Dear Reader - Sharing Good Books Five Minutes at a Time
How can you convince people to read more books when they tell you there’s simply no time? Suzanne Beecher came up with a novel idea - e-mail them five-minute book excerpts for one week and see what happens next.
Beecher’s audience, initially women who worked part-time at her family’s software company, got hooked on reading. “They went from saying they didn’t have time to shave their legs, never mind read a book, to having a book on their list,” she says, and DearReader.com was born.
The daily dose of book bytes spread by word of mouth and Beecher’s shrewd marketing. Beecher lives in Sarasota, FL and she pitched her idea of e-mailing daily book blurbs to the Sarasota Public Library, which became her first client. Beecher then traveled around the U.S. to introduce her concept to other libraries. At first, it was a hard sell; it was 2000 and the Internet was still new. “Using e-mail to attract patrons to the library was an untested concept.” Beecher notes.
Now DearReader.com has 3,000 libraries nationwide that use the chapter-a-day format to promote reading to their members. DearReader.com provides a resource center libraries can use, from technical support and Web sites to newsletters and book selections, all branded with the library’s name. The library’s daily e-mail includes Beecher’s column as well as book samples for the day.
In addition, DearReader.com currently has an e-mail list of more than 290,000 members worldwide. Each book is featured for one week, approximately two to three chapter’s worth, and subscribers can choose from 12 genres: fiction, non-fiction, mystery, romance, audio, science fiction, teen, business, pre-publication, good news (no bad language) and horror.
Finding new readers is critical since the publishing industry has faced declining revenues due to low readership. “It goes back to the old-fashioned idea that people say when they have a block of time they will read a book, but they never find the time,” observes Beecher. “DearReader.com shows people it’s fun and easy to read, and we make it convenient to them.”
DearReader.com has expanded its services from libraries to offer the format to businesses, county governments, public schools and Web sites that offer DearReader.com clubs to their members, and Beecher also works with more than 80 publishers. “What I look for is ways to partner, smart ways to market DearReader.com,” Beecher says.
The variety of genres, expanded over time due to reader requests, ensures that DearReader.com subscribers will be exposed to an eclectic mix of books, which is Beecher’s goal. “What I’m hoping for is that someone joining the book club will try different genres,” she says. “I get e-mails from readers saying they never would have picked up this particular book at a store or at the library, but now they’ve been turned on to the book.”
Making it easier for readers to connect with books is important, she says. “If they walk into a bookstore with a list of books they’ve sampled it’s an easier decision for them to buy the book, especially if they have to spend $20 per book.”
Prospective books excerpted on DearReader.com share one attribute regardless of genre: They have to fit into the five-minute-a-day format. A complex book that requires a reader to flip back and forth to keep up with the narrative won’t work on DearReader.com. “People have to want to continue reading the book so they will go to the library or the bookstore to get a copy of the book, so a book can’t start slowly,” she says. “By the end of the week they know if the book is a good match for them,” Beecher adds.
Print on Demand books also do not work with DearReader.com’s format. The decision has nothing to do with quality, Beecher says. There are plenty of good POD books being published, but the companies that support DearReader.com have to be able to buy the book at a bookstore or check it out from the library.
Books are chosen for DearReader.com through submissions from publishing houses, orders from publishing catalogs, author submissions or suggestions by the DearReader.com staff. A staff of 13, mostly full-time, many of them mothers, comprise DearReader.com. Beecher says she will feature a book that doesn’t appeal to her if someone on her staff reads and recommends the book.
DearReader.com staff looks at all the books they receive – up to 50 a day -–although they are not able to feature every title or contact every person who submits a title. However, books that are not excerpted in e-mails may be used in other ways; for instance, DearReader.com regularly runs several contests and may give away books as prizes, Beecher says.
Authors should submit their book several months in advance. DearReader.com’s libraries receive eight week’s advance notice of its selections. Interested authors can e-mail DearReader.com and they will receive a form with submission guidelines. Authors who submit their own books should also include a letter to distinguish their book from a publishing house’s submission and provide their publisher’s contact information. “The easier you make it the better chance you have,” Beecher explains. In addition, Beecher recommends that authors target their book pitch to DearReader.com’s members – busy people who say they don’t have a lot of time to read, so they need to be enticed by daily book teasers.
DearReader.com is the best of both words, says Beecher. “It’s a job, but it’s a job that gets people to read books,” she says. “We want to make money, but we’re looking at ways to get people back into the habit of reading. All ideas funnel back to that. Hopefully, one day we’ll open our e-mail and everybody will have a book club.”
Although Beecher’s job involves reading she says it’s difficult to say how many books she’s read since starting DearReader.com in 2000. When Beecher read all of the books herself, she would read the first 40 pages or so – enough for a week’s worth of excerpts and to know if the book would work. She didn’t finish reading those books due to lack of time. But one book she recently read (and enjoyed) is Marshall Cook’s Murder at Midnight, which the author submitted.
