The next Publishing Talk Guide is coming soon! And this one is all about the most essential starting point for your social media marketing: blogging.

The ebook will explain how to use blogging to:

• build an online platform for yourself
• use blogging to promote your books
• use blogging to get a book deal.

You will learn how to:

• get started with WordPress
• use plugins and widgets
• find topics to write about
• automatically tweet your blog
• promote your blog
• go on a blog tour
• and much more!

The Publishing Talk Guide to Blogging is a comprehensive guide to promoting your writing and your books online.

About the author: Jon Reed is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Publishing Talk, which has the largest publishing community on Twitter with over 200,000 followers. He previously worked in publishing for 10 years, including as publishing director for McGraw-Hill. His book Get Up to Speed with Online Marketing was published by FT Prentice Hall in 2010. Jon regularly lectures and runs workshops in social media marketing. In November 2012 he is running a week-long course with Sarah Salway and Danuta Kean for the Arvon foundation called Building your Online Platform.

Publication date: July 2012

Sign up to the mailing list to be the first to hear when the ebook publishes, for a discount on the PDF edition and for a free Blogging Cheat Sheet.

Welcome to the London Book Fair Digital Minds Conference live blog! I’ll be updating every 5 minutes or so, so keep refreshing the page to see the latest action from the conference. Join the discussion by commenting below, or by adding  #digiconf12 to your tweets. Are you ready? Let’s get digital!

All aboard the QE2! The conference centre rather than the cruise ship, sadly.

Keynote: The Future of Creative Media – Jim Griffin

10:05 – Conference Chair Evan Schnitmann (Bloomsbury) introduces Jim Griffin’s (OneHouse LLC) keynote

We’re living in a time of Tarzan economics – how do we let go of the old vine and grab the new vine to go forward? JIM GRIFFIN

10:10 – Jim Griffin (OneHouse LLC): We’re living in a time of Tarzan economics. How do we let go of the old vine and grab the new vine to go forward? There is a battle over piracy, but this is not our biggest battle. We’re in a battle for limited time and money of our audiences.You can never understand the media of your time. Like a fish understanding water. It’s fashionable to think we live in special times. I don’t believe it. The transition from mechanical to electric was far more savage that the transition from electric to digital.

Need to look backward rather than forward. Guttenberg got started pirating Papal indulgences. The library in Alexandria was piracy – stocked with books seized from the harbour. Jazz was an unpopular medium that found its way into popular culture via technology.

10:20 – We need to make it faster, easier and simpler for people to pay for content in the hope that people will when they can. You have only to look at Amazon.  We need a feminization of marketing – starting relationships that never end. Amazon is a woman. It remembers what you last bought, the colour of your eyes, it stays in touch. We need to sort this out if we want a sustainable economy of ideas.

10:25 – We need to seek balance that equalizes access to culture, knowledge, information. And we need to do it fast as increasingly the Internet is God. People spend more time on the Internet than at church. People confess their deepest secrets to a search engine rather than to a priest.

The .com economies will soon become bigger than the G8. We will do a lot better with an open hand than a closed fist. We can hold more in an open hand than a closed fist.

Keynote: Content is King – Andrew Steele

10:30 - Next speaker: Andrew Steele, former head writer at Saturday Night Live and runs www.funnyordie.com, the website started by Will Ferrell.

Andrew Steele starts by showing a funnyordie video.

10:35 – Lot of disruption in publishing and also in the entertainment industry. Background in TV – was a comedy writer for 20 years. funnyordie is a website built on user engagement. The parallel in publishing would be a website built on self-publishing.

We got out there and found that users aren’t funny. There are a million very unfunny videos on YouTube (which fortunately you don’t have toi look at as people pass around the best ones). We hired staff – writers, producers, directors – and made our own videos. Started making stuff for funnyordie – traffic increased on our site. Users could not bring in the experience people were looking for.

Once you increase traffic, you increase ad revenue and this is a good thing. The thing that was frightening was discovering that the Internet was crap and couldn’t solve our problems in the entertainment industry. But used background to create really good stuff.

The Internet is frightening to Hollywood right now. I’m sure self-publishing is frightening to publishers at the moment. But the most creative, best people on the Internet are winning for a reason. There isn’t enough good stuff out there. ANDREW STEELE

10:40 – We discovered that the best people are generally the professionals. Publishing has access to the real artists and make use of them. The Amazons of the world will never know what the people in this room know because they never know who those people are. Engagement is the key. The best people inside this technology are the ones who’ve run it for years.

In Hollywood everything is basically the same as it was 20-50 years ago. The artist drives all the traffic – there’s no medium that can displace that. Comes down to the smartest people controlling these things rather than disruptive technology taking this away from us.

In publishing it’s always the creative people who matter and there will always be a way to monetize that.

Schnittman: Curation is not enough – content is king. Now over to the King of Content…

Keynote: Pottermore – Charlie Redmayne

10:45 – Charlie Redmayne (Pottermore) takes to the stage.

Redmayne: Harry Potter – 50m book sales worldwide and most successful movie franchise in history. Pottermore was something Jo [J.K. Rowling] really wanted to do to engage with digital and give something back to the fans.Two parts:

1. Pottermore Experience- unique exploration of the stories containing new writing from J.K. Rowling
2. Pottermore Shop – the only place to buy the ebooks and digital audiobooks

10:50 – allowed 1m people to enter the site when it opened in beta summer 2011. 97% have looked at every piece of content and the average user session is 47 minutes. The platform couldn’t support the amount of interaction. It opened formally at 8.15 am UK time yesterday (when teenagers and Americans were asleep!) Quietly announced it with a tweet:

We're opening to everyone http://t.co/FnRDYZYg #Pottermore

April 14, 2012 7:44 am via web Reply Retweet Favorite

@pottermore

Pottermore

Redmayne shows a promo video from the Pottermore site.

10:55 – Contains hidden content and other goodies from J.K. Rowling.Reactiuon to the site has been striking / borderline disturbing. [CR shows video reactions made by fans]

11:00 – Readers assume that digital books should be cheaper than print books, so we price in that way. We can do some fantastic enhanced ebooks later this year. We want this to become the central hub for all things Harry Potter – the store will grow further – only just started.

