Creating a credible poll or survey related to the topic of your expertise and/or book is creating news and if it is at all provocative it could land you some major media.

Doing a survey is time-consuming but worthwhile. You probably want to have at least several hundred responses for it to be a valid and reliable poll. But the pursuit of respondents actually gives you the opportunity to connect with relevant associations, bloggers and others in a way that does not seem self-serving.

A few years ago I was involved in a survey of women becoming authors. We compiled a list of women’s organizations and writing organizations and asked their help in spreading the word that we were doing an important survey, the results of which we would share with them so they could share them with their readership.

We also offered prizes for those who completed the survey – your book would serve this purpose well, but we had Amazon gift certificates, book bags, writing books and other related items to attract the right crowd.

We conducted the survey for about six weeks to allow plenty of time for the organizations to let their members know via monthly newsletter or blog or however they regularly communicated.

We also had relatively few questions, but then ended with an open-ended question that would allow participants to say more if there was something we hadn’t asked that was relevant to them.

In the case of the online dating service survey, they would only have needed to ask two questions: What musical artist is your favorite and would you have sex on the first date. Not a perfect correlation, of course, but good enough for an online dating service!

The important component is the correlation of those two questions that made for a very interesting graphic. Often a survey will find interesting results that vary by gender or age or economic status. Sometimes you have an idea about what results to expect and other times it is a complete surprise, so you have to stay open to asking good questions and doing a thorough analysis of the answers.

The dating service may have asked a lot of questions, but they only sent out a press release on two and their correlation. It is much more effective to find the most interesting results and blog or do a press release on that limited data rather than trying to give all the results.

Listen for the questions people ask when you talk about your book, the kind that start with, “I wonder…” You can certainly explore subjects that were not covered in your book, but that are related in a way that will draw attention to your expertise.

There are techniques used by research institutions and others who regularly do surveys to make sure the questions aren’t leading the respondents in any particular direction, invalidating the survey.

I urge you to keep an eye out for what topic might make an interesting survey. Sending a press release out about your new book is unlikely to get any interest. But if you create news through a poll or survey, you can mention your book and talk about your expertise as an author.

I generally suggest that at least 50% of a book be written (in first draft form) before starting to put any time toward book marketing. You don’t really know what the book is about until you get at least that far into it because a book often takes on new dimensions as it is being written.

If it puts your mind to rest, just know that there are very few things the author must do before the book comes out marketing-wise and many things that can be done months after the publication date. For most books, sales are slow to ramp up (slower than the author would like anyway) and after the book is published the best thing you can do is get out and talk about the book by giving seminars, workshops, webinars, teleclasses and pursuing available speaking engagements on your topic with organizations that need what you do.

But there are some good things to think about that will affect the ultimate marketing of the book as you are writing it:

1. Book Title – Book titles are tricky business. You want the title to reflect the “promise” of the book (be accurate about what the reader will find between the covers), but also be short and clever enough to intrigue a potential buyer. Most nonfiction titles are between 3 and 7 words and then there is a longer subtitle.
What you can do while writing: Pay attention to books you are reading or see in a bookstore or on Amazon and think about what words appeal to you. As you are writing, a title may come to you or you may find it hidden in your chapter titles or headings or just in words or phrases that are already in your book. Just write down words that you think should be in a title without trying to come up with the write order or sequence and keep that list for when the time is right to focus on the title. When you talk to others about your book and describe it, listen to how they respond with their own interpretation of what you told them. Sometimes the author is just too close to the book or the subject but a natural audience member (potential book buyer) can sometimes describe exactly what would appeal to him or her about this book and the words they use are often perfect for a title. Remember, you don’t need to make a final title selection until you are ready to have a cover designer start work, so keep playing with all the possibilities.

1. Book Front Cover – You can’t really do anything to market a book without the cover, but you can’t create the cover until you are set on the title. The intent of the front cover is to create emotional appeal, so you don’t want it to be too busy or cluttered – just the title (in an interesting type font), author name and a graphic that will draw the reader in that has meaning considering the title and the topic of the book.
What you can do while writing: Visit bookstores and Amazon.com to get an idea of what appeals to you. Collect links to the books with covers that are similar to what you might want so you can send them to a book cover designer when the time is right. Don’t get too locked into one idea or concept because a book cover is a package to help sell the book and the professional cover designer can really help you come up with a cover that will do that.

