Where's Tony?

I am in the middle of finishing a difficult book manuscript.



Not much time or energy for anything else.

12 blogging tools from Erica Reitman

Erica Reitman is the founder and owner of the blog Fucked in Park Slope. She started her blog from scratch, posting irreverent comments about her Brooklyn neighborhood. Fucked In Park Slope now gets 500,000 page views a day and employs 14 writers and a full time managing editor.

This list is taken from notes I made during a talk Reitman gave to a social media marketing boot camp I attended last year.

Reitman says the first thing to understand about blogging is that it is a huge time-sink. One of the keys to coping with the work load is having the right tools. She recommended these:

1) Skitch
A screengrab and lightweight picture editing program. Use it to do quick edits (crop, add callouts, etc) to make photos fun and interesting. Mac only. For the PC she suggested Jing.

2) Evernote
Evernote is a powerful online notebook for everything you find online. You can tag stuff as you capture it. She uses it to keep story ideas, information for the blog, and links to useful tools. With a $5 Premium account you can share notebooks with others. (Highly recommended.)

3) Pinterest
A visual notebook. Pinterest is a cross between photo album and notebook. It is a great space to save ideas. It is also a social network. She uses it to save images for blog posts, and as an image search tool. When she needs a quick idea for a post on her blog, she browses the images for inspiration. Pinterest is a good place to
search for images because the photos are curated. It is also a good way to discover neat blogs and people.

4) Morgue file
A source of royalty and credit free photos you can use on your blog.Moguefile is a public image archive "by creatives, for creatives." Reitman says she is a "super fascist" about having a picture with EVERY SINGLE POST. So... I went to morguefile, searched for "Brooklyn diner" and found this attractive image.



(Morguefile also has a "paid" side to their website where for a small fee you can buy rights to even more images. And if you are going to publish the photo for money, check the rights.)

5) Flickr pool
Once you build a following on your blog, you can ask your readers take photos and post them in a Flikr pool. You can start a group (pool) around any topic you want. Fliker pool can also be a good source of royalty free images.

6) Disqus (prounounced discuss)
A social media commenting system. People can add photos, text, etc. Discus helps you build a community on your blog site. Strangers who are passing by cannot see the comments.

7) An editorial calendar
Reitman said "You must have an editorial calendar!" On the calendar write a schedule of what you plan to post, and when. The calendar gets more important the bigger you get.

8) SMO Books
Nifty little pocket-size log books with a few concise how-to pages in each book. They help keep you on track for making regular and effective blog posts. (SMO books were suggested by one of the class members.)

9) Kapost
Kapost is a way to manage content when you have more than one writer on your blog. When you have several people working on columns and stories, managing everything quickly becomes a second job.

10) isocket
An easy way to sell ads on your site. Allows you to manage your own ad sales. With isocket you can set up a self-service area on your blog for people to set up their own ads and check stats, etc. The system is super easy from a publisher standpoint. Good way to get exposed to people who want to buy ad space on your site.

11) Outbrain
Outbrain is a tool that ensures none of your site's content is dead. All posts link back to other related posts on blog. Site visitors have access to content even after it has cycled off page. (Outbrain has tools to increase revenue, but I have not used them. -tl)

12) Zinio
Keeping up with your reading is important, and Zinio can help. Zinio is a mobile reading app so you can read all your magazines online. Transfer all your existing subscriptions to Zinio and you have your magazines with you at all times. Works with iPad, iPhone, Android, Mac & PC.

Seth Godin's lessons from the Domino project

Today, Seth Godin wrote about what he learned from The Domino Project in a blog post titled The last hardcover. In the post, Godin also announced that he is closing down the Domino Project after publishing a string of 11 best selling books.

I've copied his entire post here. It is a brilliant analysis of book publishing and writing in the digital age.

Tony

*******************************************************

"Today the Domino Project is publishing Sarah Kay's new book. It's a short poem, a great gift and a book I'm proud to publish by an author on her way to big things. I hope you'll take a look.

"Almost exactly a year after we started, Sarah's book is the last print book we'll be launching. Twelve books, twelve bestsellers, published in many languages around the world.

"I've posted a history of what we built, along with some of what we learned along the way.

"By most of the measures I set out at the beginning, the project has been a success. So why stop? Mostly because it was a project, not a lifelong commitment to being a publisher of books. Projects are fun to start, but part of the deal is that they don't last forever.

"The goal was to explore what could be done in a fast-changing environment. Rather than whining about the loss of the status quo, I thought it would be interesting to help invent a new status quo and learn some things along the way. Here are a few of my takeaways:

"Permission is still the most important and valuable asset of the web (and of publishing). The core group of 50,000 subscribers to the Domino blog made all the difference in getting the word out and turning each of our books into a bestseller. It still amazes me how few online merchants and traditional publishers (and even authors) have done the hard work necessary to create this asset. If you're an author in search of success and you don't pursue this with singleminded passion, you're making a serious error. (See #2 on my advice for authors post from five years ago, or the last part of my other advice for authors post from six years ago.)