Pottermore is a huge challenge to publishers, who are struggling to retain their relevance in new world. CHARLIE REDMAYNE

11:05 - need to expand digital platforms to gaming, YouTube, Facebook, apps, in-flight entertainment etc. Pottermore is a huge challenge to publishers, who are struggling to retain their relevance in new world. Need to learn to build brands with our marketing in publishing. Social media isn’t a branding strategy. Need publishers to have brand development strategies – invest in brands over a period of years.

11:15 – 11:20 - coffee break time! See you in a bit.

Panel: Blurred Boundaries: Publishers, Agents, Retailers, Distributors and Authors

Chair: Rosie Goldsmith (journalist). Panellists: Victoria Barnsley (HarperCollins), Ed Victor (agent), Kerry Wilkinson (bestselling self-published author), Michael Tamblyn (Kobo)

11:20 – Goldsmith: Publishing faces the biggest change since the invention of the printing press and at the heart of this is digital.

11:25 – Wilkinson: Self-publishing is just that – you can’t just be a good writer, you have to be good at publishing too. I discovered that many Kindle books weren’t engaging in the free sample – just loads of dedications and endorsements, and a prologue that only makes sense if you’ve read the book. You need to grab people straight away and end on a cliffhanger that makes them want to read more.

11:30 – Barnsley: Self-publishing is a nursery of talent – you can test the market first and the publisher can take less risk, so in some respects we welcome self-publishing. It is a bit of a threat too, as it’s bringing in competition. Many self-publishers have decided to go the traditional path after self-publishing, but if too many decided to do their own thing that would be a lot of competition for us.

Victor: I wasn’t trying to spit in the eye of the publishing industry – I just wanted to bring stuff back into print.

11.35 – Tamblyn: we sit on both sides of that fence.

If you are a publisher you are a content-led, product-led business at heart. Amazon is a brilliant company but it is consumer-led through and through. VICTORIA BARNSLEY

Barnsley: We all finding that we’re going into new business models – ecommerce, retail, speaker agency etc; but if you are a publisher you are a content-led, product-led business at heart. Amazon is a brilliant company but it is consumer-led through and through. The author and the content defines the culture of our business. It’s great that the silos are breaking down but I have a suspicion that it’s not possible to be a one-man band and all things to all people.  Can we be author-led and consumer-led at the same time?

11:40 – Wilkinson: I don’t understand why, if publishers have 18 books in a series, they don’t sell the first one for a quid and then people will come back for subsequent ones in the series, like self-published ebooks.

Goldsmith: Why are ebooks so expensive then?

Tamblyn: That’s due to publishers; we do have books at £1 – £2, but they tend to be self-published.

Wilkinson: It’s about value rather than price. People buy the next book because they want to know what happens next, not because of price. My first book sold the most but made the least money.

Tamblyn: We can create a community of interest around us / authors / products. On any given day in our top-10 we have self-published authors. What’s the entry price for a ‘high risk’ author who you’ve never heard of before?

11:50 – Barnsley: Discoverability online is the big challenge. Unlike a physical environment where you can browse, it’s very difficult with digital. Price is one thing you can use as a lever.

Tamblyn: We can look at the social media activity that surrounds a book as a way to elevate it. The very best support is your friend saying ‘you have to read this book’. We have word of mouth on a scale as never before now. But how do we take some of those things that we lost in the move to digital and bring them, back in a new way?

Goldsmith: Ed Victor, you are the showbiz equivalent of a literary agent. How do you keep that personality going in a digital world?

Victor: The rise of agents is something that I have been part of and watched. What we agents have is equivalent to barrels of crude oil: content which can be marketed in many different ways. Our job is to figure out the best way forward.

Barnsley: It’s a hybrid world. Print is still our biggest business, so we need the old skills but new skills too. E.g. we’ve recently hired a pricing expert. I’m not a digital native – barely a digital immigrant – but it’s a very exciting time – there are incredible opportunities. One can reach consumers one could never have reached before.

Victor: We have a simple business model copied from Jane Friedman: you deduct the production costs and split the revenue 50/50. And because we have brought books back into print, we’re also selling foreign rights.

Wilkinson: I was approached by an awful lot of agents – not always a pleasant experience. I’m still working full-time as a sports journalist, thought I had nothing to lose with a traditional publisher [Pan Macmillan]. It’s partly about exposure; but if it doesn’t work, I still have a #1 bestselling book, I’ve still paid off the mortgage – I have nothing to lose. I was looking at an author’s website the other day and the only way to contact him was via his agent – what sort of message is that to send out to readers? I’ve got a huge mailing list of people who have emailed me.

Barnsley: It’s important for authors to start a relationship with readers – we are intermediaries, and that’s something different to what publishers have traditionally done.

12:00 – Goldsmith: The book industry is very slow to change.

Tamblyn: Do you think so? This week alone we’re looking at publishers having to come up with a new business model in 48 hours or less. What could be more fast-moving than that?

Goldsmith: Who, in this blurred world, controls intellectual property?

I thought that, by the time we reached this phase in publishing, I’d be dead. But go with it, embrace it, we’re trying to figure it out and make money as we do. ED VICTOR

Victor: You were right [about publishing being slow to change] until recently. I feel much more camaraderie with people in the publishing industry now because of these blurred boundaries – we’re all on a stormy sea trying to navigate the waters together. I thought that, by the time we reached this phase in publishing [ebooks], I’d be dead. But go with it, embrace it, we’re trying to figure it out and make money as we do.

12:05 – Goldsmith: Final predictions, thoughts, or pieces of advice?

Victor: I’d quote Adventures in the Screen Trade: Nobody knows anything.

Tamblyn: How much is this a revolutionary force around the world? E.g. places where previously books could never be bought/moved. We’re changing the way reading happens everywhere – and we’ve not even begun to realize the impact of that.

Barnsley: Given what’s happened this week: Don’t speak to another publisher! Two major issues: value and time. Biggest challenge is finding enough consumer time. We’re not just competing against other books now, but against people’s Facebook time.

Wilkinson: Don’t be afraid of technology. If you embrace it there are so many more opportunities than if you try to compete with it.

Coffee break! See you at 12:25!