2. Author/Book Website – If you are self publishing, you will need a publishing company name to put on the back cover. If you already have a business name, you may choose to use that or a variation of that name.
What you can do while writing: Do a Google search to make sure someone isn’t already using the publishing company name you are considering for a publishing company name. You will also want to reserve the domain name (perhaps at GoDaddy.com or HostGator.com) so it will be there when you are ready to create your website (or add book pages to your already existing business website). You should also buy your own name as a domain name if it is available and you don’t already have it. Finally, buy the domain that reflects the name of your book title if it is available and once you decide on the title.

3. Media Kit - The media kit will be part of your website that is intended to attract journalists and blog, podcast or radio interviewers. There are typical things that go into the media kit (but there will be time for you to think about those later). What you can do while you are writing: What makes a nonfiction book particularly appealing to the media is when they can reprint (printed or web media) or talk in talking points (radio and television) short bullet points like types and strategies. For instance, “The Top 5 Reasons Why Businesses Fail”. Anything original, such as if you do a poll or survey as a part of your research for the book is also a big media draw, so consider how you might poll your audience about some aspect of the topic on which you are writing.
What you can do while writing: Build in checklists, tips, top 5, 7, 9 or 10 lists as sidebars in your book as you are writing and you will have a better chance of attracting media attention when the book comes out.

4. Testimonials/Foreword – Testimonials are generally used to establish credibility on the back cover of a book. The foreword is strictly optional, but wonderful to have if you know a name-recognized individual who can brag about you and your work in a way you really can’t. Consider who you know who might give you a testimonial (you can have unlimited testimonials and continue to gather them long after your book comes out) or who could write a foreword (there is only one foreword for a book). Make sure you let these people know you are working on a book, but don’t ask for a testimonial or other endorsement until you have a professionally designed copy of the pages in the book (which is after you have completed the writing, had the book edited, had it reviewed by possible audience members and had it proofread).
What you can do while writing: Start a list of people you would like to endorse your book, even if these are people you don’t have a personal connection to now. Brainstorm with friends, business associates and at networking meetings if anyone knows the people you would most like to endorse your book (assuming you don’t have a direct connection). When you need a testimonial is not the time to build the type of relationship where you can ask for one and expect you will get a “yes”. Work on building relationships with bloggers and particularly with other authors you admire during the time you are writing by sending them something of interest you find on the web, information on your poll or survey (if you decide to do something like that) or comment on their blogs with something useful for their readers. Make yourself know to them but in a way that serves them, not you. I personally never give a testimonial to anyone I don’t know well and whose book doesn’t deserve it. My own reputation is important to me so I only say in a testimonial what I really believe to be true. If the book isn’t very good, I won’t be saying it is.

Another thing that might help you not worry so much about book marketing as you are writing is that the best book marketing is free – media opportunities, Amazon.com, interviews with influential bloggers, great testimonials and book reviews – all free. Write a great book and everything else will follow.

Here are my New Years’ Resolutions for Authors who know slow and steady will win the race:

1. Make time for marketing. If you spent two hours a week on emails, phone calls and brainstorming for the next weeks’ calls and emails, you would spend more time than the majority of authors. Plan to take Friday afternoon or Thursday morning or some other regularly scheduled time and devote yourself to a continuing effort of at least six months.

2. Get the basics done and maintain your website. Journalists, potential large volume buyers and those who might want to hire you for consulting, coaching or teaching will look first at your site. Do you know how often I go to an author’s site I’d like to interview and find no easy place to buy, no contact information and no bio? If I were a journalist on a deadline, I’d go on to another author – I just wouldn’t have time to chase you down. Make sure you link your site to any interviews you do – print or broadcast as soon as possible after the interview.

3. Follow the media and get on board their already-running treadmill. Watch Saturday and Sunday morning cable TV – especially CNN, MSNBC and FOX. All three constantly interview authors about the topics that were important during the week. Local morning shows do the same. Look ahead for national holidays and other opportunities to be the expert and make a media list so you can email journalists and others with just the information they need when they need it. Unless you have real news (which you can create with surveys and polls), you will need to get on the treadmill of stories the media is already interested in. Most people try one effort with the media – one press release or email – and then give up. Send something to those on your media list whenever you think you can make a contribution to their work with sources and resources. Create relationships with them – it is about what you can do to make them look good and in-the-know – not about selling books.

4. Get great help when you need it and can maximize it. Hire an author’s assistant when you don’t have time to execute. Hire a publicist or others to help you with marketing ONLY after you’ve done the basics, like preparing your web site and doing some local media yourself. Don’t spend money on advertising, do spend money on expertise and hands-on help.

