PMA-U - The End

Are you tired yet?  I was but soon became energized by the outstanding May 31 courses.

 Class #1, Online Technology to Gain the Winning Edge. Speaker Jeff Compton www.thirddimensiongraphics.com strongly recommeded adding more memory to your computer touting more memory as very cheap insurance, e.g., 2 gig external hard drive is available for $40-50. The insurance part–an external drive makes backup a snap — or, rather, a click. Jeff says that only 4-6% of users backup daily. All guilty raise your hands.  If you haven’t thought about your printer costs lately, Jeff says ink/toner cost is the more important consideration in printer purchasing decision. Ink jet is much more expensive than laser in the long run. Design software: InDesign is the most commonly used program for book layout. I had assumed Quark was number 1.  Printers as a rule have no preference.  Many tasks of general office organization can be accomplished by using Google tools from calendar to batch emailing to contact list…all free from Google. Jeff is a big advocate of each book having a unique website since the business should be promoting books, not the publishing company. Using Go Daddy is fine since all that is needed is a splash page with boook cover, link to publisher, author contact info. Can add, and he recommends you add video, audio, media room, customized shopping carts.

Jennifer Thompson, MonkeyCMedia, was awesome (Is that word still in use? no? Then Jennifer Thompson, MonkeyCMedia, was INSANE.) She likes:

•  turning websites into marketing tools  
• GoDaddy (for websites and blogs)
• WordPress for free blog (I can vouch, WordPress is easy to use and FREE)
• using URCHIN to track where site visitors come from, where do they go in your site, where do they exit your site
• Using tools — Overture, Google, Nichebot — to stay on top of those all important key words.
• Spicing up your site using color but be wary of too much yellow or red.
• Using bullet points. White space is important
• Using imagery which can be purchased at sites such as www.istock.com if you don’t have images of your own. 
• Slide in windows not pop ups (so 2006!) for news, to capture visitor info, sign-ups, special offers
• Creating interactive activities such as surveys or contests for your website
• Giveaways such as free tips sheet
• Changing the content. No need to drive traffic to a stale site, but duplicate content within the site is a no-no.
• RSS feeds
• YouTube
• Audio on web sites. Check out www.audioacrobat.com and www.freeconferencecall.com
• Creating communities among the visitors to the site or blog
• shopping carts and gateways: Kickstartcart.com //google checkout // zen cart // mals-e cart. I confess ignorance. all are unfamiliar to me.
• to capture email addresses she suggests getresponse.com or constantcontact.com
• website newsletters
• Blogs on websites where they increase visit time and traffic
• Organizing people, teams, groups using basecamp.com and whois.net
• Using deadlinks.com to get rid of dead links on your site
• Using backlink.com to check out who links to you
• Posting a comment high traffic sites and linking back to your site
• checking keywords monthly
• keeping passwords in three places
• knowing when your URLs expire
• and lastly, Jennifer likes using surveymonkey.com which allows up to 10 questions to 100 people before charges are incurred.

Class 2, Website Tricks to Pull More Traffic. Penny Sansiveri www.amarketingexpert.com, Jennifer Thompson, monkeycmedia.com, and Celeste Simons, thirddimensiongroup.com shared these “tricks”–

• Define the focus of the website by hiring a copywriter
• Gain trust by including a privacy statement, a guarantee, testimonials
• Keep calendar up to date or get rid of it
• Offer value in content. Keep fresh articles posted
• Engage your visitor by using slide in windows, quizzes, offering bundled items, special offers, free on-line classes
• Host your blog on the site
• Match keywords to what the intended audience would look for
• Do not optimize your site before it is ready (define ready!)
• Learn what not to do at websitesthatsuck.com
• Demonstrate or present a problem and solve it
• Be honest. Do not make unreasonable statements or offer that cannot be delivered

Networking Lunch — Always beneficial to hear from others in the trenches. During the lunchtime, PMA elected new board members for 07/08.

Two afternoon sessions concluded PMA-U

Class #3, How to be a Publisher Kathleen A. Welton, Director, Book Publishing, ABA and Dominique Raccah, publisher, Sourcebooks. Two very smart women led us through a crash course on strategic planning for a publishing business.