Current goals include continuing to expand DearReader.com and finishing writing a book based on her daily column, which is another way she connects with the members of DearReader.com. The column is about her life – the ups, downs and topics Beecher thinks about daily. “When people read about the things I write it causes them to think about how this happens to them in their life, making it fun and easy for them to reflect on their own lives,” she says.
Beecher recommends that DearReader.com be contacted via e-mail, but correspondents also should include their phone number to make it easier for the staff. DearReader.com receives 300 to 600 e-mails daily, and they answer as many as they can.
Contact Suzanne Beecher at DearReader.com by calling 941-373-0700 or e-mail
Suzanne@DearReader.com. The Web site is
www.dearreader.com.
Article contributed by Paula Krapf, an Associate at Author Marketing Experts, Inc. and a super savvy marketing specialist. You can reach Paula directly at:
paula@amarketingexpert.com
Getting Into Newspapers
Yahoo has just about every imaginable newspaper and you can peruse them all here:
http://dir.yahoo.com/news_and_media/newspapers/
Learning Annex Does Book Reviews!
We recently learned that the Learning Annex in New York has launched a book review program. We're getting more details on this and will feature it in an upcoming Blog. FMI log onto their Web site at
http://www.learningannex.com
Face Time!
Are you itching to get face-time with some of your local media? How about joining one of your local press clubs? Virtually every city has them. Try searching your local club on Google by typing in "press club and your city." Then see when their next meeting is, bring a bunch of business cards and get ready to make some great contacts!
The Blog Factor
So what is this "blog factor"? Well, what a few thought was a novel idea some years ago has now morphed into something no one expected. There are currently nine million blogs out there with 40,000 new ones being added everyday. Some are informative and some are just downright a waste of your time. And while we hear a lot about blogging these days, what is blogging *really*? Blogging in its simplest term is like an online journal but much, much more powerful. Blogs (short for Web log) is a place where surfers can get up to the minute information on a topic or voyeur into someone's life. Some blogs are nothing more than a daily glimpse into someone's life, while others are so sophisticated, it's hard to tell them apart from an online news service.
Why Blogs Matter
Google, the #1 search engine on the net, loves blogs. So much so that if you do it right Google will spider the heck out of your site. What does it mean to "spider"? Well spidering is when Google, or the like, searches your sites content to establish ranking, the more content you have (i.e. fresh content) the more Google will do its magic and push your site up the search engine. Another reason blogs matter is that they are interactive and, if you blog on your books topic, it will help to further your expert status on a particular issue. When we plan "Virtual Tours" for our authors, we include as many blogs as we can into a tour. Why? Because if you can get into a good blog that's seeing a lot of traffic, you can really start to gain some exposure for your book.
What Would You Talk About?
This is the question we get asked most often. "If I start a blog, what on earth would I talk about?" Well if your book is non-fiction it's pretty easy to figure out what your topic would be, but if your book is fiction it could get a bit tricky - but not impossible. An author I work with has a series of books starring one character - a private detective. I recommended that he "blog" this character, meaning that the character (not the author) would have the blog. It could be the character's diary or adventures and stories - a glimpse into the life of a private detective. This would give the reader (and fans of this character) a reason to return to the blog for an update on this ongoing adventure or story. In another instance, I work with an author who wrote a fiction book about right and wrong with a new age/spirituality spin. I advised him to blog on issues related to that - right and wrong in our society and his own personal "spin" on these issues. Some of his blogs might be controversial but that's okay, you want to create your own "voice," your own take on a certain issue and if that opinion is controversial, all the better for exposure and for getting people to interact on your blog. Getting readers to respond to your posts is a great way to gain interest and momentum for your blog and (more importantly) getting people to talk about it will grow your blog like nothing else!
How to Start a Blog
Starting a blog is super easy. All you have to do is register at a blog site (like www.blogger.com) and get started. It's that easy. The blog service will link to your site; you'll need to ask your Webmaster to add a button to your home page so people can find your blog.
How to Blog Effectively
The best bloggers know that the more you add to your blog, the more traffic you'll drive there. Some bloggers I know post daily, sometimes even multiple times a day while others post weekly. How much you post will probably depend on how much time you have to dedicate to this, the challenge will be that if you want to keep driving people to your blog, you'll want fresh content. This doesn't mean you have to create this all yourself, in fact you can invite people onto your blog and interview them, or you can just post a one paragraph "thought" on your topic. It doesn't have to be complicated or long, it just has to be fresh. Also be innovative, as we discussed earlier, be different with your blog, have fun with it. It might seem complicated at first but once you get the hang of it, you'll quickly become a blog expert!
What's a Platform?