Case Study: Social Marketing – The Power of Communities – Matteo Berlucchi

Matteo Berlucchi, Anobii: Key theme is discovery – finding books online. Anobii strapline is ‘together we find better books’ – best way to discover books is through recommendation.

Anobii is 18mths old – backed by HMV, Penguin, HarperCollins and Random House. Acquired an existing company called Anobii, the first social network for book lovers – set up in HK in 2006 – and acquired their dataset. Team of 25 people in London and a new version of the platform created – now in beta (beta.anobii.com)

High street bookstores are closing. Majority of people who go into bookstores go there to browse. Risk polarizing book sales to the frontlist and end up reading what everyone else is reading. Great example is the Richard & Judy Bookclub – guidance on what to read outside of the bestseller lists.

Word of mouth is important, but there’s always an intermediary: your favourite reviewer in a magazine, a bookseller – but the order or recommendation is important, with friend recommendations at the top.

12:35 – Other readers are the key that unlocks discovery – social networks are important. They provide the idea foundation to develop a ‘recommendation marketplace’.

We are a tech company – we don’t have any publishers on the team.

We create a way for people to organize books around their interests. Books can live in multiple topics and be more or less relevant to that topic. Not very different to what a good bookseller does in a store. Three-dimensional browsing space where people can jump from topic to person to book.

In order to sell ebooks you need the ecosystem to enable you to sell them. Not possible to share ebooks between devices, didn’t want to use Amazon, so we had to build our own reading apps.

12:40 – How do we get around the “I am on Facebook and don’t need yet another social network” objection? By making our API available to create third-part apps from, such as Anobii Facebook App. Organize games via Facebook app such as ‘Top Reader Challenge’. Payback is that we get lots of data on what people are reading. Leverage the best of the existing social networks. We’re using Pinterest, Twitter and iTunes.

This industry needs to move to a DRM-free paradigm as fast as possible. MATTEO BERLUCCHI

Final comment: we are DRM-free! This industry needs to move to a DRM-free paradigm as fast as possible. The elephant in the room is that Amazon sells 90% of the ebooks in this industry. In order to have a healthy ecosystem, we need to make ebooks as widely available as possible.

Hard Times for Soft Covers? Facts Behind the Fiction – Mark Oliver

12:50 – Mark Oliver, Oliver & Ohlbaum Associates: In 2011 10% of people bought ebooks. We predict that by 2017 25% will be regularly buying ebooks. This is driven by device ownership.

Online book buying: 31% of sales in the UK in 2011. In 2017, the volume of books sold will increase by 8.5% but consumer spend will fall by 10%.

This is not as bad as the music industry, which saw a decline of 35% between 2003-2011; or the DVD market, which saw a decline of 16% between 2005-2010 DVDs. Supermarkets and online retailers have sharply eroded traditional margins. This will continue and ebooks will accentuate this trend.

13:00 – Reef Read: So far, the book trade has fared well in the UK, and the Internet has helped. But we’re facing regulatory intervention on the agency model in the US – and possibly the EU.

We’re looking at the rise of new competitors with the vertical integration of online retailers, especially Amazon.Another threat to publishers is the rise of self-publishing and P2P publishing, which could threaten to put out publishers completely.

The traditional value chain was linear. The new value chain is radically different: e.g. Amazon getting into publishing and authors self-publishing. Authors such as J.K. Rowling launching online platforms such as Pottermore.

Not clear how these structural shifts will impact on publishing, but it is clear that publishers will have to change what they do in order to adapt and thrive.

Average price for a fiction book in the UK: £8.56 – hardback; £4.82 – paperback; £3.16 – ebook. In the old world, readers had a simple choice. Could buy new or 2nd handbooks from a store, borrow books from friends or the library, or join book clubs.

The Web 1.0 word of ‘online physical’ saw prices for fiction of between £3.99 – £7.99. The Web 2.0 ‘online ebook’ world has seen fiction prices drop to £0.69 – £6.99. Bricks and mortar stores sell fiction for between £2.99-£9.99 bricks.  Lending is free, and new models such as Kindle daily deals and eSingles are emerging.

Old genres were: fiction, non-fiction, children’s, School/ELT. New world: increased fragmentation / competition across all genres.

13.10 - Mark Oliver: Device uptake will be fast and far-reaching. Ebooks will be the leading format. The Internet will dominate book sales. Volumes will go up but market values will go down as prices are eroded. Publishers have so far been immune to these trends, but now need to adapt.

Time for lunch!

Panel: Children’s Content – Leading the Way?

Chair: Sara Lloyd (Macmillan). Panellists: Kate Wilson (Nosy Crow), Belinda Rasmussen (Macmillan Children’s), Eric Huang (Penguin Children’s), Jeff Gomez (Starlight Runner Entertainment).

14:10 – Sarah Lloyd: When will the moment come for children’s publishing to go digital in a meaningful way? What will the catalyst be? How can today’s publishers position themselves for what’s coming?

Lloyd: Teen publishing is taking off – how about younger children’s?

Huang: Companies like Nickelodeon are already in that space – a lot of the titles we’re publishing became digital quite quickly because they were already part of the larger children’s publishing landscape and having big brands such as Peppa Pig helped.

Wilson: I came out of a corporate publishing background and felt that some of the things I’d wanted to do were difficult to do in a corporate context. You had to feed a machine, especially in tough economic times. I set up Nosy Crow to do digital books from the start. Wanted to look at what could make the reading experience more engaging for a child. The proliferation of devices over the last year has helped our sales. The pick up of sales following Christmas is really just backlist sales – but driven by devices.

Gomez: In the US 30-40% of parents have stuck mobile phones/tablets into the hands of their kids. Esp with tablets, you are removing the last barrier of friction. Manipulating a book, turning pages etc difficult for an infant – there is a direct connection between the child and the app / digital book. It is manipulatable with tremendous ease, which delights the child and the parent. We will see a cascade effect.

Wilson: for pre-schoolers who cannot read text, the addition of audio/video is a fantastically empowering thing for the child. No longer have to ask parents to read it to them.

Huang: It has been so quick for children’s publishing, and they are leading the way because of our customers. For adult publishing it’s a nice thing to have – but our customers demand it.

Rasmussen: But it would be a shame if that emotional connection of the experience of reading with a parent was lost.

