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Hot today – not tomorrow.

August 20th, 2010 by Neil No comments »

Read this post today about how hard it is to keep up with the constant changes in Internet and Social Media Marketing. Duh. The speed of change is astounding. While Facebook and Twitter are the darlings today – what will be hot tomorrow? Probably an app being tweaked at this moment on somebody’s development site or incubating in a college dorm. Keeping track of these things can drive you nuts. They first hit the buzz horizon, then they get put into the real world to see if they work, and then the final hurdle is – is there traction? Do people use the app because it adds value to their lives? Or does it just wilt and die.

I don’t know how this current phase of development and growth in marketing tools and strategies will shake out. We have existed for so long using tools attached to legacy media – and now legacy media is exactly that. If I take my crystal ball out I would say that we have a nice chunk of communication and technological advancements still coming our way. With the growth that is predicted in mobile some of today’s leading marketing tools will evolve but I would expect that we will still see a slew of new players.

Better be flexible and be willing to learn new tricks!

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Posted in Marketing, Technology

EverPub builds the new Blood Moon Productions website

August 10th, 2010 by Neil 1 comment »

We recently completed the website redesign for Danforth Prince and his company, Blood Moon Production. Their old site looked like this:

: Blood Moon Productions – Original Home page

For this project we not only added the EverPub online book catalog to their “Books” tab, we also brought their social media updates to their home page, brought a newsletter sign-up front and center (and with it the start of a new direct marketing initiative), and added a Vimeo page to host a 75 minute long video about BEA. We created the site using a content management system that permits them to make easy changes on the fly to their home page content.

Here’s their new website and the link if you want to go directly there:

: Blood Moon Productons – NEW Home page

In addition to the robust EverPub online book catalog and their incredibly active home page we supplied Blood Moon Productions with a suite of powerful administrative tools to help them manager their business.

Complete access to all book and author pages

From the Administrative Dashboard Danforth can add books and change any of his site content, including the all-important keywords, downloads, and reviews, instantaneously. Once he enters the changes and refreshes, everything is ‘live’. No longer does he need to bring in developers and consultants to add new books. He can add a book and all of it’s metadata in minutes.

Control the Social Media posts

From the Administrative Dashboard he can also designate which books appear in the highlighted titles section, which author’s status updates post to the book home page or website home page, and which books appear in the cover scroll bar.

Control author access

Another powerful EverPub feature is author access to the book and author webpages. Through the Administrative Dashboard publishers like Danforth can grant authors access to their pages. The site Administrator can permit access to all fields on the book pages or as few as they would like. Authors can now make the immediate changes to their book pages without waiting for the IT staff or webmaster to get around to it.

Final word

The bottom line is that we helped Danforth and Blood Moon change more than their website. We gave them a active, integrated, robust marketing platform that helps them focus their efforts to sell more books. Now when they use all of their social marketing tools they are directing their readers to a powerful new landing spot. We helped them flip their website from passive to active. Through their newsletter Blood Moon will build a committed following of readers for their entire program, not just a single book. Instead of just publishing books they are now building their community.

neil

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Posted in Marketing, Social Media

Tags: book marketing EverPub|Publisher publisher website

Why can’t every publisher be a little more like Amazon?

June 25th, 2010 by Neil 1 comment »

One of the best things about Amazon is their success in making personalized recommendations to their users. If you have ever purchased a book from them you have also received additional emails pitching a similar title. They also go one degree further by letting you know the books bought by other purchasers of your original book. I don’t know about you but I have definitely bought books as a result of those recommendations.

Here’s the thing. That process is not brain surgery. You already have ½ of that information from your existing buyers. The other significant group of names you can add to your file belong to those people who sign-up for more information on your website. If you don’t do that now you need to immediately put that on the top of your list of enhancements. Better yet, have a sign-up on ever page of your website and a way to retain the information about what book, or books, a visitor was viewing.

These names are the most valuable asset that you can build from your website. Once you have them you can begin to implement a direct marketing strategy. It may sound complicated but its not. There are many email contact websites to choose from and you will be amazed at the tools available to build your on-going program. After evaluating all of the available email vendors we decided on MailChimp at EverPub. You can have a free (!!) account there with 500 names and up to 3,000 emails a month.

We recently added segmented sign-ups to the EverPub|Publisher package. Every book page in a publisher’s EverPub online catalog now includes its own sign-up page and the title for each page is retained along with the visitor’s name. In addition, we have seamlessly integrated it to your MailChimp account to support your direct marketing strategy.

Build your list – build your customers.