Kathleen emphasized knowing that 3 to 5 year snapshot of your market/audience, your program (publication, revenue and profit targets), your editorial roadmap (title planning and format planning), your financials. Her ten steps to success: strategic goals, research, market needs, goals & objectives, editorial roadmap, sales and distribution, marketing & promo, engaging customers, financials, and publishing plan.

In 19 years, Dominique Raccah had taken her company from a ‘bedroom biz’ with initial investment of $17,000 to 250 titles per year and a publishing record that includes nine NYT best sellers. She was both enlightening and entertaining as she described the job of a publishing CEO, which is to plan future strategy, to hire the right people to implement the strategy, and provide the right people with the right resources to implement the strategy. Another point of emphasis–the difference in being a publisher and being a company builder. “Don’t create a job for yourself. Create a business where every job is replicable.” Dominique repeated what we’d heard from others at the conference–Publish authors, not books. And final wisdom, “A publisher takes a book to market. A printer warehouses books. A publisher’s job is sales, not printing.” Big take away for yours truly.

Class #4, Let’s Brainstorm the Marketing of Your Book. Three days before leaving for PMA-U, I had received galleys for Prunes and Rupe. What an opportunity to be able to  show the book and have the board members of PMA comment on marketing possibilities! The panel discouraged my big idea to market the book to pet supply stores and chains. They thought the book would do well if most of the marketing efforts were applied locally and regionally. It was a privilege to have the new title ‘reviewed’ by this group and a hands-on and extemely practical way to end my PMA-U adventures.

More on PMA-U

At PMA-U, not a moment is wasted. Wednesday, May 30, offered four training sessions, lunch with best selling author Robert Kiyosaki,  and countless opportunities for networking.

Class # 1, Marketing Regional Books. Three panelists dispensed more good ideas than i will be able to recall here. Dorothy Molstad from Voyageur Press emphasized taking advantage of local celebrityhood. Voyageur always queries authors for affiliations all the way back to the author’s elementary school. She schedules signing anywhere people gather including grocery stores. David Cole, Baytree Publishing, reminded us that every author is from somewhere and every book is local to someplace.  Do your market research. Where do people shop who would want the book? Jacqueline Church Simonds, Beagle Bay Books, began by saying that regional books are a very deep spring. A good book about an area can have a years long shelf life. Don’t overlook neighborhood weeklies and other small media outlets. Heritage travelers is the new travel industry buzz.

Class #2, Workable Marketing Plan with speakers Peter Bowerman www.wellfedwriter.com and Brian Jud www.bookmarketing.com. Peter spoke from experience as writer and self published author. Admonished us to know a) what kind of book are we selling — niche or mainstream, b) why was it written/published, c) how much money &/or time is available to invest? Answering these questions will make for more efficient marketing. Websites from Peter: www.booksonline.com for listing of niche bookclubs, www.internweb.com for ’cheap’ help, www.wellfedsp.com for samples of cover letters and other pr helps. Brian Jud’s take was to define the problem of the target reader, make recommendations, spell out what reader will gain by taking action or the recommendations. What you sell when you sell the book is the results or what the reader will gain. Remember that nobody cares if you wrote a book, but if you can solve a problem then they care. Another tidbit: People buy emotionally. They may explain rationally, but they buy based on emotion. And yet another pearl of wisdom: Bookstores display books. They do not sell books. Last words: Know your audience. Heard that before? Book site recommeded: http://bookcentralstation.com

Luncheon Speaker  was Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Kiyosaki is an engaging and relaxed speaker. A quote of note from his talk: “I am not a best writing author. I am a best selling author.” He emphasized the difference. I think we’ve all long known that good writing does not equate good sales, but his first person take on the difference was a strong reminder that marketing trumps. Kiyosaki said learning public speaking was a key to best-sellerdom. His book has sold by the bucket load for years, so take heed.