5. Have the confidence to pursue big wild ideas. If you think a company would be perfect to buy 5,000 (or 100,000) copies of your book, call them. Find out as much as you can about the marketing contact so you can start a business relationship. Don’t expect too much, too soon – this is a long-term strategy. But imagine is you could call one company or organization a week and one out of 50 said yes! This would include potential sponsors, nonprofit organizations and others that share the passion for the topic of your book. Fun is infectious, so make this fun for yourself and for them. Again, this is about what you can do to enhance the company or organization reputation, not about selling books, so think about how you can do that. Blog about how much you admire them and what they do – get on their radar!

I’ve created a Book Marketing Checklist for authors that parallels these ideas that you are welcomed to download at the link. Enjoy and have a very happy and productive 2011!

2. Know your audience. You will have the most success in crafting a message that hits home and solved the problems of your audience if you spend time with them. The audience for your book should be the same as the people who spend money with you – you know they are willing to pay for your expertise and perspectives. You will also want to write just like you talk with them. If you find words you say to clients over and over that they relate to, those are the words that should go in the book. Use “you” as much as possible and not “we” when writing and make suggestions using words like “Consider how you might…” and “Focus on these strategies….”. Try to avoid saying “You must…” or “You should”. Finally, consider how you can keep your own doubt out of your writing by avoiding, “I believe…” or “In my opinion…”. Your audience wants you to be certain of your advice before they trust in your words.

3. Take an inventory of work you have already done. If you are a subject-matter expert, you have probably already done articles, interview, blog posts and more. You can use these as source material, actually put them in the book if they fit or at least use them as inspiration for what to write about. If you don’t have an inventory of work done, this might be your first step in writing your book. Many are intimidated by the idea of an entire book, but an article or blog post seems more doable.

4. Start with any chapter. (or any checklist or any paragraph). You don’t need to start at the beginning. In fact, your Introduction (if you have one), should be written last. No one will ever know in reading the finished book where you started and how. Just getting words on paper is tough, so whenever the must strikes, just write. You can decide on where it fits in later. After you do enough writing, books tend to organize themselves. If you are the type of person who likes to do outlines and plan, do that. If not, just write.

5. Get help and support. Why do we think we should be able to write a book? You don’t learn how to do it in college and there really is a method to the madness. A book coach can help with creating the most marketable and transformational book for the audience as well as keeping you on focus and on track. An author’s assistant can help with the practical manuscript-prep items, like audience research, organizing already-existing inventory and more. Just make sure you are working with someone who has a lot of experience helping authors create successful books.

Here are two downloads, the first called How to Build a Marketable Nonfiction Book and the second, From Idea to Published: How to Get it Ideas on Paper that might help give you some additional ideas.

One of the most affordable coaching programs (in my humble opinion) is at www.eWomenPublishing.com. Take a look at the website for more information about how you can succeed with your book in 2011. Enjoy!

Some important considerations about covers:
1. The title should be visible from at least ten feet. When you see an author interviewed on television, can you read the title when the interviewer holds up the book? Many covers have a white or very light color background to maximize title readability.

2. The only essential information for the front cover is the title and the author’s name. Popular titles right now are one word titles, like Switch and Drive, followed by a subtitle with “how to…” or “7 strategies to…”

3. Do not clutter the front cover with too many graphics or too much text. There is a tendency for the new author to think they have to cram as much as possible on that front cover or no one will see it. The front cover should be used to generate emotional impact and then the back cover gives the logical buying reasons.

4. And speaking of the back cover, there probably won’t be a back cover for electronic books, but there is plenty of space to put testimonials, the author bio and other information in the back of the book.

5. If you plan to sell in bookstores (even event bookstores), don’t forget the design of the spine, that small space between the front and back covers. Most books on a shelf have the spine out and the title should look interesting and be very readable.

6. Take some time to browse the bookstore and see what covers grab your attention and which don’t. Even major publishers put out books with bad covers – covers that don’t represent the promise of the book or don’t sell it effectively.

7. Work with a professional cover designer – don’t try to do a book cover design yourself. It is probably the single most important investment you make in your book – other than the time you took to write it.

CBS Sunday Morning recently did a segment on book covers. It was interesting to note that publishers have different covers in different countries. Here is the link to the program if you’d like to see it: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7165161n&tag=cbsnewsVideoArea.0

Let me get more specific about what activities you should be undertaken in each area.

