The Author Blog Awards aim to highlight to readers the great content that you can find in author blogs and microblogs, reward those authors who engage with their readers online, and encourage other authors to do the same. Nominations are now open so please head over to www.authorblogawards.com to nominate your favourite author blog.

What you need to know

8 March  2010: Nominations open

Anyone can nominate an author blog that they think is worth of recognition by visiting a dedicated competition page on CompletelyNovel.com. The nominations will be compiled and a shortlist created for the blogs that receive the most votes.

2 April 2010: Nominations close

5 April Shortlist Announced and voting open

There will be three categories:

• Best Published Author Blog
• Best Unpublished Author Blog
• Best Author Microblog

Everyone will be able to vote for their favourite blogs from the shortlist.

15 April: Voting closed

20 April: Winners announced at London Book Fair

The rise of author blogs

As an author,  how do you keep engaging with your readers? How do you keep a buzz going around your book, and also have people to contact when your next one comes out?  Constantly touring the country, trying to engage with your readers is one option, but unless you really like road trips and paying for petrol there’s a limit to how much you’re going to want to do this. The low-carbon answer is to keep in contact with readers online through a blog or microblog – and that is exactly what loads of authors are now doing.

There are plenty of reasons why you might read an author’s blog. On the fiction side, you can get a fascinating insight into the mind of the writer and how the book was written.  Writers can also give you some handy tips if you have writing aspirations yourself – this can be both regarding the business of writing, and then publishing. You may well be aware that Neil Gaiman has a huge blogging presence, as well as being an avid Tweeter, and keeps his fans up to date on his progress of his latest book and book signings. Author Cory Doctorow, one of the curators of Boing Boing also offers interesting insights into the effects of copyright law and DRM on the life of an author.

On the non-fiction side, it’s worth checking out whether the author you like has a blog as a way to keep up to date on their subject matter. Malcolm Gladwell and Seth Godin also have a big blogging presence but we are also seeing lots of newer authors engaging with their audience online. As the cost of setting up a blog starts at free, there’s no barrier to authors who self-publish their work, and many of those are producing some excellent material too.

Rewarding the best

The Author Blog Awards aims to highlight and reward the authors who are doing a great job of engaging with their audience online. The awards are being run by CompletelyNovel.com with help from Jon Slack. They have also partnered with publishing news website BookBrunch and publishers such as Allison and Busby, The Random House Group, Quartet, Simon and Schuster.

To encourage as many people as possible to nominate and vote in the awards, we will be offering prizes including books, eBooks, eReaders, event tickets etc to randomly selected participants, provided by CompletelyNovel and the partners in the awards.

We’re also very pleased to announce that we will be announcing the winners at London Book Tweet, the official London Book Fair Tweetup, organised by Publishing Talk and the London Book Fair.  Hopefully see you/tweet you there!

Since Twitter is such an important part of the Publishing Talk community, we’re including not just our own tweets, but mentions of @publishingtalk on Twitter in a new ‘Chatter’ column on the site. According to the Twitter directory WeFollow, we are now the most influential of 1,600 Twitter accounts about publishing. Our latest job ads will appear more prominently on the home page, and this section will be revamped too.

We will also start charging for job ads from February – but your first ad will remain free (or your next ad if you’re an existing advertiser). Job ads will remain on the site for 30 days, and tweeted. With over 21,000 followers, we have the largest Twitter reach for publishing jobs on the Internet. You can manage them yourself by logging in, or simply email them to us at jobs@publishingtalk.eu. There will also be banner advertising opportunities on the new site.

Finally, you will also be able to announce your publishing events, conferences, workshops and tweetups on the site in our new events section – and this will be free to start with. Just email them to us at events@publishingtalk.eu.

I hope you find the new site a useful resource. Let us know your thoughts, and see you on the other side!

Oh, and in case you hadn’t noticed, all the action has been taking place over on Twitter lately. Do follow us there if you don’t already, for daily thoughts, news and links on publishing and social media. We now have over 13,000 followers, which puts us well in the top 10 in the wefollow directory with the ‘publishing’ tag. Have a look at the directory to find other publishing tweeters to follow too.

There are also some changes afoot for Publishing Talk. I’m not going to say too much for now – but watch this space…

But where have I been? I’ve been busy re-launching my Reed Media site (my social media consultancy), which now also includes a blog on yet more social media topics. I’ve been running workshops (shameless plug to follow). But the other thing that’s been taking up my time is writing a book. Yes, I’ve finally completed the transition from publisher to author!

I’m working on a book called “Get Up to Speed with Online Marketing: What you need to know and do to grow your business” for FT Prentice Hall. It should come out next summer, if I somehow stick to the deadlines. It is aimed at small businesses and start-ups – but some of you might find it useful too, as it covers a wide range of social media tools.

What you might find more interesting is the marketing. I will be doing a lot of the marketing for the book myself, using all the social media methods I’ve been blogging about here for the last couple of years. I will keep you posted here about what I do, what works for me and what doesn’t – so you can consider it an extended case study! Some of the things I plan to do include:

• pre-publication blog – launching soon, I hope – just as soon as we get a cover design done, so I can follow the branding
• Twitter (obviously)
• Facebook Page
• AudioBoo – for those not yet using it, this is Twitter-meets-podcasting. You record audio on your iPhone, then attach a photo (if you want), upload it to the site, it adds a geolocated map of where the recording took place, and automatically updates your Twitter and/or Facebook status. Very quick, easy, and free. I can see this becoming my new favourite toy… I plan to use it for short interviews with people I write case studies about, or just to capture opportunistic meetings with relevant people I meet at conferences, tweet-ups and the like.
• Pre-publication podcast – for longer interviews with case study people. A limited-run podcast with a few episodes leading up to publication.
• Book launch in Second Life. Plus in real life, of course – possibly organised as a tweet-up.

So, please excuse me if I’m a bit sporadic at the moment. For I am not blogging, but writing. And marketing. And I’ll share the results of both with you.

Meanwhile, let us know what social media marketing methods you have found most useful for your books. Your blog comments are always useful – and get tweeted as well as appearing on this site.

Right, another 1,000 words before bedtime, I think…

Make sure you unplug from the Internet for a couple of days at least – OK? For those who can’t get enough social media, and will be eating Twitter bird on Thursday, check out the 12 Days of Social Media Christmas.

Look out for more shiny social media goodness from us in 2009.

All good wishes,

OK, so, vous-êtes prêt? On y va.

First of all, many thanks to everyone who filled in our Reader Survey last month. The data is in, the count has been verified, and an independent adjudicator has pulled a name out of the hat… and the winner is… (drum roll)…

Sylvia Petter! Congratulations Sylvia – the iPod is on the way to you as we speak. Sylvia is one of our Facebook Group members, and an Australian writer living in Austria – nicely illustrating what an international lot we are. I’ll let you have some headline results of the survey on here soon, including where in the world we come from.

Speaking of the Facebook Group, we now have over 1,000 members; and a new MySpace Group to boot. We’re still also on Twitter and YouTube; and we now even have a Flickr account (albeit with no pictures just yet!).

And speaking of iPods, the podcast should start later in the year, and you’ll be able to catch it here as well as on your MP3 player. Meanwhile, there’s a sneak preview of our theme tune on the website (can you find it?).

It’s all go at Publishing Talk Towers. More news as it happens. Meanwhile, it’s back to the blog: talk to you soon!

There’s plenty going on, and a lot to talk about in publishing at the moment; and we will be back up to speed on the blog very soon.

Why are we moving domain? Well, it’ll be a bit easier to find in search engine results. But I also want to de-couple the blog from my business a bit, make Publishing Talk more of a brand in its own right, and focus on building a resource for authors as well as publishers. I also want to host the forthcoming podcast at that domain (yes, it is coming – honest!)

Do you need to do anything? You shouldn’t have to. The RSS feed should automatically update, for those of you who subscribe to it; so should email subscriptions. I will also leave old postings here (as well as transferring them to the new blog), so that no existing links to specific posts should go astray. Finally, this page will automatically forward you to the new blog before long.

Those of you who are lovely enough to include Publishing Talk in your blogroll, you may want to update your link to www.publishingtalk.eu – but you don’t have to. You may also want to change the description from Reed Media to Publishing Talk – but you don’t have to.

Meanwhile, in other news, we now also have a MySpace Group, for those who like their social networks Murdoch flavoured; and our Facebook Group has just topped 1,000 members!

Hope you like the new look, and continue to find something useful in these pages. See you there tomorrow!

As for the podcast itself, we’re busy dusting off our microphones, lining up guests, and fiddling with our mixing desks. And some Facebook news just in: we are now, officially, the largest publishing group on planet Facebook! Onwards and upwards, dear readers – and authors and publishers, of course.

The end of the year already. Time for some top-10 lists, highs and lows, and a review of 2007, surely? Maybe next week. For now, I’m signing off for a few days, with news of developments at publishing talk next year.

As Facebook Group members will already be aware… publishing talk is evolving into a podcast!

The blog will continue, and even be spruced up a bit and include some guest bloggers. But, later in the year, we’ll also be having some real talking, about publishing, on a podcast. We’ll be talking to some thought leaders, industry professionals and authors about how they use social media, and how to get started.

Meanwhile, please let us know what you’d like to hear – and what you think of the blog – by filling in our reader survey. It should only take 5 minutes, and will help us develop publishing talk into a resource that is going to be of most use to you.

You could even win an Apple iPod Nano to listen to publishing talk on, since those who complete the survey will be entered into a draw.

Have a very happy festive season – and I’ll be talking publishing with you in the New Year!

Topics will include book, journal and magazine publishing, digital media, social media, Web 2.0, podcasting, marketing and market research.

Do join in the conversation by commenting on postings if you wish, and subscribe to the RSS feed to make sure you get the latest articles.

There will also be periodic contributions from guest writers, offering a range of expertise and perspectives.

We hope hope you find the articles useful. Let us know what you think, and hope to talk publishing with you soon!