The Amazon ranking for your title gives you an idea of how popular your book is in the past hour. A rank of 1 = the best, hottest selling book. The challenge with tracking your rank is that it changes over the day and doesn’t really tell you overall how you’re doing, just how you’re doing that hour.
Admittedly you can make assumptions about how well your book is doing by looking at different ranges, 1-1000 being damn good.
You may have seen it in the Globe and Mail or heard about it on the tv or radio, this week (June 9-14) was National Blood Donor week.
Canadian Blood Services, the national, not-for-profit charitable organization that manages the blood supply in Canada (except for Quebec), is running a campaign called “Because”. It’s purpose is to encourage people to donate blood, but also valuable platelets and plasma.
I like that the campaign ties the process of giving blood to the process of receiving it. Part of the campaign portrays blood recipients thanking the donors who have improved or even saved their lives.
Thankyourdonor.ca is a place where recipients can share their stories, photographs and videos about how receiving blood or blood products made a difference in their life.
Since blood donation is an anonymous gift, recipients normally have little opportunity to thank the people who may have saved their lives. “It is such a moving experience when recipients visit blood donor clinics to share their stories and thank donors for their generosity,” says Steve Harding, Executive Director of Marketing and Communications at Canadian Blood Services. “With this social media initiative, we are trying replicate that experience on a wider scale so that more donors can witness first-hand the power of their donation.”
Personal stories can have a powerful impact on people’s motivations to donate. It can come across as a cheesy, overt play on emotions, or it can be a true heartfelt story from donors and recipients.
I like this video. It’s informational and personal.
Quillpill is a micro-blogging site, which is currently in private beta. The service lets users write and read content on mobile devices. Yes, it’s another version of Twitter, but Techcrunch had an interesting article about how Quillpill takes a totally different approach by wanting to know what stories you would like to tell. The site is primarily aimed at aspiring authors and readers of fiction.
E-books still unnerving publishers. “Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, spent much of a packed session on Friday evangelizing about the Kindle, which he said already accounts for 6 percent of his company’s unit sales of books that are available in both paper and electronic formats.”
Carolyn K. Reidy, the chief executive of Simon & Schuster, said “electronic book sales last year totaled about $1 million, a sliver of its annual sales of roughly $1 billion.”
And here’s something ironic. Despite the fears of e-books, “Electronic readers have nevertheless gained many fans in the publishing industry. Random House and Penguin, among others, have equipped their entire sales force with electronic-book readers, allowing them to avoid having to lug around as many preview editions of books. Editors at many of the larger publishing houses also use the devices to read manuscripts submitted by agents and authors.”
I was speaking to Nicola Furlong the other day about her new mystery novel which is newly published as a Quillr. A Quillr is a multimedia version of a book that uses actors to portray certain scenes, audio effects, text and images.
This book is a study in what what world would look like without humans. The book is one of James’ favorites. It stimulates a lot of thoughts and questions about the world. The website is a multimedia experience that extends your ability to explore the ideas in the book. There are podcasts, interactive google maps (which are pretty cool--and my favourite part of the site), flash-based book trailer, an interactive slideshow, and audio clips.
Zio calls his work an iNovel. The physical book references the website and you can move back and forth between the two to listen to the music referenced in the book or other elements.
Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman, produced by DNA Media
This is the closest I’ve seen to what Nicola is doing and unfortunately DNA has gone bankrupt and you can no longer access the site. There was a website, DVD and book. The website moved you through the novel in a fascinating way, it was all done in Flash I believe and it was a really integrated story experience. You were able to “choose your own adventure” which was part of reading and understanding the work. I loved the music in it and am very sad that it’s lost.
Now about Nicola ...
Here Ends the Beginning by Nicola Furlong HereEndsTheBeginning.com
Nicola’s latest novel, a supernatural thriller entitled Here Ends the Beginning, is available online in a multi-media storytelling format that she calls a Quillr.
Nicola says:
Much more than a conventional e-book, a Quillr is an innovative and interactive fusion of book, movie and soundtrack. The text of Here Ends the Beginning is punctuated throughout with video clips and photographs of actors recreating the characters and scenes. Music and sound effects further enhance this novel experience ...
Here Ends the Beginning is a dramatic, compelling story about the devastating consequences of manipulating science and desecrating the laws of God and nature.
The first five sensory-enhanced chapters are offered for free online at http://www.hereendsthebeginning.com, with the full 43-chapter entertainment package available for $12.95 Canadian.
What do you think of the site? Feedback for Nicola?
Osocio is a great site dedicated to social advertising and non-profit campaigns. On Friday, they had a cool piece on a London streetart campaign aimed at encouraging Londoners to make more time for reading.