Huang: If you want an interactive book, you can’t just slap some pops onto it for the sake of it – has to be relevant to the story. It’s a question of technology and awareness of what each device can do.

Gomez: Best not to have an author or illustrator guess at what will work, but bring in a designer who understands the technology and sensibilities that go into a product like this. It requires a third-party professional.

Wilson: We create all our apps in-house. I think what Jeff says is true – being a children’s publisher is not enough. It helps though, because we are already working in a multimedia way, with text and images, and imagining a book being read aloud. App development is a much more collaborative process: writing, illustration, coding, voice etc. A lot of the time we get proposals from someone saying ‘I have written an app.’ Really? It is usually two sides of A4 starting ‘It was a dark night [the stars twinkle when you touch them]‘. This is not enough. We need people who think about storytelling in a non-linear way.

Huang: We’re using a lot of traditional children’s book illustrators, because the aesthetic often works best. But we need to pair them up with an animator. The word ‘Digital’ can be intimidating for people, but can also lead to projects that are too ambitious.

Wilson: We’ve always said that we’re digital, so the authors and illustrators who approach us do so because we are establishing a name for ourselves in this space. A lot of the thinking that was applicable to novelty books is applicable to this, as Jeff says, but sometimes something works better as a novelty book. We shouldn’t confuse media – some things work best in one medium, some things work best in another.

Gomez: Too many people think a digital format means ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’, a set of branching pathways through the text. The participation has to be more truly interactive than this, and have more to do with bells and whistles.

Wilson: The ways you use the features of the device in a way appropriate to the story is important. We did Cinderella, and had to think hard about the key story elements of magic. Three Little Pigs was about drama and action and movement – so we had to do something different. You can’t just use the same godollop of code. You have to be responsive to the nature of what that story is.

Lloyd: What about parental concerns about the amount of screen time their children spend?

Wilson: The important thing is to balance the parental sense that reading is good for you and the child’s expectation that the experience will be interactive. Apps are walled gardens, and this is reassuring to parents.

Gomez: Children’s books make money. A good amount of money. The expectation of publishers is that, in a digital world, children’s books won’t make as much money, and this is stepping on the brakes somewhat. Two important points:

1. The idea that digital content should be much cheaper than physical content will evolve away. Because there is an emerging generation who perceive it as valuable. I know it’s hard to belive right now!
2. There are new kinds of partnerships that you are gong to have to form with your authors. We’re starting to see those partnerships with teen fiction and YA.

Rasmussen: If the process seems slow it’s because, on the children’s side there hasn’t really been a market until recently.

Lloyd: What do we need to bear in mind about the way in which young people consume content? Is it true that teenagers have no attention span?

Wilson: For our age group of 2-7 year olds, it’s a bit different, and familiarity is key. Children can interact with apps in creative ways -

Gomez: Teens and increasingly tweens are switching up between gadgets, devices and screens at a more and more rapid clip. One of the solutions to this is not necessarily reiterating the same content on these platforms, but offering different types of content that play to the strengths of different platforms, but are set in the same story universe. So you’re doing some branding/franchising too, but keeping the teen in the story world that they love. As children get into their teens, they’re getting more into interactive content such as video games. They’re solving problems in complex, non-linear ways – not like the arcade games of the 1980s!

Wilson: Andrew Steele said this morning the UGC wasn’t always very good, and it is tempting to imagine that we are all content professionals. That balance of linear and non-linear narrative is interesting – children don’t always want to make their own narrative – they want stories better than they can imagine. This is why J.K. Rowling is popular. We are all descended from people who told stories around fires in caves about the mammoth that got away – we are storytellers. Our conversations are stories. Yes, we can fragment and cut it up – but I don’t think the non-linear story that satisfies us goes away.

Gomez: I didn’t mean we’re raising a generation of kids who understand Pulp Fiction. I meant creating a story world – as you move through the story there are different things that are unfolding in other platforms. They’re all linear, but complementary and add up to a greater experience.

Gomez [response to audience question]: My company, Starlight Runner Entertainment, is creating multi-platform storytelling. We initially wanted to go with a publisher. They were going to invest a lot of money, but they couldn’t get their head around the editorial concept of part of the story unfolding on Facebook. So we went to Sony.

Panel: Emerging E-Book Markets: Germany, Spain, France

Chair: Evan Schnittman. Panellists: Fabrice Piault (Livres Hebdo), Siobhan O’Leary, Antonio Fraguas Garrido (El Pais)

15:05 – Fabrice Piault: If you want to know what’s going on in the French ebook market, you need a microscope. Only 1.5m tablets and 145K ereaders were sold last year. Kindle and Kobo dominate (Kobo distruted by Fnac). In 2010 the ereaders were not good quality.

The ebook market was worth about 18m Euro in 2010 (0.6% of the industry). No more than 90K ebooks in various formats – many PDFs included. Max 8% of printed books are available as ebooks.

There is an emerging digital market for comics and graphic novels, and dozens of apps from artbook publishers and children’s publishers.

All the main publishers have built ebook distribution platforms like Numilog (Hachette), ePlatforme (Editis), Eden (Gallimard/Flammarion/La Martiniere)

15:15 – Will the number of digitized books increase rapidly? Will the publishers lower their prices? How soon will the public be seduced by ebooks? Online print book sales represent only 10% of all book sales in France – very different to the English-speaking world.

15: 20 – Siobhan O’Leary: The German market is facing a lot of the same issues as the French market. Germany has a very established publishing industry, and the second largest book market in the world (9.73bn Euros). Fixed book prices: also, 7% VAT on print and 19% on digital.

13% are translations into German, 2/3 of which come from the English-speaking world. Four largest groups: Verlagsgruppe Random House, Hotzbrinck, the German arm of Sweden’s Bonnier Group and Weltbild. Biggest STM/academic publishing group is Springer.

Market share of ebooks: 1% (up from 0.5% in 2010). Expected to be 16.2% by 2015. There is a clear trend towards fiction: 85% of ebooks sold are in this genre. The industry as a whole is starting to take ebooks more seriously, including publishing bestseller lists. Current bestselling authors include Henning Mankel and Steig Larsson.

Ebooks are generally sold at a retail price about 20% lower than the lowest-priced print edition. Same price if under 10 Eur. So you’re sometimes paying much more for an ebook as the VAT is higher.