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Posted in Marketing, Social Media

EverPub at the IBPA University in NYC

May 22nd, 2010 by Neil No comments »

If you are in NY for the BEA, you should try to attend the IBPA University. It’s an amazing 2 day program. This year they are offering 3 different session tracks: Getting Started, Making a Living, and Expanding your Business.

I will be there speaking in Session 702 on Tuesday at 2:00PM.

Tips and Tools for Building Your Online Visibility Without Breaking the Bank

Learn how to reach consumers and convert readers into buyers in this session that reveals the ins and outs of creating 21st century author and book websites that sell while building a community of readers. Leave this session with practical ways to expand your online marketing reach right now without spending a fortune.

Speakers: Davida Breier, Johns Hopkins University Press; Peter Clifton, FiledBy; Neil Levin, EverPub LLC

Davida Brier Peter Clifton Neil Levin

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Posted in Marketing, Publishing industry

Take 5 minutes to control your Facebook data leaks

May 18th, 2010 by Neil No comments »

As the coverage over the Facebook privacy issues began swirling a few months ago I checked my settings like every one else. I meandered through their confusing structure and read and checked and clicked. All was fine with the world. I trust my ability to deal with these things. (Ha!)

This morning I picked up a post from Mediapost with a headline about a free tool [http://www.reclaimprivacy.org/] to check your Facebook privacy settings. OK - Free – Let’s roll. Easy links to follow with a quick easy set-up and boom. I see how I have left my personal information flying out there in the breeze available for everyone to see – and more importantly – to share without my permission.

This could be a long post about us already having lost the privacy battle – but it won’t be.

Do what you can, when you can, to keep the secondary spillage of your personal information to a minimum.

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Posted in Technology

EverPub | Publisher is here!

April 14th, 2010 by Neil 1 comment »

I am thrilled to be able to finally show off the 2nd app from EverPub — EverPub|Publisher. This package is the result of the natural evolution of what we now refer to as EverPub|Author. The new EverPub|Publisher uses the original EverPub pages tied together under a publisher’s administrative control. The entire package can be attached to a publisher’s existing website and becomes a powerful search engine optimized online catalog for their program. The publisher can easily maintain all of the data in the system through the administrative dashboard. In addition the system is designed to permit authors – depending on the level of access permitted to by the publisher – access their own author and book information. The system is also constructed to handle multiple imprints or categories with different design skins for sub-home pages and book pages that work with the publisher’s current appearance.

Many publishers have been slow to bring their websites up to date with social media, SEO, e-commerce, video, and on-the-fly flexibility. A publisher’s website is what everybody sees if they want to learn about your books and your publishing program and let’s be honest here, we all know that far too many of them are &*^%$!<.

EverPub|Publisher is your powerful, elegant, scalable, and affordable solution.

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Posted in Marketing, Publishing industry

EverPub at the Tools of Change conference in NY

March 3rd, 2010 by Neil 2 comments »

Last week I spoke about building stronger book pages for your website a the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference in New York.

Making effective book landing pages

View more presentations from Neil Levin.

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Posted in EverPub Training, Marketing

Authors, Share the Value of Your Book

February 26th, 2010 by Neil No comments »

Before marketers can identify their customers for new products they must first fully understand the value of what they have created. In book marketing, nobody understands the value of a book more thoroughly than its author.

I’m heartened by the recent success of Rebecca Skloot’s debut title, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. In 2001, when the book’s original publisher was acquired by Henry Holt, Skloot’s manuscript ended up at Times Books, an imprint of Holt. Skloot found that her new publisher wanted to dramatically change the elements of the story; which she refused, outright. Skloot spent a year escaping the contract, and in 2003, signed with Crown, who published The Immortal Life in the form she had intended. The Immortal Life sold out the first day it went to sale.

Crown’s traditional marketing alone, backed by a masterfully written, hot-topic book, would have brought both author and publisher a tidy return on their invested time and effort. But it was through Skloot’s own self-publicity efforts—notably through her blog, and her Facebook and Twitter accounts—working in harmony with the traditional marketing campaign of Crown, that drove The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks to No. 4 on Amazon’s best-seller list two weeks ago.

When a capable author knows she has created a book that can succeed—a book that, by merit alone, has all of the makings of a bestseller—she need only the right platform for building meaningful connections, and the willing proponent necessary to mount that platform and make those connections. And what better proponent to convey the value of a book than the author herself?

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Posted in Marketing, Social Media

Tags: Marketing Rebecca Skloot ROI self-publicity Social Media The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks