« January 2005 | Main | March 2005 »

February 25, 2005

eBook Marketing

I love learning about new categories and sales strategies. I've spent so much time in the tech and business book world that I've missed some fun spaces.

We adopted a dog last week. He's about one and we don't know much about his prior history except that although he is generally good natured, he was in a house without kids and cats, while we have a few of each. So this is a new adventure. Our last dog was very obedient from the get-go and lived only to please and if we wanted him to live with cats, that was fine by him. The new guy, Montana, has a much more pronounced prey drive, so we're doing everything we can to try to acclimate him to his new situation while protecting our feline relations.

So, as with anything new in our lives, we first turn to the web for answers. What I've found is a huge market of competing ideas and philosophies on dog training. And a surprising (to me) number of trainers have self-published books or ebooks and they're doing a credible job of online marketing using a mix of free content, eZines, bonus eBooks, add-on videos, audio teasers, forums and email consultations: a many headed hydra of content.

When I have questions about my dog's behavior I want the information right away, and I can tell that other dog owners are in the same boat. These sites make it easy for me to get a sense of the training philosophy and the trainer and offer me lots of free goodies and sneak peeks at useful tips and techniques. You can see one good example at Adam Katz's page here .

What's notable is that these are writers who might not have the kind of profile needed to really make a trade book work, but they can find a reasonable market by selling their books and videos directly to the public, and with a much higher rate of return for each copy sold.

I'm not sure who said "content is king," wait, I've googled it: yes, Bill Gates said this (among others) in an essay from 1996, where he also said, "If people are to be expected to put up with turning on a computer to read a screen, they must be rewarded with deep and extremely up-to-date information that they can explore at will. They need to have audio, and possibly video. They need an opportunity for personal involvement that goes far beyond that offered through the letters-to-the-editor pages of print magazines."

Even for 1996, none of that was really rocket science, but it's certainly the state of the web today, and it obviously works for writers and business-people who can integrate content into their online business model.

Re Montana, we're not very hopeful about the cat situation, but we're going to keep working on desensitization and correction, and while we're at it we'll have plenty of support from online resources as well as professional trainers.

Posted by matt at 9:25 AM | Comments (0)

February 14, 2005

You Say You Wanna Write a Tech Book?

Dave Taylor, grizzled computer book vet that he is, has some advice for anyone who might want to write a technical book.

First off, don't do it for the money. As Dave says, you have to love what you do, and you definitely need to write for more than money. Hey -- fame, respect, future books, better jobs, all these count as decent reasons too.

This doesn't mean that you don't treat prospective deals like a pro, or that you don't expect to make it big on one of your books eventually, but with your first book you'll learn that on an hourly basis the advance for writing a computer book pretty much sucks, and if your motivation isn't higher -- such as truly helping people to understand the topic at hand, or building your own career -- it's just not worth it.

That said, there are ways to make yourself more fortunate: keep in mind that I'm stealing most of these ideas directly from Dave but they bear repeating...

1) Write books that are useful. Dave's Wicked Cool Shell Scripts is a hit for good reason, and it has a distinct market and great publisher behind it.

2) Syndicate, market and extend your brand. Dave does a lot more than books: he writes articles, speaks, syndicates, blogs, and participates in user groups. His web presence supports and expands the market for his books, and his books likewise support what he does on the web.

3) Fight Google with Google. Google, MSDN and countless other web sites are challenging the entire reference category. A few blame MSDN for disappointing .NET book sales, and I think it's easy to blame Google and improved online help for the downturn in lower end reference -- who needs a book anymore to figure out how to format a letter in Word???

Instead of being victimized by Google, Dave works within the framework of Google, selling ad space while simultaneously working to get his various pages ranked as highly as possible. Plus, he found that free advice goes a long way toward finding new readers, and he works at finding cost effective ways to do this.

For more of Dave's wisdom and advice, check out AskDaveTaylor .

Posted by matt at 9:43 AM | Comments (1)

February 11, 2005

Really poor sales for some big business titles

Slate has an interesting article about James Stewart's DisneyWar. Author Daniel Gross projects great sales for this title, and from reading the New Yorker excerpt, it looks promising to me too, but what's really startling are the absolutely terrible sales record of many recent "business dramas." The lowlights are three books about the AOL/Time Warner merger: Fools Rush In, 5,000 copies; There Must Be A Pony In Here Somewhere, 3,744 copies; and Stealing Time, 9,176.

Even the top Enron book did only 70,000.

I can't verify his numbers, but still...even if this is bookscan data and 30% low, that's still pretty bad.

Daniel Gross lays the blame on media saturation and the lack of any real news in these books, and suggests that all the scandals and bad corporate decisions of the last ten years have somehow melted together in our minds.

My favorite Disney book remains Carl Hiaasen's Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World. Carl's not a very big Disney fan, and that's an understatement....

Posted by matt at 7:58 AM | Comments (0)

February 8, 2005

Report Card: this is fun, fulfilling and creative work

I'm slightly more than a month into doing my own thing and it's the best time I've had as an agent. Sure, I won't see royalty checks for maybe a year, and those are the ultimate report cards for any agency, but I have three deals pretty much down, and more on the way. That's not bad for starters.

I've spent much of the first month prospecting, and my first signed contract is with an author I found via her blog. She's not only a kick, she has great potential for future books.

I have to thank the publishers who have been generous with their time and their wish lists, which really helps me to focus. In fact, I'm in the midst of a big push right now and couldn't do it without the partners I've worked with over the last fifteen years.

Authors always acknowledge the folks who contribute to their work, and I'd like to do the same thing on occasion. I have to give a huge thanks to Harold and Phyllis Davis for their encouragement that I go out on my own, as well as for their longstanding friendship. And I thank Dave Taylor and Deke McClelland for their similar encouragement, and Andy Rathbone, John Mueller and Barrie Sosinsky for choosing to bring new projects to me. And thanks to Joe Hutsko and Phil Reed for numerous referrals.

On the publisher side I've had great support from folks at Sams Technical Publishing, Que, Wiley, Peachpit, O'Reilly, McGraw-Hill and many more.

As the header says, this is fun, fulfilling, and creative work for me, and that wouldn't be the case if I didn't have such great partners.

And, as regards my foremost partner, there is no way I could do this without the constant support of my girlfriend, Amy.

I'll have many more acknowledgements to come and I know I've missed some folks, but I have to get back to work.

Posted by matt at 12:32 PM | Comments (0)