15:30 – Ebook readers first hit the German market at the end of 2009. But most Germans read on tablets rather than ereaders.

Ebook hurdles: 78% of Germans claim not to want to read from a screen. 85% say they love printed books too much.

O’Leary ends with a quote:

The best way to predict the future is to create it WILLY BRANDT

15:35 – Antonio Fraguas Garrido: 75% of Spanish publishers are already following some kind of ‘digital strategy’. But 40% of people don’t read books. 6% read on screen. Have more ereaders than France – 285K sold in 2011 – 5 x more than previous year. Over 1m devices in Spain and rising.

LIBRANDA is an ebook distribution platform founded by big three publishers in Spain: Grupo Planeta, Random House Mondadori, Santillana.

Main concerns:

• Pricing - price of ebooks is too close to printed books. VAT is 4% on print books, 18% on ebooks.
• Piracy - In 2011, 49% of ebook content available online in Spain lacked proper copyright holders. 793m Eur value – the highest for any cultural content.

In Spain, the ebook industry requires a lot of investment but the revenues are too low. Ends with a  quote: “In the future customers will pay for services related to content rather than paying for the content itself.”

Digital Innovation: Inspirational Startups

Introduced by Paul Brindley (The Appside). Now for some 6-minute presentations from innovative startups. First up:

Booktrack

Booktrack synchronizes soundtracks to books. Example: reading the text opening to Star Wars with soundtrack over it is ‘booktracking’.

NYU study: “The study clearly show the distinct cognitive advantages of sound-enhanced electronic reading platforms.”

Flooved

Hamish Brocklebank, Co-Founder Flooved: Flooved is a web-based platform that provides students with a package of content on any platform for a monthly subscription. Launched 12 months ago.

Supply content from academic publishers, and can feedback on which chapter(s) students read and engage with the most. A cool engaging interactive platform for students; a pathway for publishers that isn’t disruptive.

Mindshapes

Christian Dorffer, Mindshapes: Mindshapes was founded in 2010. We have a background in the gaming industry. We’re focusing on how adults and kids learn through play.

There are around 500m kids with access to the Internet but 50% with no access to books. Various virtual worlds have been created for kids, such as Club Penguin, Moshi Monsters, Poptropica, which are educational to varying degrees. We have defined a new platform that focuses not just on passive brand engagement but interaction with characters.

The result is Magic Town: a child-centred virtual world for 2-6 year kids. A new interactive storytelling format, a revolutionary business model (subscription, pay per view and downloads), collaboration with parents and teachers. A new channel for publishers – launch brands in months, discoverability, subscription model and unique level of consumer insights.

Padify

Micahel Kowalski, Padify: Padify makes it easier to repackage your content into ebooks, digital magazines or apps for publication on iPads or other mobile devices.

Skoobe

Christian Damske, Skoobe: Skoobe ['ebooks' backwards] is a mobile library. Launched Feb 29, 2012, financed by Random House and Holtzbrinck. Device independent (currently for iOS, soon for Android). Epub as standard, no enriched ebooks with special formats. First 10,000 readers can borrow and read any number of new books each month for Eur 9.99 pcm, then model will be refined. Open to all publishers.

The Future of Content Business Models – Don Katz

16:50 – Don Katz, CEO, Audible: Audiobooks should never have been a physical medium. They had no artefact value or beauty and little replay value. 105m Americans drive to work alone (only 119m drive to work). That’s hundreds of hours a week. Audible is what millions of people do when they can’t read or look at a screen.

Our main challenge, ironically, is that there is simply not enough audio. Every book worth reading should be available as an audiobook – but 80-90% of frontlist books don’t go to audio. E.g. if a member of Audible runs out of sci-fi, we lose a member. So we became producers, and we’re now one of the biggest producers of audiobooks, with recording studios running back to back.

17:00 – I thought this was a no-risk business: to use unused audio rights that were just sitting in filing cabinets. When you have content rights they should be used. With print, publishers sell rights aggressively, even in Lithuanian[!] But this is not the case with audio.

17:10 – Why pay authors per download? It’s the right thing to do. We pay authors £1 per download. Average writer only earns 6k a year so are always looking for increasing income.

Recently met Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) who leverages his 1.7m Twitter followers to sell books.

17:15 - Movie industry spent money and effort trying to prevent movies on VCR and cable in the Supreme Court, arguing that even on a small screen it’s still a movie. But by the end of the 20th Century movies on cable was a $33bn industry.

Piracy helped Audible take off because it taught everyone how to download!

Aiding the work of writers who seek to capture the human condition is a good thing to do. Supporting the traditional supply chain is only good insofar as it supports the creative endeavour. Increasingly the old business models just don’t work in the modern age.

Closing Comments – Evan Schnittman

17:20 – Evan Schnittman wraps up. What have we learned?

• The Internet is God
• User Generated Content is crap
• There’s more to come from the Harry Potter franchise
• Mortgages can be paid even by self-published authors
• Price pressures will continue to expand
• Ebooks have learned to crawl finally in France, Germany and Spain
• Hamish might want to look into Xanax
• HTML5 is finally here
• Skoobe is ebooks backwards
• Does a right exist if no one can hear it?

That’s it, folks – we’re off for ‘networking drinks’ now! Let us know what you think about any of the issues raised in today’s conference in the comments below. And I’ll see some of you at Tuesday’s London Book Fair Tweetup!

Is that the sound of champagne corks popping? Did someone say ‘cocktails and canapés’?

For the third year running, Publishing Talk is pleased to be hosting the official London Book Fair Tweetup! Come and mix and mingle with the publishing Twitterati. And if you can’t join us live, follow along with the Twitter hashtag #LBFtweetup.

Your fellow Twittery publishers, authors, agents and other book trade folk will be gathering on on Tuesday 17th April 2012 at:

• 5.00pm – 6.00pm: The Children’s Innovation Bar inside the Earls Court exhibition centre
• 6.00pm onwards: Mango Lounge, 306 Earls Court Road, London SW5 9BA (find them on Facebook)

We have the Mango Lounge exclusively until 10pm. For those coming from the Book Fair, this is our closest venue yet – just around the corner from the Earls Court exhibition centre. For those coming from elsewhere, it is also on the same road as Earls Court tube station. Get there early for champagne cocktails and food!

This is a great opportunity to meet fellow book tweeps in real life, and connect with like-minded folk over cocktails. The perfect way to unwind after a hard day’s Book Fairing.

Don’t worry if you’ve never been to a tweetup before – it’s a very friendly crowd: just pitch up and say ‘hello’. We’ll have name badges to help you identify people by their Twitter usernames; and if you’re new to Twitter and trying to work out your hashtags, @mentions and DMs, I will once more be distributing copies of our Twitter Cheat Sheet.

Look forward to seeing you there!

By Ed Pilkington on guardian.co.uk:

In internet-savvy circles [Amanda Hocking] has been embraced as a figurehead of the digital publishing revolution that is seen as blowing up the traditional book world – or “legacy publishing” as its detractors call it – and replacing it with the ebook, where direct contact between author and reader, free of the mediation of agent and publishing house, is but a few clicks away. There is certainly something to that argument. The arrival of Hocking onto the Kindle bestseller lists in barely over a year is symptomatic of a profound shift in the book world that has happened contiguously. Her rise has occurred at precisely the moment that self-publishing itself turned from poor second cousin of the printed book into a serious multi-million dollar industry. Two years ago self-publishing was itself denigrated as “vanity publishing” – the last resort of the talentless. Not any more.

Read the full article at guardian.co.uk.

By Mark on thewritersguidetoepublishing.com

No, it’s not a trick question.

Fact is, Amazon may not be selling your 99c ebook for 99c. It may well be selling your 99c ebook for $3.50, and pocketing most of the difference.

For those of you lucky enough to have strong sales from the US market it’s perhaps not something you’ve ever given a thought to. And when you look at the six million Kindlefires expected to be sold over the Holidays, plus all the nooks, it’s really not something you need worry about.

Sellers with a strong US base can expect a bonanza this Christmas season for sure.

But spare a thought for the rest of the world. Because the vast majority of your potential readers don’t live in the USA. And if you’re thinking, So what? Amazon is the world’s biggest book store and my book is available for 99c anywhere in the world, then think again.

Read the full story at thewritersguidetoepublishing.com

Laura Austin runs the BookMachine website and tweetups with Gavin Summers. Follow them on Twitter at @book_machine.

Do you organize real-life events? Social media can help you promote them – and save time, says Laura Austin.

Image © Toby Rhind-Tutt

How do we organize our bi-monthly BookMachine tweetups alongside full time jobs? Well, doing this has only become possible in the last few years, and all thanks to social media. We spend just two to three hours a week on promoting our events. Here are the top five free tools that help us out:

1. Twitter

Twitter works best if you use it little and often – that way you get to follow the trends and keep in touch with your followers, but without losing sight of the rest your life! In other words, it’s extremely addictive but equally extremely effective.

We have been using it for a year and now have over 1,150 followers, many of who come to our parties. We have learnt so much by following interesting people and also extended our network and knowledge of the industry by reading the constant stream of articles on our timeline.

BookMachine’s Top tips:

• use DMs for more personal contact
• always thank people for RTs
• use Tweetdeck to schedule your tweets so you can get on with the rest of your life.

2. Mailchimp

Mailchimp software is ideal for starting out with email campaigns. We send out weekly newsletters to our distribution list. It enables us to easily monitor response rates. The best feature is the mobile app which allows you check data on the move. Using the app you can also add new contacts to your distribution list as-and-when you meet them.

It is very intuitive and provides an array of pre-designed templates to get you started. From the easy-to-follow analytics we can check which campaigns are most read and which articles are clicked on. It’s interesting to see how many people might read the same email up to 18 times!

BookMachine’s Top tips:

• carefully analyze your stats so you increase click through rates
• don’t add folks without asking permission first – if you do they’ll block you and if you are blocked too often you will be blacklisted by anti-spam software
• take the app with your everywhere so you can always add contacts.

3. WordPress

WordPress makes building and updating a website much easier. Previously only a platform for blogging, WordPress has become a fully-fledged web content management system, used by some of the biggest sites on the net. Using free plugins, it is easy to integrate feeds from all our social media profiles, and create a real ‘base camp’ for BookMachine. Once set up, we just add our articles weekly using the handy management tools, and hit ‘publish’, no fancy coding involved!

BookMachine’s Top tips:

• there are a multitude of high-quality (and free) themes available for WordPress, pick one and give your site a more polished look
• don’t buy an expensive web hosting package if you only want a simple blog, host for free using wordpress.com
• use Google’s Analytics code with WordPress so you can track visits to your site (in terrifying levels of detail)
• be sure to add social links to your posts so your content can easily be shared on social media sites.

4. Eventbrite

We have just started using Eventbrite for event sign ups and so far it seems to fit the bill very nicely. It enables you to set up a few events at once and event-goers are then sent invitations, which you can customize. For example, Atwood Tate are sponsoring the drinks at our next event, and we’ve been able to personalize each and every invitation with their logo on it.

You also have the option to insert a map of the venue and attendees can either sign up with their name and company, just their name or anonymously, depending on the type of event you’d like to hold.

BookMachine’s Top tips:

• link up Eventbrite with your Mailchimp account, and easily send out event invitations to your mailing list
• do something interesting with your tickets – we might hold a raffle at the next BookMachine event using them. Maybe.

5. Facebook

We are also quite new to the world of Facebook brand pages. When we first signed up we started an ads campaign so that people who were interested in publishing were enticed with BookMachine adverts. The response rate to this was good, and we made some interesting contacts this way, although we found it to be too expensive to be continued long term.

We have many contacts whose only regular social media usage is with Facebook, so it’s really important to be present here, even if your updates are less frequent than with Twitter or LinkedIn. It’s also a good way to share great content from your website as people can ‘like’ and comment on your posts.

If you do wish to feed your Twitter posts into Facebook, make sure you only do so for tweets marked with #fb. This way there won’t be a content overload.

BookMachine’s Top tips:

• set it up so your WordPress articles feed automatically into your Facebook feed so it runs itself in terms of new content
• similarly set it up so that there are no more than two updates a day – no one wants their Facebook homepage overloaded with posts from one contact
• make sure you like other interesting pages via your Facebook page so that you are able to follow and support others with their marketing too.

