AuthorHouse Blog

In my previous life (dot com days), I used to fly all over the world and talk on the topic of convergence. My thesis was simple: eventually all data, video, phone calls, audio, video would be delivered via an Internet protocol (IP) based platform. I always talked about this convergence from the device-side of things; television, handheld devices, set top boxes. Now that the dot com bubble has poppped and broadband adoption is now over 65% in the United States, convergence is happening right before our eyes in the media industry.

With this in mind, I’d like to propose that the ‘big bang’ of convergence has been YouTube.com. Yes, this free online video hosting service purchased by Google last year is democratizing the last of the media frontiers: television.

Think of what desktop publishing did to the book industry. I was working at a typesetting company back in the late 1980’s when they bought their first Apple computer. Within three years, Weimer Typesetting was purchased by a local printer in Indianapolis for about $3.1 million and a few years later, the name was basically worthless. Desktop publishing lowered the barrier for average Joes to design, layout, and publish their own print publications. Fifteen years later, print on demand took this industry to the next level of democratization by allowing people to print one copy of their books at a time. Publishers were no longer the gatekeepers to the books that people bought. Bookstores were no longer the destination for book sales, Amazon.com took buyers online with a broader selection of books.

Second, look at what the Internet did to the radio industry. Remember back in 1995 when Real Networks introduced the Real Audio Player and Broadcast.com (later acquired by Yahoo!) took most radio stations online? People were now able to listen to their favorite broadcast radio shows from all over the world on their PCs. Fast forward to today, now that 67% of America is dialed in with broadband and Apple has sold over 100 million iPods, people are coming out of the woodwork producing podcasts (or Internet radio shows). People like the ability to listen to what they want, when they want. The radio industry has been democratized as well.

Lastly, look at the television industry. Traditionally, it takes a lot of money and an FCC license to produce and ‘publish’ a television show. Local broadcast stations and cable networks have been giving up ground to satellite television for years. Again, people like more channels, more choice, and thanks to Tivo and new set top boxes watch it when they want. But up until YouTube.com, average Joe had no way to easily and effectively distribute video. Today, YouTube.com allows anyone to create video content, push it online, and host it for the world to search and see. This my friends is the last frontier that needed to be conquered before true convergence happens. Network television no longer is the gatekeeper of video content, and televisions are no longer the ‘last 10 feet’ of convergence: iPods, cell phones, and hand held devices are the ‘last 3 feet’ of convergence.

So what does this all mean? It means that people like me can provide a multi-media, multi-platform source of news and entertainment with nothing more than a laptop, video camera, and Internet connectivity. And guess what? That’s exactly what I’m doing.

With atGeist.com, we’re providing:

• A monthly print publication that is mailed to 13,000 Geist Reservoir residents
• A twice weekly podcast radio show at GeistRadio.com
• Video segments for many of our feature articles

We can provide the full spectrum of media in a local market, thanks in large part to YouTube.com. Video was the last frontier to be conquered, now it is up to the devices and transparent software to streamline the delivery and consumption of all medias. The lock that newspapers, book publishers, radio stations, and television stations have had on media delivery has been obliterated by the Internet.

I got this email from Google Book Search about a significant upgrade to their program: reference links to your book.

I’m writing to let you know about some recent upgrades to Google Book Search. These features are designed to make Google Book Search much more comprehensive and useful for users and increase the value of the program as a book discovery tool.

On the “About this Book” page, we’ve added “References to this Book” and links to reviews on the web. If we find that your book is referenced by another book or scholarly work that we’ve scanned in Google Book Search or indexed in Google Scholar, we’ll link to the referring title. In addition, when we find a reference to a book on the web that we think is useful to users, we’ll link to the website. Finally, where possible, we’ve included links to online reviews of the book. See this example: http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0395977894

In order to further enhance the user experience, we will be including results from books that we have scanned as well as books in our Bibliographic Information Index. Searching across both of these indexes will make Google Book Search much more comprehensive for users, resulting in a better user experience. This will ensure that Google Book Search continues to improve as a valuable discovery tool for your titles. Books in the Bibliographic Information Index will be presented with “no preview available.” These “no preview available” listings display only basic bibliographic information about the book, as well as the web references and reviews that we’ve found. Because we have not scanned the books, such results will only appear when the user’s query matches the title, author, or other basic information about the book.

Now, when a user searches for a book or a topic in Book Search, not only do they get the benefit of discovering books by searching across the full text, but they also will receive information about other books which, based on the title or other bibliographic information, may contain the information they’re seeking.

We welcome your feedback as we continue to improve Google Book Search and make it more comprehensive and useful.

As reported previously, Google is now selling radio ads in local markets. I logged into my AdWords account and a big “Audio Ads” tab was staring at me this morning so I took it for a spin.

Much like SpotRunner.com, Google Audio Ads allows you to select the radio markets you want to advertise in by city, state, station formats, and audience type. You can select the times of day you wish your ads to run, days of the week preferences, and set your budget by the week. To help you get your :30 second spots created, they have developed an ad creative marketplace that you can search for audio production companies to help you create your spots complete with samples of their work.

Taking an idea from Ingenio.com, they also offer free call reporting service where they assign you a toll free or local phone number that rings to any number you wish and tracks the responses. How cool is that? Even if you already have a toll free number, it’s a good (and free) way to track each campaign separately and monitor all the responses in your Google AdWords account.