"The ebook is a change agent like none the book business has ever seen. It cuts the publishing time cycle by 90%, lowers costs, lowers revenue and creates both a long tail and an impulse-buying opportunity. This is the most disruptive thing to happen to books in four hundred years. It's hard for me to see significant ways traditional book publishers can add the value they're used to adding when it comes to marketing ebooks, unless they get busy with #1.

"Booksellers have a starfish problem. Without permission (see #1) it's almost impossible for a publisher to be heard above the noise, largely because long tail merchants haven't built the promotional tools traditional retailers have long used to highlight one title over another. You used to be able to buy useful and efficient shelf space at a retailer. Hard to do that now.

"There is still (and probably will be for a while) a market for collectible editions, signed books and other special souvenirs that bring the emotional component of a book to the fore. While most books merely deliver an idea or a pasttime, for some books and some readers, there's more than just words on paper. Just as vinyl records persist, so will books. Not because a reader can't get the information faster or cheaper, but because there's something special about molecules and scarcity.

"When you combine #1, #3 and #4, you get to Kickstarter, which it seems to me, is going to be ever more important, particularly to new authors, authors that don't write genre ebooks and anyone with a tribe who wants to produce something like a book.

"Sponsored ebooks are economically irresistible to readers, to sponsors and to authors. I'm proud to have pioneered this, and I think it's a trend worth pursuing. The value transfer to the reader is fabulous (hey, a great book, for free), and the sponsor gets to share in some of that appreciation. The author gets a guaranteed payday as well as the privilege of reaching ten or a hundred times as many readers.

"The ebook marketing platform is in its technical infancy. There are so many components that need to be built, that will. Ebooks are way too hard to give as gifts and to share. Too hard to integrate into social media. And the ebook reader is a lousy platform for discovery and promotion of new titles (what a missed chance). All that will happen, the road map is there, but it's going to take commitment from Apple, B&N and Amazon.

"If you're an author, pick yourself. Don't wait for a publisher to pick you. And if you work for a big publishing house, think really hard about the economics of starting your own permission-based ebook publisher. Now's the time.

"Most of all, the character of people in the world of books hasn't changed since I started in this business 27 years ago. Every author I dealt with was a delight. Smart, passionate, honest, humble (and yes, good looking). Readers sense this, I think, and treat books and the people who make them very differently than someone hawking a vitamin or a penny stock. Publishing is about passion and writing is a lifestyle, not a shortcut to a mansion and a Porsche. Bestselling authors are like golfers who hit holes in one. It's a nice thing, but there are plenty of people who will keep playing even without one."

Cat Monday

Capturing video using PowerDirector 10 on an older computer

I am using PowerDirector 10 to capture DV from an older camera on an older computer. The challenge is to capture video on a slow computer without having dropped frames.

First I shut down everything except PowerDirector 10... including the antivirus, cloud backup, clock and weather gadgets, and wireless internet connection.

Next I selected PowerDirector 10's "non-real time capture"option. (I selected this after Real time capture failed, with hundreds of dropped frames.)

I was able to capture two hours of DV with no dropped frames.

Do you need film making skills to get a job?

Today Seth Godin explained "How to Get a Job With a Small Company."

His blog post is brilliant and workable (as usual). One of his recommendations is to 'learn how to produce extraordinary video and multimedia.'

For the past couple years I've been writing books and articles that teach people how to produce extraordinary video. My publisher, MWP is a good place to find books that teach all the skills you need. I am probably prejudiced, but think my own book Digital Video Secrets is a good way to get started. It may be the only book you need.

I've excerpted Godin's post, below, with notes in (parentheses) showing how each step applies to film making...

"1. Learn to sell. Everyone has sold something, some time, even if it’s just selling your mom on the need for a nap when you were three years old. A lot of people have decided that they don’t want to sell, can’t sell, won’t sell, but those same people need to understand that they’re probably not going to get a job doing anything but selling.
(To learn how to sell, look for books on pitching, marketing, acting and auditioning.)

"Small businesses always need people who can sell, because selling
pays for itself. It’s not an expense, it’s a profit center.

"2. Learn to write. Writing is a form of selling, one step removed.
There’s more writing in business today than ever before, and if you can become a persuasive copywriter, you’re practically a salesperson, and even better, your work scales.
(To learn how to write, look for books on script writing, story building and mythology for writers.)

"3. Learn to produce extraordinary video and multimedia. This is just like writing, but for people who don’t like to read. Even better, be sure to mix this skill with significant tech skills. Yes, you can learn to code. The fact that you don't feel like it is one reason it's a scarce skill."
(To learn how to produce video and multimedia look for books on documentary film making, editing, auditioning, casting, budgeting, cinematography, guerrilla distribution, directing and acting. For technical books on things like coding, you can't do better than the books, videos and conferences from O'Reilly Media.)

A book is like an iceberg

"A book is like an iceberg. 10% writing and 90% marketing." Jack Canfield, author of Chicken Soup For the Soul.

144 publishers turned down Chicken Soup For The Soul before it was eventually published. So far, the book has sold more than 10,000,000 copies.