Class # 3, Meet the Online Retailers An hour + with Google, Amazon, Booksense, and bn.com. W-O-W. We began with Google, whose aim is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible. All content in all languages, then they’ll rest. Google Book Search is a partner program that can lead to more exposure and discovery by readers. Several publisher testimonials were given. Google can match content to inquiry quite easily….so can Amazon, but more on that down the scroll. Numbers: 13% of books are sold online, but 66% of book buyers research on the web before buying in stores. Google has 700,000,000 users per month and realize 95% of their revenue through ads. For the publisher thinking that Google Book Search is a threat, here’s the deal: sign up for the program and uploading book files are free. Books listed on the GBS site can be linked to publisher’s website or to local bookstore or other. Content access is limited to 20% of the book, no right mouse functions are enabled, and all images are low dpi. GBS never posts an entire book at one time –except works in public domain. Did I say GBS implies no transfer of rights? Google will report to publisher how many visits to a title, how many clicks within the book, and which pages are clicked on. Coming soon: GBS will allow a one-week downloaded rental of any book for a fee or sell the physical book. I can’t report on how much of the rental fee or selling price Google keeps.

bn.com was next to the podium. bn.com checks in with 9.5 million visitors /month, has 10,000 vendors, and only 5% of the books sold each year fall into the category of best seller. bn.com supports online bookclubs moderated by authors. Important for publishers to add content to the book listing. Cover image will increase sales by 60%.

Amazon. Yes, it’s true, just as you suspected. Amazon is the world’s largest online selection of books. Amazon starts with the customer and builds backwards with the four pillars of Amazon: Price, Selection, Availability, Convenience & Discovery.  Publishers were strongly urged to add content such as Youtube snippets, an about the author segment, search inside, reviews, and always make sure info is correct information. As with Google, Amazon’s search inside program allows no right mouse function, and all images are low res. Amazon has a POD partner, Booksurge, and will print & ship books for delivery through the CAP or Content Acquistion Program. Would liked to have heard more about this as well as mobipocket, the Amazon subsidiary that produces ebooks. Note of interest: Amazon has partnered with FedEx for reduced shipping cost for Advantage program publishers.

Class #4 Q&A with Booksense, Ingram, Baker & Taylor and Regional Wholesalers. This session was dominated by Ingram. Speaker from B&T was not present, and there was a pitch-hitter for regional wholesalers. Points covered by Ingram — Ingram does not work with any account that does not net $20,000 in sales over a period of two years. The rule that to be part of the IBG a publisher must have 10 titles holds because Ingram figures that 10 titles should result in $20K in sales. Ingram’s biggest frustration with publishers is that so many come to Ingram without a marketing plan. Set up fee for new publishers is $750. Booksense is a marketing program for independent bookstores. They offer a low-cost advanced access program offering galleys to stores. I understood there is a discount for the advanced access program extended to PMA members. Check it out at the PMA site www.pma-online.org.

Manhattenhenge

While on our visit to New York, we were able to take in the celestial phenomenon known as Manhattenhenge.

Twice each year, the setting sun aligns perfectly with the city’s east-west grid.  Best views are had by walking east to 1st or 2nd Avenue and looking west down the canyon. We were on 42nd Street standing on the Tudor City overpass.

Neill deGrasse Tyson, director of the Haydon Planetarium, coined the term ‘Manhattenhenge’ in Natural History magazine in 1996.  Wonder how future archaologists will opine about the layout of the city? Surely the grid has astronomical significance, as we have assumed for Stonehenge. 

The two occurences are on either side of the summer solstice. We viewed the May 30, 2007; the next event is in July.

Turns out we were not the only ones looking at sun setting over New Jersey.

PMA Tuesday

PMA University 2007 kicked off on Tuesday, May 29 at the Park Central Hotel. 

Learning more about PMA was beneficial. I’ve been a member for years, but did not fully realize the many benefits of membership www.pma-online.org. The board is involved and helpful. Carlene Sippola is chair of affiliate programs (there are 25 of us!). Robin Bartlett gave hints on how to make the most of the PMA-U and BEA. I can’t imagine the hours these folks give to the org.

Dating Your Distributor was worth the efforts of travel. Representatives from IPG, NGN, Biblio, PGW, and more explained how and why to place books with them. PGW seemed as vigorous as ever in spite of the bankruptcy. They did not stop shipping for even one day during the recent financial turmoil.  

Truly Effective PR. Antoinette Kuritz and Joanne McCall. Horror stories of the ill-prepared author appearences in major media. Lesson: Local media are likely to be more interested in your author and local media is great training. Even the most polished speaker will not come across on tv without at least some training.

Budget Basics. Turns out that cash flow will make or break a company. Who Knew???

Dinner!!! A fun time with members of the PMA Board. They are ALL so very nice. PMA treated all scholarship recipients to a lovely time and meal. My companions were from Penn., Montana, New Hampshire, and Santa Fe.