Hats off to Google for taking a very difficult ad buying process and putting it online and giving it trackability. I’m testing a campaign in Las Vegas for our upcoming WriteStuff Writers Boot Camp in June. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Picking a name for your children is easier than selecting a name for your online web presence. Why? Because you can have as many Tommys, Billys, Madisons, Taylors, Sarahs, Robbies, and Jeannes in the world but only one TomBritt.com. Only one. Finding that unique domain name that is as easy to remember and spell as “Tommy” is harder than you think.

Domain names are registered, or leased, in one-year increments through various online providers like GoDaddy.com, Register.com, and NetworkSolutions.com. They all charge different prices for doing the exact same thing. Some services charge $4.99 per year while others might charge $14.99 per year. Why do they charge a different rate? Some people like the ease of use with one provider over another or they like sexy girls on Super Bowl commercials. That might not be the answer you wanted to read, but that’s the truth.

Some general guidelines for selecting a domain name are as follows:

• Buy a .com whenever possible: People inherently think of every domain as ending in “.com.” Having a domain end in something other than that will give people two things to remember: your domain name and the extension. Buy a dot com and don’t tax people’s already over-taxed memories.
• Avoid hyphenated domains: While “John-Smith-Author.com” might be available, you will have the toughest time getting anyone to remember your online name. It looks good in a brochure, but the hyphens become speedbumps when you are trying to describe how to find yourself online: “John hyphen Smith hyphen Author dot com.”
• Avoid commonly misspelled words: My first local portal was (and is still) called atGeist.com. People that live in the Geist Reservoir area where I live know how to spell “Geist”, but folks outside of the area or not native to the area often times misspell it as “Giest”. The old “I before E” thing doesn’t apply for Geist. What did I do? I bought “atGiest.com” as well and pointed it to the same website. Ask a few of your friends and family to spell your domain, you might be surprised at how a word is easy for you to spell but harder for others.
• Book titles are not the best domains: Many authors purchase the name of their book as their online domain name. This is handy to have and I certainly wouldn’t discourage you from doing this. But what if you decide to write a second, third, or fourth book? What if your book title is really long (i.e. “HowtoLeveragetheInternettoMarketYourBook.com”)? What if you get a cease and desist letter from another publisher claiming you can’t use the word “dummy” in your title? Think twice about using your book title as your domain name, it might sound good now, but you could grow out of it in a few more books.

Last weekend’s WriteStuff Writers’ Boot Camp & Conference was two full days of workshops, presentations, and panel discussions in my backyard of Indianapolis, Indiana. It was unique in the fact that all aspects of writing were covered, not just books and manuscripts.

Friday’s Boot Camp was a high-touch, one-on-one classroom style workshop with about 44 attendees. Each person sent a sample of their work ahead of time to the WriteStuff faculty to have their work reviewed professionally and get a critique on where they could improve their work. Throughout the day, “Boot Campers” came in to the Hilton Garden Hotel in Fishers and met for :30 minutes to get invaluable feedback on their works. At 1:00 pm, Andy Murphy and Marcia Ellett conducted a joint class covering everything from creative writing, character development, plot lines, and finding your voice to etiquette tips when approaching a publisher. After a quick :15 minute break, everyone split into one of two groups: Internet marketing (taught by myself) and self-editing tips (taught by Heidi Newman).

Our evening mixer was well-attended, approximately 75 people came for food, drinks, and great networking with other authors. Several AuthorHouse authors came up to me and introduced themselves, most donning a copy of their book of course. It was great to see everyone and put a few faces with some names or emails that I’ve been corresponding with over the last few months.

Saturday’s WriteStuff Writers’ Conference was a big success with about 150 attendees and another 25 speakers and guest presenters. The kick-off breakfast with Angelo Pizzo and Diane Willis was amazing, both told very inspiring and heart-felt stories. Angelo talked about his debut into screen writing with his Academy Award Winning film “Hoosiers.” Surprisingly, after he spent a year writing the screenplay, he was told by a close friend and mentor that it was terrible so he put it in the back of his closet for over a year. “Don’t let anyone squash your dreams,” Angelo said after a very inspiring personal story. Diane Willis told her story of how she writes professionally for both television and corporate public relations.

Perhaps the surprise of the morning came before Angelo Pizzo took the stage. It seems that a high school in northern Indiana, Oregon-Davis, won both the girls and boys state basketball championships this year. This is the first time this has ever happened in state history. The athletic director, principal and girl’s coach all came down to meet Angelo and talk about their real life “Hoosiers” story (shown to the right). One of the audience members asked during Angelo’s Q&A “are you going to write the Oregon-Davis basketball story?” Angelo replied simply “I already have.”

The rest of the morning was full of panel discussions covering topics like book to film and how to make a living (or at least get some lunch money) for writing. Jonathan Faber gave a great presentation on the legal side of publishing. For a lawyer, he was sure interesting and had some great stories.

After lunch, we awarded the “Young Voices Short Story Competition” winners with their plaques. Over 100 kids ages 8 to 14 years old submitted an entry to the atFishers.com sponsored contest and the three finalists were present with their parents and family to accept their awards. Tara Brugh, Alex Zoumbaris, and Mary O’Leary took home top honors. If you’d like to read their winning entries, visit WriteStuffWriters.com.

By the end of the day, I was admittedly “tired but inspired.” The afternoon workshops were a little more lively than the morning panel discussions. Lou Harry did a bang-up job covering book marketing. Both he and Dick Wolfsie gave countless pointers on how to (and how not to) run a book signing. Between the both of them, they have seen it all when it comes to book signings.