or six different places and blogged about her myself. I know who she is, and I’m totally aware of her book. It worked for me.

Phyllis Towzey wrote:

And if I see it often enuf, I do get the impression that there’s a “buzz” on the book and would be more likely to pick it up next time I’m at B&N.

Jennie said we got her hooked. She bought it, read it, loved it, and reviewed it. I suspect its post like Jennie’s which will provide legs to Singh’s book in the blogosphere as can be seen by the commenters, 2 of which are being swayed to pick up the book. So that’s three sales, in a viral sort of way, Singh may not have had before. We all know that word of mouth sells books like no one’s business and who is to say that those 3 readers won’t virally infect readers offline who affect more readers, etc.

Frasier’s campaign is having great success without the bribes offered by Dear Author and without being a reader led initiative (which was one of the comments I read as a plus for the experiment). Frasier has had four books released before and a wider readership than both Dear Author (for sure) and Singh (maybe) which may contribute to her viral blogging success. I also think that Frasier is very creative in her marketing with the video (though it runs a bit long imo) and the website. Content is king in the blogosphere.

So what does Nalini Singh think?

Singh’s expectations:

To be quite honest, I didn’t have any huge expectations about this. I thought it sounded fun and interesting and figured, why not? My hope was that enough people would pick up the viral blog that Slave to Sensation would become more widely known as an upcoming release.

Measuring success:

As far as I’m concerned, the experiment itself is already a success. We’ve had well over the 100 entries we set as our goal, and people are talking about it. More than that, Slave to Sensation has had considerably more exposure than it otherwise would have had given that this is my first single title.

Negatives:

I think if I’d already been a well-known author, there’s the risk of overexposure with something like this. But because this is my first ST, many of the entrants (and so maybe their readers too) had never heard of me before.

Positives:

The simple fact that more people now know about Slave to Sensation. Whether they buy it is up to them, but at least they’ve heard of it and can decide if it interests them. Another positive which I don’t think we should overlook is how incredibly upbeat everyone’s attitude was to this. People questioned it, had their doubts as to its efficacy, but the one thing that jumped out at me in all the posts I read was that everyone wanted it to succeed.

And that says great things about the community of readers and writers out there.

Repeat:

I don’t know at this stage. I think the success of this experiment was due greatly to the fact that it was initiated by Dear Author because Jane loved the book so much. That gave it a legitimacy an author’s promotional push might not have. But having said that, I do think it’s a great promotional tool if used in moderation. If viral blogs started appearing every day, everyone would get sick of them pretty fast. So I guess my answer is – I’ll wait and see.

—

Jane and Jayne thank everyone for participating. We love to hear comments, both postive and negative. Seriously, you won’t hurt our feelings if you think the idea sucked big hairy donkey balls. In October or November, we’ll revisit this blogging experiment with some generalized sales figures and see how Singh fared and whether the blogging experiment had any measurable effect.

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1. Slave to Sensation by Nalini Singh, a blogging experiment
2. Viral blogging contest: Do We Have Hand?
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WIN $200 AMAZON Gift certificate from DearAuthor.com by participating in a blogging experiment

UPDATE To see if you have been entered, please check this post. I have listed all the entrants that I know of. If I haven’t caught you, leave a comment and I’ll get you on the list. No worries if the image doesn’t load. Contest will end on September 5, 2006. The contest is only open to those who are 18 years or older. I don’t want to get an unhappy parent suing me for corrupting their children!

I am participating in a blogging experiment hosted at dearauthor.com. To enter the contest, put up this blurb, image, and trackback and you are entered to win the following prize package.

• $200 Amazon gift certificate
• Signed copy of Slave to Sensation
• New Zealand goodies chosen by Singh
• ARC of Christine Feehan’s October 31 release: Conspiracy Game

You can read about the experiment here and you can download the code that you need to participate here.

SLAVE TO SENSATION
Nalini Singh
Berkley / September 2006

Welcome to a future where emotion is a crime and powers of the mind clash brutally against those of the heart.

Sascha Duncan is one of the Psy, a psychic race that has cut off its emotions in an effort to prevent murderous insanity. Those who feel are punished by having their brains wiped clean, their personalities and memories destroyed.

Lucas Hunter is a Changeling, a shapeshifter who craves sensation, lives for touch. When their separate worlds collide in the serial murders of Changeling women, Lucas and Sascha must remain bound to their identities — or sacrifice everything for a taste of darkest temptation.

Excerpt

Related posts:

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