60% of Your Book Marketing Efforts:

1. Blog. Blog about individuals you’ve met on the road and organizations doing good on the subject of your passion (and your book).  Also give advice to celebrities and others. Have a strong opinion and always advocate for your passion. Once a week would be great, once a month at a minimum. Use social media only to bring other people to the attention of your followers through the blog. Never (in my opinion) mention your book in your blog. Instead, have a link to buy your book and show it, but don’t mention it. People are allergic to self-promotion at this point. They want an authentic person who cares about what they care about.

2. Create Community. The blog will attract the target audience. Make a space with them to communicate with you and each other. Use your own site (or create one with Ning.com) for people to congregate and get resources and inspiration. Resist the temptation to curb discussion that you don’t like, but respond to all the comments yourself. Help continue the dialogue.

3. Keep working on your online media kit. Keep it updated at least weekly. Think of new interview questions. Here is a download on what should be on your author website and media kit. These are the essentials but you can get creative from here.

4. Create articles that will stand the test of time. I created 20 articles over 5 years ago to promote my book and not a month goes by that one of those articles is used by a new source (literally, not a month). I did almost all my articles as top 5, 7, 9 or 10 lists. Two of my lists were picked up by the New York Times online over the past two years. Investor’s Business Daily did a full column on me and my book three years after the book came out. Look back at your book to create the lists or make new lists when subjects seem relevant to what the news media might be looking for.

25% of Your Book Marketing Efforts:

1. Read and watch television. Read overall consumer newspapers and magazines, like the New York Times, Wired Magazine and the Wall Street Journal. Watch CNN, MSNBC and Fox News, especially the weekend morning shows where they tend to interview authors. Stay up to date with what the media considers important in the area of your passion and advocacy.

2. Plan a strategy for jumping on the media treadmill that is already moving. Figure out who you need to know – which journalist or reporter will want a connection with you because you can help them with expert opinion and interesting stories. The media loves stats, so if you can do a survey (with over 1,000 respondents) then you have real news.

15% of Your Book Marketing Efforts:

1. Brainstorm the wild ideas. Take a half hour on Friday to talk to others, to think yourself and to decide which two calls you will make next week where you can make a big connection that might lead to a big advocacy opportunity for you. This should include people you already know as well as those you don’t. Your job is tor bring big ideas to them – the kind they can get excited about based on their own passions. This isn’t about you, it is about a new way to serve the group you served in your book.

2. Plan for networking. If you will be attending any networking events, plan to advocate for your passion. I recommend you do not take any books to networking events. Only first-time authors think they need to show off their work for credibility. Don’t give away books and don’t sell them unless you are the event speaker.

Final Advice: Stay focused and don’t get distracted. Don’t spend money at this point on publicity, ads or other marketing efforts. The only exception would be to hire an author’s assistant if you need additional hands-on execution help. The only other exception is spending money on your website. I highly recommend you get a WordPress site, and get a good designer (I have a great one in the Philippines). This shouldn’t cost you more than $500 to start.  If you can’t make changes on your site, you will lose a lot of time.  You or your author’s assistant should be able to update graphics, add media and content in minutes.

Desperate authors who haven’t achieved the sales success they think they should have start spending money. If instead they got more strategic and took action, they would have a lot more success. You have to be willing to invest time in thinking and thinking big and then you have to be willing to consistently send emails and make phone calls. Let me know how you do!

So let me make it simple for you and I promise if you just follow this formula you will get all the media you want, and over time, all the sales you can.

Here’s my simple formula:  Spend 60% of your time on the basics (defined in a moment), 25% of your time on what is in the news already and 15% of your time in wild ideas and you’ll do just fine.

60% of Your Book Marketing Time- You must be an outspoken advocate for the cause you passionately discuss in your book.  You must truly care for the people you are helping in your book and every communication you have with media, in your blog, etc. must be advocating for that group.  The minute you turn to think about money, your sales, etc. the entire equation is changed and you introduce fear, resentment, wanting to work on other projects.  Your audience can feel the shift and you won’t like the results.  If you need to gain energy for the continued pursuit of the passion you wrote about, then take time to do that.  Never stop advocating – don’t ever sell.

How you will actually spend your time?  Figuring out ways to help and acknowledge other people.  Figure out ways to speak and get your message out, find ways to collaborate and partner with others to make the world a better place.  Stay in a service frame of mind and everything else will follow.

The other thing you must stay on top of in this 60% of your effort is your author website.  Make is a media center.  Make it so journalist/reporter friendly that they feel fortunate to have found it.  Don’t make them ask for anything.  Have several photos of the author and book (in high resolution JPG so they can use it for print if they want).  Have interview questions and answers.  Have the author bio done as a journalist would do it – just the facts, not a lot of editorial comments.  And probably most importantly, have links and copies of any audio or print or broadcast media you’ve done in the past. Media leads to more media.  So start local, build to regional and national, but any time you get any media – post it on your site.

25% of Your Book Marketing Time – Watching news media, especially what is on Saturday mornings on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News.  They interview authors all the time.  But think about this:

When would the media naturally cover your passion? Do you know what the media is already writing about or covering on radio or TV? It is a lot easier to fit into what they are already covering than to convince them to do something special.  If you have a book on women’s history and March is Women’s History month – focus on how to get interviewed then.  If you have a book on couples, focus on Valentine’s Day or February in general because the media will be interested in new approaches – not on your timetable but when they naturally do stories on this.

Where (which media) would your story naturally fit? You need to find ways to constantly stay on top of the news.  Sign up for Google alerts will help, but reading and most importantly watching television is the way to do it.  When there is a story that you are the perfect expert to comment on tweet, blog and pick up the phone and find the reporter you need to talk to.  If you have a list of media that is right for you ahead of time, you won’t have to work so hard to find that email or phone number.

Why (under what circumstances) would you naturally get media coverage? Last weekend MSNBC covered a book on National Parks because that weekend there were free passes into all national parks.  This week, many authors discussed food safety.  There is so much opportunity if you know who to call and when.  But being prepared with a great author website (go back to the 60%) is your key to taking advantage of opportunities.  When I ran a publishing company, we had a book called True Odds about the probability of things happening. We had about 3 hours to prepare our author for an on-site interview at our offices with NBC Nightly News when both a Kennedy family member and Sonny Bono both were killed in the same week by skiing into trees.  What were the odds of that kind of skiing accident the news media wanted to know.

15% of Your Book Marketing Time - Go for broke, have no fear and pursue your wildest dreams.  One of my favorite stories is about Jennie Nash, author of many fiction and non-fiction books.  She wrote a book on breast cancer a number of years ago and her husband came home with a newspaper one day and showed her that Ford Motor Company was a major sponsor of the Susan G. Komen foundation, a well-known breast cancer advocacy and support group.  Without hesitating, Jennie went to the Ford web site and found the name and number of the marketing director at Ford…and she picked up the phone.  They started a conversation about Jennie’s book that resulted in a sale of 100,000 books to Ford.  She was also a paid national spokesperson for them for three years.

What is stopping you from doing something like that?  What if you made two wild and crazy phone calls like that every week.  What if one of them actually worked?  Is it worth taking the time to figure out what the collaborations you might find with your book and doing a little Google research to understand your possible new partner and his or her passions?  I think so.

Final comment:  70% of your success actually depends on whether you wrote the best book you could in solving the problems of the audience of readers.  I am assuming that in my marketing formula.  I am also assuming you had a professional cover designer and interior designer if you self published.  Even if you worked with an established commercial publisher, your input on cover and interior design is essential.  Look at how books look on the TV screen.  Notice how you can read the titles on some and not on others?  Make sure your title is easy to read (and preferably your name as well), even in a small reproduction of the book.  I am sure you know by now that you as the author are the chief advocate for your book.  So gratefully accept any publicity or other help you get from your publisher.  And if you see a great opportunity, by all means see if they have contacts you can call or they can call.

Let me know if you think these ideas make sense for you.  Weigh what you are doing now against the formula and make changes to your approach.  This also goes if you are hiring marketing or publicity help or are working with an author’s assistant.  Their work should follow this formula as well.  I promise you will see the difference.

Never hold anything back in your book. Give it all away. If you can be replaced by a book, then you should be replaced by a book. If you are keeping some secrets because you are afraid if you give them all away in your book you won’t have clients, then you shouldn’t have clients. If you don’t provide more customized advice or energy to your clients than you can in a book, then they should buy a book and not pay for your more expensive services.

Whenever I write or speak, I intend to give away everything I know. The more I give, the more I enable my prospective clients to value and understand what they would get from me if we work together.

Your readers need you – don’t let them down. That is why this idea of writing a book in a weekend or a week is so wrong. I defy anyone to give their best to the reader by writing a book in a weekend. It can take me hours to write a blog post.

The idea of the special communication that exists between writer and reader when a book is delivered from one to the other is something that will continue whether the medium is an iPod, an iPad or a computer. The medium can only enhance the message – if you keep your eye on the ball – your target reader.

The most valuable use of Facebook, Twitter, your web site and other social networking opportunities is to get feedback from and a clearer understanding of your target reader – not to sell. How many messages do you get every day from people who want you to read their book, take their class, attend their workshop – in other words, do something for them?

Software developers, in particular, get this right. If you use WordPress, like I do, you will see that WordPress plugin developers get a tremendous amount of feedback from their users. Some of it kind, some of it not, but all of it targeted at letting the developer know what works, what doesn’t and what the user would like instead of or in addition to what the developer has put out there. I’m so impressed by the developers (Ravi Jayagopal of Digital Access Pass, a membership software comes to mind) who are in constant dialogue with their users. They blog about their new 1.2 version, send it out to be beta tested by a few or many, and then get tens if not hundreds of comments. From these comments they create new lists of items to be released or changed in version 1.3. What an amazing system of feedback from the developer of the intellectual property to the exact people who want it and back from the users to the developer.

This is where we are going as writers, if you aren’t there already. The community of users of your work is the only thing that matters. They are the target audience. Your job is to have such wonderful back and forth communication with them that you know exactly what they need in your next blog post or book. You won’t have any trouble with sales if you know who your fans are and how to solve their problems.

Apple, Google and Amazon have a strong bond with their users and they are helping build ways (along with others) to enhance your ability to communicate directly with your users without third parties (like publishers).

Too many writers are taken in by all the marketing hype that marketing is king. Communication is king and marketing communication is just one kind. But marketing communication tends to be very broad brush – throwing a message out there to attract the widest possible audience. And the fact that you are supposed to reach a national audience before you publish a book scares many aspiring authors.

You know that feeling you have when you’ve just worked successfully with a client or you’ve just taught a workshop and you can see by the nodding heads that they got what you said? Stay with that feeling. Whatever you said to the client or the workshop group – that is what your readers want to feel and know.

Next time you tweet refer to a resource, ask a question or give an opinion. Stop making all your social media about the newest, greatest, most spectacular product you’ve just released or the newest greatest products of your affiliates. Help others get off of buying overload and back to real communication and focus on what’s really important. It all starts with you and that one most important person in the life of any author – the target reader.

And FYI – that is how books will be sold in the future, especially when they are primarily available electronically – when the author’s reputation for great content is what matters.

There are times to request feedback – when you are just finished writing and before you publish. One of the smartest ways to get feedback is with a professional peer and audience review of your work before you self publish or send your manuscript off to your commercial publisher.

There is a process for doing this that I’m happy to share with this Reviewer Download(click to get it).

This is feedback in a controlled environment. Unfortunately, like it or not, we receive feedback too early to be useful (“You are writing about what?) and too late (“I found 4 typos in chapter 3!”).
Some feedback is honestly intended to be helpful and some is just an I’m-still-better-than-you-even-though-you-wrote-a-book in disguise.

To become a successful and happy author you need to be able to draw the line both in when and how to receive feedback and what feedback to accept and what to reject.

I got a lovely thank you note the other day thanking me for something I had done for the sender but then offering to give me feedback if I wanted it. Whoever offers to give feedback if they have something nice to say? If someone uses the old “Are you open to feedback?” you both feel trapped into saying “yes” (because good people are open, right?) and stuck listening. I say, feel free to say “no” if you really aren’t and no explanation is needed.

Feedback can be very destructive when we don’t decide where and when and from whom to accept it. I hear sad stories all the time of individuals who wanted to become writers but who received early negative feedback from English teachers that stayed with them for a lifetime. These people never recovered their confidence and assumed this feedback was not only right, but forever.

On the other hand, to be fair to those who give feedback (especially to those who do it for a living like I do), if you and I are having a conversation and you spend more than 2 minutes complaining about something I know something about – expect feedback. If you don’t want feedback, then tell me that upfront. But in fairness to all, don’t complain (and yes, 2 minutes is my real standard) and expect the rest of us to sit in silence, especially if we’ve heard this same complaint before. And while we’re on the subject, don’t ask for feedback and then kill the messenger. If you asked for it, then you need to be prepared for the possibility it might be negative.

Another thing about feedback – it requires no action on your part. It is a gift for which you politely than the giver and then choose to use or not, like the fondue pot you got for your wedding, still in the box and left in the basement.

However, if you’ve gotten negative feedback that’s really eating you up inside – tell a few other trusted people. Which is not to say that you should gossip about the feedback-giver (“Can you believe she would say that to me after all the things she’s messed up?!). One opinion does not a true statement make. Check it out with a few other people you trust. If you get an honest, “You know, she’s really right about that,” from others, then you might want to pay a little more attention.

And taking that a step further (again) even legitimate feedback requires no immediate action on your part. Give yourself some time to decide what course of action you want to take.

Back to your book – the peer and audience review process is your chance to test your own emotional response to feedback. More books have not been published because the author wasn’t ready to be that vulnerable than for any other reason.

I hope this has made you think about your own feedback delivery. You owe honest feedback to those who ask for it, delivered with compassion. Not being honest is leaving the person to hear the truth from someone else – often the market after going to tremendous time and energy expense. The kinder thing to do is to tell the truth as you see it. You might want to give feedback like this: “I like what you said, but what I think might make it better is if you…”

Bottom line: I’ve had dozens (really) of people come back to me, sometimes years later, to thank me for something I told them which they didn’t want to accept at the time, but that made a shift in their thinking.

One last thing about feedback – If you are giving something (like your book or other project) everything you’ve got, then you will take feedback from anyone and everyone willing to give it. If your ego is at stake, you won’t. Just a good barometer about what you’ve got invested to know whether your ego or the project is more important to you right now. No judgment here – sometimes your sense of self has to trump other things and it is important to know when that is true. The more confident we are, the less we worry about ego and the more the book (and what we can give to the reader) becomes the focus. Do what you need to to boost your own confidence and get help in analyzing feedback and maintaining perspective.

Reader feedback is going to make the ultimate difference in how your book sells, so working on that part of yourself that knows how and when to ask for feedback and what feedback to accept and what to reject will be an important skill for the author.

Most of us inside the industry are shocked only by how slowly the world of book publishing is catching up to what has happened and is happening to every other business and the common business models.  In short, middlemen are out and direct from creator to consumer is in.  There are very few business models that have so many people involved for so little money per unit.  Because there were high barriers to entry until the mid-1990s, book publishing was able to use an awkward model and still make it work very profitably.  Then, of course, the technology we all know and take from granted changed the playing field, not just a little, but dramatically. Two things in particular turned book publishing from a rich company’s sport to an every person hobby:  Personal computers which allowed for desktop publishing (in the late 1980s the cost for even a reasonable typesetting system for a smaller publisher was $250K) and the Internet (which made Amazon possible, which made international distribution possible for anyone who wrote and published a book).

Many other business models have had this sort of revolutionary change, the most similar to book publishing is the music industry.  The music industry went from mega-labels that only signed the most bankable stars and produced record albums then cassette tapes then CDs at a very profitable gross margin to a place where you buy any single song you want for 99 cents from iTunes to download to your MP3 player.  You probably know the artist, but do you have any idea what label the song came from (assuming there was one, at least one you might have heard of)?

This radical shift in business model is not sad, it is glorious.  Consumers rule.  Authors and creators of other intellectual property rule.  And the market decides what it wants and when and how it wants it.  No record label executive or publishing company CEO or acquisitions editor decides what you publish and what you read.

So, with all that in mind, I hope you enjoy reading this New Yorker article by Ken Auletta as much as I did:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/04/26/100426fa_fact_auletta

He got some things right and others wrong. Early in the article it says that the book publishing industry expects ebooks to account for 25% to 50% of the market eventually.  Make that 90% – at least.

The article rightly explains the economics, almost:

Traditionally, publishers have sold books to stores, with the wholesale price for hardcovers set at fifty per cent of the cover price. Authors are paid royalties at a rate of about fifteen per cent of the cover price. A simplified version of a publisher’s costs might run as follows. On a new, twenty-six-dollar hardcover, the publisher typically receives thirteen dollars. Authors are paid royalties at a rate of about fifteen per cent of the cover price; this accounts for $3.90. Perhaps $1.80 goes to the costs of paper, printing, and binding, a dollar to marketing, and $1.70 to distribution. The remaining $4.60 must pay for rent, editors, a sales force, and any write-offs of unearned author advances. Bookstores return about thirty-five per cent of the hardcovers they buy, and publishers write off the cost of producing those books. Profit margins are slim.

An author whose contract says that he or she is paid royalties based the list price and gets 15% has a pretty good contract.  But only those authors who are in a position to negotiate generally have their books come out in hard cover.  For most new authors, their books are published in soft cover from the beginning, they get only a 10% royalty and the royalty is based on the net price (the $13 that the publisher actually gets if we use the example above), not the list price.  So the author’s royalty at 10% would be $1.30 per book, not $3.90. Profit margins are worse than slim – they are virtually nonexistent.