You've probably heard it a million times: "you must have a platform." But what exactly is a platform? Well, many times it's the difference between making a book sale and sending a potential customer to buy someone else's book instead. If you envision a platform as something you stand on, then the components that elevate you can be any one (or all of) the following:
Your business
Your expertise in a field.
Your speaking career
Any products you've developed related to your topic/book
Any articles you've published on your particular topic
Whether fiction or non-fiction, having a platform can be crucial to furthering your career as a writer and if your ultimate goal is to ink a deal with a corporate publisher, then a platform isn't just crucial, it's mandatory. If you haven't spent a lot of time creating your platform then maybe you should.
Alternative Book Clubs
Both online and off, book clubs are big business and a great way to spread the word about your book. One such club, DearReader.com (
www.dearreader.com), began with an interesting concept. They feature a new selection Monday through Friday with book club members receiving a 5-minute book sample delivered directly to their e-mail. The reads are consecutive, giving the reader a chance to get "hooked" on the book they are previewing. They offer 11 different clubs in total: fiction, non-fiction, romance, audio, teen, business, mystery, good news (features Christian titles), horror, sci-fi, and pre-publications (books featured a few weeks before their release date). As of this writing, DearReader.com boasts over 220,000 members and this list is growing every day.
To submit a book to them for consideration send your advanced copy or final book to:
DearReader.com
1002 S. Orange Ave.
Sarasota, FL 34236
Be sure to put your contact information in the book. This is important so that the staff at DearReader.com can notify you that your book has been selected. They do not accept poetry books, or books comprised of short stories. Also, keep in mind that they preview only 8,500 words so, about the first 23 pages of your book. If that number of pages is more than 10 percent of your total book, then the selection probably isn’t right for the club.
Fatal PR - Mistakes Authors Make on Their Campaigns
Any author who is driving their own PR campaign knows that often times marketing and media can be an uphill battle. Many times authors are pitching and promoting themselves with minimal results. It can be tedious and frustrating and sometimes lead them to make fatal PR mistakes that can cost them their campaign.
One of the first, and potentially most fatal, is thinking that one or two media appearances are going to wing your book into the bestseller spotlight. Media works when it’s done consistently and often it takes months, and in some cases years, for you to reach your own "PR payoff." The most important part of a campaign is the author’s ability to stick with it. Most of the interviews you see nationally on shows like Good Morning America and Oprah, started with a regional buzz. Build your base (or buzz) in your own back yard first and then start getting your message out on a national level. And this leads us to our second PR mistake: ignoring regional or trade media. Sometimes when you’re promoting yourself it’s easy to get caught up in going after the big fish, but don’t ignore the smaller regional and niche publications, they can be a gold mine of PR and really help to get the buzz going.
Next on our list of fatal PR mistakes is the technique with which authors pitch themselves. First and foremost you want to make sure you’re pitching the right people, don’t just go after a "producer," find the producer that’s right for the story. And be cautious of when you pitch, before you start calling the media, turn on your TV or radio and see if there’s a breaking news story. There’s no quicker way to offend your media target then pitching them a story when they’re scrambling to cover a plane crash or some other major disaster.
As you’re navigating through your PR campaign you’ll also want to make sure your pitches are focused and relevant. It’s much easier to get the attention of the media when you’re pitching them something that’s already on their radar screen. For example remember when you’re putting together your campaign to keep an eye out for seasonal or news spins to your topic. If, let’s say, you are discussing the topic of depression, you might want to pitch it around a nationally designated "depression awareness day" or, perhaps, given all the buzz around college kids and depression, you might want to tackle this as a back-to-school issue. Targeted, focused pitches are the best way to get the media to notice you, so open that calendar or read your local newspaper to find out what’s hot and top of mind. Also, respect their time when you’re pitching. Get to the point, don’t ramble and remember that this is not about you, it’s about the benefits to their readers, viewers, or listeners and mo! st of all, never, ever, ever sell your book. You should always sell yourself and your expertise. Producers and editors will be looking for the WIIFM factor behind your pitch (what’s in it for me) not how they can showcase your book.
Finally there’s no quicker way to end your campaign than to over promise, stretching the truth, or not being reliable. If you miss an interview or over promise on a commitment one time, you can kiss any further media goodbye. Word travels fast in the industry and bad news travels even faster. Remember be patient, be persistent, and be professional and you’re bound to get the media you deserve and keep your campaign alive and well!
Romancing the Novel
Is romance in the air? Presumably not since sales of romance novels declined by 13 percent last year. Still the numbers for the market are staggering. If you're a romance novelist or thinking of getting into that market, here are some numbers you should know: $1.4 billion was spent on romance novels in 2003 There were 2,093 new romance titles published in 2003 34% of popular fiction sales were romance novels 46% of romance buyers are women ages 25-44