Sign up for the next BookMachine party. Simultaneous events are being held in London and Edinburgh on 25th August.

Today is #WriterWednesday and also the second anniversary of #amwriting – which has got me thinking about hashtags. There are now many Twitter hashtags out there that are useful to help writers promote their work, connect with other writers, and – well – write. How do you use them, and which should you use?

If you’re not yet familiar with hashtags, they are simply words or phrases used in tweets with the # symbol in front of them. Make sure you don’t use any spaces or punctuation, and they become links in Twitter that, when clicked, reveal a timeline of everyone whose tweets contain that hashtag. To make the most of your hashtags, include a relevant weblink where appropriate and where space permits.

Here are my top 10 hashtags for writers, with suggestions for how to use them – and a recent example of each plucked from the Twittersphere. Click on a few of them to get a feel for hashtags and how you might use them – and do share any others you’ve found useful in the comments below.

1. #amwriting

Writing can be a solitary experience, and Twitter is a great way of connecting with other writers. It’s like a virtual watercooler. #amwriting is a hashtag started by Johanna Harness as a way of supporting writers and fostering a sense of community. It even has its own website at amwriting.org. Use it to tell us what you’re working on, support and learn from others, and share your experience.

Crossing the 50K mark on this first draft tonight! Over halfway done and still right in the thick of things! #amwriting

July 27, 2011 7:29 pm via TweetDeck Reply Retweet Favorite

@sposcente

Stephanie Poscente

2. #amediting

If you’re at the editing stage, let people know and ask for any advice you need.

Writing is easy but crafting the words and honing the plot sure isn't! #amediting

July 27, 2011 4:20 pm via web Reply Retweet Favorite

@mmrule

mmrule

3. #WriterWednesday

#WriterWednesday or #ww was originally intended as a way to give shout-out to writers / suggest authors to follow, or to share writing tips. In practice, it also covers pretty much anything else to do with writers or writing too.

A big #WriterWednesday shoutout to @johannaharness, whose #amwriting community is two years old today! http://bit.ly/oXUf2S #WW

August 3, 2011 12:56 pm via bitly Reply Retweet Favorite

@publishingtalk

Publishing Talk

4. #writetip

While #WriterWednesday is sometimes used to share writing tips as well as give shoutouts to writers, if you specifically want to share or find writing tips, use #writetip.

Avoiding distractions frees up more time to write http://ow.ly/5OoPh #writing #writetip

July 27, 2011 2:15 pm via HootSuite Reply Retweet Favorite

@JodyCalkins

Jody Calkins

5. #wordcount

For some people, regularly sharing your word count in public can be a great way to stay focused. Use it to share your successes (and failures!) and motivate yourself and other writers.

Today has been an AMAZING success. I successfully avoided writing a single word, leaving my August #wordcount at 777. #campnanowrimo

August 3, 2011 12:42 am via TweetDeck Reply Retweet Favorite

@mightylauren

Lauren Anderson

6. #followfriday

#followfriday or #ff is one of the most popular hashtags on Twitter, used on a Friday to suggest people to follow to your followers. Ideally, don’t just include a list of @usernames – tell us why we should follow the person or people you suggest. You can do them one at a time, or include a list of people grouped together by topic or reason.

#ff can help raise your profile too, if people return the favour, or at least thank you in public. This isn’t why you should do it – but it’s an added bonus if it happens.

Thank you! RT @miss_givans: #ff publishing folk: @LOSTINFICTIONUK @ThebutterflyT @scrollscast @lornableach @helenahalme @publishingtalk

July 29, 2011 11:33 am via TweetDeck Reply Retweet Favorite

@helenahalme

Helena Halme

7. #fridayreads

Another thing you can do on a Friday is tell us what you’re reading. This can be a good way of name-checking other authors your admire – or even promoting yourself if you can persuade your friends to include you in their #fridayreads!

Ideally, include the Twitter @username of the author and official hashtag for the book if either exist; and a link to the book on Amazon. If you have an Amazon Associates account, you might even earn a few dollars (pounds, euros etc.) if people buy your Friday Read on your recommendation.

And if someone else gives a shoutout to one of your books – whether one that you’ve written, or one that you’ve published – retweet it on your own Twitter account, and add it to your ‘Favorite’ tweets.

xoxo RT @thejumbles: Found a package from @penguinusa waiting on my stoop. Rules of Civility, my new #fridayreads; Penguin, my new crush.

July 29, 2011 2:35 pm via HootSuite Reply Retweet Favorite

@penguinusa

Penguin Books USA

8. #writingprompts

Use #writingprompts as a way of engaging with other writers by suggesting a trigger for a story; or to look for writing inspiration yourself. Sarah Salway starts her Twitter day with a writing prompt, for example. Also check #writingprompt (no ‘s’), since this is used too; and maybe throw in an #amwriting for good measure! You’ll notice that many of the hashtags in this list are combined where appropriate.

A writing prompt for today: The subtitle for your life #amwriting #writingprompts

August 2, 2011 7:36 am via web Reply Retweet Favorite

@sarahsalway

sarahsalway

9. #bookgiveaway

Running a book giveaway on Twitter? Use #bookgiveaway to help people discover it.

#bookgiveaway time! Which pig built a house out of bricks? 1st, 2nd or 3rd? Tweet us ur answer & u could win a copy of http://t.co/7MBBNph

August 3, 2011 1:20 pm via web Reply Retweet Favorite

@fridayproject

Friday Project

10. #askagent

You know that you should never pitch to an agent on Twitter, right? They really don’t like it. However, you should follow them, and many are prepared to give advice on Twitter. #askagent is the hashtag to use, which some agents will seek out to answer your questions. #askpub and #askeditor are variations to ask questions of publishers and editors.

OK I am starting the August Open Thread early so you can hit me with your great questions. http://t.co/932UlDV #AskAgent

July 31, 2011 12:59 pm via web Reply Retweet Favorite

@literaticat

jennifer laughran

Let us know which other hashtags you find useful – and find more practical Twitter tips in The Publishing Talk Guide to Twitter.

Suzanne Collier runs bookcareers.com – a specialist careers consultancy that provides independent careers advice and support to those within the publishing industry. Follow her on Twitter at @SuzanneCollier or @bookcareers.

Looking for a job in publishing? Suzanne Collier shares her top ten tips for using Twitter for your job search.

As with all social networking, when it comes to job searching there are some big ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’. Twitter on its own is unlikely to find you a job: you may see jobs advertised (and you’ll need to respond quickly if you do), but it should be used as the means to finding a job, and your personal marketing tool.

1. Do choose your username carefully. To be part of your true job search brand use your own name. Then when you then start sending in speculative enquiries or job applications, as soon as your email or application lands on the recruiter’s desk or inbox you are instantly recognised by your real name – the one on your CV / resumé. Twitter has a unique way of making complete strangers feel like they know you. People repeatedly come up to me at publishing events and introduce themselves saying ‘I follow you on Twitter’ and then launch into a conversation about something I have tweeted or discussed with them on Twitter.
2. Do interact with people. I don’t auto-follow, but aim to respond to all @messages directed to me. Do this with the person who has advertised the job – make them feel like they know you, because you have responded to a tweet, or interacted with them.
3. Do use a real photograph of yourself as your profile image. When you walk into a recruiter’s office for an interview or meet them at a networking event there can be that moment when the recruiter instantly recognises you. ‘Ah, you look exactly like your profile pic’, can be a great start to an interview.
4. Don’t leave your biography blank. If you are in a position to state you are looking for a job then do so in this field. If not, see if you can add your current job title and add something personal too, maybe even some slight humour ‘loves coffee’ ‘loves cake’ are two of the most popular things I read on Twitter biographies. At all times keep your biography professional. If you follow someone and they don’t know you and your biography is blank they are unlikely to follow you back. And remember if you are tweeting for yourself but mention the name of your employer in your tweets then do add ‘all tweets are my own’ to ensure no one believes you are tweeting on behalf of the company.
5. Don’t protect your tweets. Yes, it means everyone can read everything you tweet or Google your tweets, but the whole point of Twitter is that it is an open network. Unless there is a very good reason for protecting your tweets, then make them open. Many people on Twitter are unlikely to follow back someone who has protected their tweets, and your tweets cannot be retweeted. Either participate on Twitter or don’t be on Twitter at all.
6. Do follow people you want to work for. Follow publisher accounts, and people who work for the publisher. Check out who they are retweeting or recommending for a #ff (Follow Friday) – very often it is their ‘own’ people. If you want to work in editorial, for example, see how many book publishing editors you can find on twitter, not so much for you to tweet ‘give us a job’ to them, but so you can get an insight to their job and the work they do. This will help you if you are so fortunate to get an interview with them. There are some very good lists of publishing people who are on Twitter, plus a number of people who have their own Twitter lists. One of mine, for example, is @suzannecollier/recruiters, a great resource if you are looking for a job. As soon as I know someone is tweeting publishing vacancies continuously I add them to the list, so you don’t miss out.
7. Don’t look desperate. Even though you are looking for a job, don’t keep tweeting several times a day that you are looking for a job, as aside from appearing desperate (it is okay – we know you are), it is also dull, boring and unattractive.
8. Do proofread all your tweets before sending. Don’t use swear words or text speak and don’t tweet about things you don’t want your mother to read (my mum is following me on Twitter – that keeps me in check!) The best thing to do is to follow others and watch their lead, or ‘lurk’, before stepping out into the big wide twitterstream.
9. Do look professional. It is imperative that you don’t tweet things that could backfire on your job search and at all times you tweet like the professional person that you are. It is okay for you to say you have lots to do, or are very busy, but if you tweet you are exhausted at 3pm in the afternoon, why would someone want to employ you, if you can’t fulfil a day’s work? Don’t be disrespectful to people on Twitter who don’t reply or offer you an interview, or people who have offered you an interview and you didn’t get the job. Why on earth would someone else then want to interview you if you tweet only bad things about people?
10. Do not tweet between 12 am and 5 am on a weekday unless you are in another time zone, or people know you are stuck somewhere. Again, why would someone want to employ you if they think you are not getting enough sleep? This might sound like something from the dark ages, but in a competitive job market you have to remember that recruiters want to employ people who will give their best. And you are someone who can give their best, so show it.

There are no hard and fast rules about what to tweet; you need to find your own ground, but remember, your future employer may (or may not) be reading your tweets.

This post is an extract from The Publishing Talk Guide to Twitter. Find out more and download a free chapter at www.publishingtalk.eu/guides/twitter.

By Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg in The Wall Street Journal:

In a feat that even the best-selling writers might envy, young-adult author John Green’s latest novel is No. 1 on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com even though he’s still working on it from his comfy La-Z-Boy in Indianapolis.

With “The Fault in Our Stars,” the author has overtaken hot books by Suzanne Collins and Laura Hillenbrand. His book won’t be published until the spring of next year.

It helped that Mr. Green, a 33-year-old who first gained attention in 2005 with his debut novel “Looking for Alaska,” has more than 1.1 million Twitter followers. Mr. Green is published by Dutton Children’s Books, an imprint of Pearson PLC’s Penguin Group (USA), but he does his own thing on the Web. “I don’t take direction from Penguin,” he says.

Continue reading at online.wsj.com.

By Michael Stelzner at socialmediaexaminer.com:

Back in the old days, book promotion heavily relied on the traditional press. I remember the challenge of promoting my first book (Writing White Papers) back in 2006. I had to work with journals and print magazines—and their long editorial cycles. I also needed to speak at physical events and perform many other time-consuming tasks.

The success of a book promotion hinged on getting it reviewed by the “right publications.”

This typically meant spending thousands of dollars on PR firms who had established contacts with elite publications and creating press releases that hopefully caught the eyes of editors. Not to mention a lot of prayer.

Today, authors have an amazing advantage. Not only are there millions of bloggers whose collective audience is larger and more engaged than that of the traditional press, there are also millions of consumers who are one click away from sharing your work with their friends on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Power to the people!

If you can make it easy for people to share and get excited about your book, you won’t need to spend big bucks or hope you make the list of some old newspaper that no-one really reads anymore.

Below I’ll share the techniques I used to help my book go viral with social media.

Read the full post at socialmediaexaminer.com and follow Social Media Examiner on Twitter at @smexaminer.