If you take out the distribution and printing costs, covering publisher overhead like rent and staff because you don’t sell a printed book and you don’t sell them in bookstores, a whole new prof picture emerges.

The article shares this quote from Tim O’Reilly, the founder and C.E.O. of O’Reilly Media, about publishers: “They think their customer is the bookstore,” he says. “Publishers never built the infrastructure to respond to customers.”

And who is it that caters to readers and not bookstores?  Authors.

In probably the most important section of the article is this:
In Grandinetti’s view (Amazon executive), book publishers—like executives in other media—are making the same mistake the railroad companies made more than a century ago: thinking they were in the train business rather than the transportation business. To thrive, he believes, publishers have to reimagine the book as multimedia entertainment. David Rosenthal, the publisher of Simon & Schuster, says that his company is racing “to embed audio and video and other value-added features in e-books. It could be an author discussing his book, or a clip from a movie that touches on the book’s topic.” The other major publishers are working on similar projects, experimenting with music, video from news clips, and animation. Publishers hope that consumers will be willing to pay more for the added features. The iPad, Rosenthal says, “has opened up the possibility that we are no longer dealing with a static book. You have tremendous possibilities.”

Authors, pay attention to this. the more you can reimagine your two-dimensional words on a page becoming three-dimensional with web interactivity, visuals and audio, and iPhone apps, the more you will be able to keep up with the pace of change and have a real chance of selling your book profitably, yourself.

While I think the article does give some insight into what the publishers are thinking and how they see themselves competing with the help of the device and application developers Apple, Amazon and Google, it misses the forest for the trees because it still focuses on publishers.

Publishers as we know them right now are not going to exist. There will be a continued reduction in their numbers and mid-sized publishers will be purchased or go out of business (a trend started at least in the mid-1990s if not before). Micro publishers (you and I) will continue to grow and we will bring out intellectual property to Amazon and Apple. The larger publishers will cater to mega-media stars and the books they publish will be part of a star’s overall branding strategy (not much of a change from the current mode). Publishers will cease pretending they are looking for new talent to develop. They want to only developed bankable talent.

If publishers could have seen this trend 15 years ago (and a number of us did) and had decided to get closer to authors by providing meaningful ways to help them develop and give them feedback (instead of creating less of a relationship and fewer services to authors), then publishers might have a meaningful role in the new dynamic. Instead, they decided to get closer to bookstores, who are now closing in record number. A critical mistake. They chose the middleman instead of the creator because they thought that was where the money was.

What authors needed then and still need now is a way to develop their thinking and a closer connection with their readers. Before Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, publishers were in the best place to provide was focus groups with the target audience, community development and teams of editors to create and give feedback and encourage and teach new authors how better to communicate their ideas. Instead, publishers provided less feedback, less encouragement, less teaching with every year. A publisher’s intellectual capital was in the heads of their editors who knew what it took to write a great book, to organize it in a way that was spell-binding to readers and to package it in a way that was catnip to readers. That kind of valuable expertise is developed over years of experience, seeing so many books that don’t work and developing a knack for understanding what does. What great editors did that was so valuable was to teach writers to become authors – to help them think through concepts, to challenge them to make them better writers and better thinkers. Editors represented the target audience member for the author and never let the author forget who he or she was writing for. Most of these experienced editors have been let go or may be part of the executive team at their publishers, but few authors have the opportunity to work with these people. Editors are now asked to take on 50 authors at a time instead of the more reasonable 12 to 18 many years ago.

Authors have no loyalty to their publishers because they have no reason to be loyal. And these same authors, some of whom have hired book coaches and ex-editors to mentor them because they had to get mentoring from somewhere, will be taking their highly developed intellectual property and reader communities direct to the market with no publisher needed.

I don’t think there is time for publishers to make this shift now. I think that time, for most book publishers, has passed. There still may be room for a few publishers who decide to focus on quality of books, development of and investment in people and IP. But from the quotes we see in the article from publishers, I don’t see any indication that they get where they missed the boat and that they are still missing it. Authors now have other options of where to develop, where to create audience connection and where to sell – all because publishers didn’t understand what their core strengths were.

So authors, your best strategy is to get good help, build community with readers and own your own intellectual property. Develop that intellectual property across media platforms. Don’t sell rights you don’t need to sell. And don’t fall into the get-rich-quick trap. Your best opportunities still lie ahead.