The campaign Osocio is referring to is a Booktrust website called GetLondonReading.co.uk.
The campaign uses streetart and a interactive map to showcase books set in different neighbourhoods in London.
The campaign started at street level on Tuesday 25 March and ran throughout April. The book campaign also featured more than 20 library-based author events.
This Sunday was the 2008 AGM for the Association of Canadian Publishers. I moderated the first professional development session of the day, which was a panel discussion on online marketing.
Rick Wilks, co-founder and director of Annick Press
There were several interesting sites mentioned in the session that I’ll post here for audience members interested in following-up on those discussions. I plan to post some notes about our session too.
Annick Press Livebrary Blog: A great resources for publishers, educators, librarians and anyone interested in what’s happening online in children’s publishing.
Emarketing101.ca: A fantastic source of information on search marketing, pay-per-click campaigns, search engine optimization and anything related to search--the most cost effective online marketing spend.
SeenReading.com: Julie Wilson, also of House of Anansi, keeps a blog that is a perfect example of how to play with books and the web. Simple. Engaging. One of my favourite web sites.
MyNameIsKate.ca: Marketing and Technology Consultant Kate Trgovac’s personal blog, which is a hotbed of links and brilliant posts on marketing and technology.
W8NC is a Canadian marketing and communications company specializing in emerging technology.President is Wayne MacPhail.
OneDegree.ca: The best and most interesting source of marketing news, case studies and interviews related to marketing in Canada.
HorsePigCow.com: A marketing blog for those who see the online world as a place for creativity, community, conversation and collaboration. This girl has it together. Another of my daily blog reads.
Microsoft announced Friday that it is taking down its online library of books. They are no longer going to try competing with Google Book Search.
“Live Search Books and Live Search Academics projects are being cancelled and the websites will be taken down next week, Microsoft senior vice-president of search Satya Nadella said in an online posting.”
According to the Vancouver Sun today (Vito Pilieci), the federal government is secretly negotiating an agreement to revamp international copyright laws, laws that could allow border guards to check private gadgets for material that infringes copyright.
I’d like to know how a border guard is going to determine if I’ve ripped a movie or not. If that’s all my music or not. Did I buy that ebook?
The article also says that the deal could “impose strict regulations on Internet service providers, forcing those companies to hand over customer information without a court order.”
What kind of police state is this? Aren’t their drugs and other things they should be paying attention to?
The agreement is called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and federal trade agreements do not require parliamentary approval.
The deal would create a international regulator that could turn border guards and other public security personnel into copyright police. The security officials would be charged with checking laptops, iPods and even cellular phones for content that “infringes” on copyright laws, such as ripped CDs and movies.
The guards would also be responsible for determining what is infringing content and what is not.
The agreement proposes any content that may have been copied from a DVD or digital video recorder would be open for scrutiny by officials—even if the content was copied legally.
Apparently anyone with infringing content in their possession, or content that could be acquired illegally, regardless of whether it was acquired legally, will be questioned and open to a fine.
The leaked document also says that “they may also have their device confiscated or destroyed, according to the four-page document.”
I like books and am always on the lookout for new books.
I subscribe to a bunch of email newsletters, in particular business newsletters and technology newsletters.
GrokDotCom is one of the newsletters and last week they wrote about the Johnny Bunko video.
I clicked on the link and watched the video, which is pretty cool.
Here’s what hooked me. I read and loved What Colour Is My Parachute? I religiously avoided Who Moved My Cheese? because it was the career book of business books for a time. The video nicely positions Johnny Bunko as THE career book of its time--the book for the new generation of employees entering the workforce.
Now I’m curious and want to read the book.
So mission accomplished. Effective video.
(Plus, I’m interested enough to write about the book and video here.)
What do you think of the video? Do you have another example of marketing unpacked?
Kyle Bean is a very clever designer who has created a paper laptop to demonstrate how technology has changed the way we source information relate to books.
We are becoming a society that is more virtual. We download music rather than purchase CDs, we research on the net, rather than going to the library and reading books. According to Kyle, “Books also have personality - they have textures and smells which the internet can’t offer”. Kyle wanted to illustrate this issue by using a book turned into a laptop. The object is made from a book purchased at a discount bookstore for only £1.50, as well as a few electrical components to illuminate the screen.
Flat World Knowledge is a resource site for finding free, open, online college textbooks. There is a little promo video that explains what the site is about.
Juicespot.ca is a place for book readers to go when they are looking for the next good read. You can Dig or Dis a book, create your own page, see what others are reading, review books, answer polls and win stuff.
Via TrendHunter.com:
