Book Blog gig widens at CHC

My new mantra about blogging comes from the phrase Hillary Clinton made so popular -- it takes a village. Or, I guess the truth is, in my case it does.

After nearly a year of guilt in which I struggled to post twice a month, I've decided to take the advice we give our clients every day and figure out a way to post frequently. So, I'm sharing the space and my colleagues graciously offered to help me fill it. "Barbara's Blog" officially becomes "The Push Behind the Book" and will feature the thoughts and ideas of everyone here at CHC and some beyond.

Sara Schneider, our Digital Media Director, will weigh in often about the growing importance of digital media, blogs, social networks, and the online world's increasing clout in launching a book.

Dennis Welch, who heads our Christian Division, will write about faith-based books and what makes them succeed or fail.

I will continue to weigh in on the publishing community at large.

And we plan to invite our authors and others in the publishing community to guest blog on their great books and how they are being received by the world at large.

We’re trying to make our blog more than just a forum for our ideas -- it's part of our effort to educate ourselves in every way we can about digital media and how it’s truly changing the way books and ideas are introduced into the market. Being active participants in this world has really been the best teacher of all.

Media, media, media

Our authors have been getting some great media coverage recently and we wanted to start sharing it on our blog. We (primarily I, Sara, aka the CHC digital maven) are going to be doing this a couple of times a month, but will post more frequently with big hits come in.

Last Friday night Stall Points authors Derek van Bever and Matt Olson were interviewed on Fox Business Network's "America's Nightly Scorecard." We've just started using RedLasso.com to get clips, and highly recommend it if you can get a beta invite. Here's a link to their interview here. Derek and Matt are blogging and the book also got some nice online attention as well: here and here.

In her June 26 "Ask Annie" column last week, Fortune's Anne Fischer had nice things to say about Steve Little's The Milkshake Moment. The discussion continues on her blog, where people are posting their own "milkshake moments" or (or lack of them).

Finally, last week also saw the debut of CNBC-TV producer extraordinaire Gloria McDonough-Taub's new business book blog, Bullish on Books. The woman is inundated with business books everyday, so she really knows what she's talking about! Our own Jack Mitchell's Hug Your People was mentioned in her inagural post.

Connecting with our community

I've been attending BEA, the annual book convention, for more years than I care to admit -- I remember when it was the ABA, recall the year it rained through all the outdoor parties in Miami, and even recollect the year that Oprah announced her own book, a deal she famously pulled out of before turning around to be the biggest advocate for reading and books the country has ever seen.

It never gets old to me, spending time with tens of thousands of people who passionately love books -- it's like getting a snapshot of the many talented hands it takes to turn a great author's idea into an equally terrific book.

Dennis, Sara, Lew and I holed up miles from the convention center at the boutique Ambrose Hotel in Santa Monica, a place we highly recommend if you're heading west and have any concerns about your environmental impact -- a very green hotel.

Our convention highlights and a few photos:
**World Cafe in Santa Monica where we celebrated with our friends from 800-CEO-READ (their book is coming out from Portfolio in early 2009).

**We all are forced to live vicariously through Sara, who wrangled an invite to the exclusive book party at Prince's house. We were jealous, but I helped out on wardrobe and at least my dress got to go to the Purple One's backyard and party until the wee hours of the morning.

**Lew scored Rick Riordan's autograph for her son Cody and tells us it was a huge thrill to meet the man "who inspired my son not only to read, but to become an avid reader."

**Barbara waited 30 minutes to say hello to Ethan Canin who was signing his new book America, America. She worked on Blue River with him in 1991 and reports he's still the "nicest and most talented novelist I've ever had the chance to work with."


Our goodie bags -- Sara made her famous toffee and marshmallows and my son posed for our promotional photo along with stacks of our great books.


Dinner at the Wilshire Restaurant with our friends from Gallup.


Dennis and Gallup editor Piotr Juszkiewicz with their selected reading material picked up on the convention floor.



We share a moment of levity before boarding our planes back home -- to the east coast and the heart of Texas.

Good show, good memories, always a great time.

Kindle boasts success; Reader gets my Nod

Jeff Bezos is welcoming customers to the homepage today of Amazon today with news that the Kindle is back in stock. His cover note (.pdf) on the online seller's site links not only to the company's annual letter to shareholders, which is all about the electronic reader, but also boasts of the product's more than 2,000 reviews to date.

Apparently, the Kindle is living up to its hype - at least in terms of sales.

As I reported earlier this month, I finally caved to the groaning weight of manuscript pages and traded paper for a Sony Reader. And after a couple of weeks, I would say I qualify as a convert, but not an evangelist, for the whole idea of digital book.

Advantages first -- it's light, easy to use, and quick to download Word documents and PDFs. While I have yet to crack the manual (reading directions is not my strong suit), it is straightforward enough to figure out how to pop up the font size, browse through a selection of downloaded files and bookmark a page. I am currently carrying five books around with me and I love the ease of dropping one, slim, leather-bound gadget into my bag. The cover is a nice touch, too, by the way. Earlier versions of the Reader felt more like a PDA, or a Blackberry on steroids. For the book lover, it's nice to open an actual cover. For the multi-tasker, it's great to have more than one option of reading material when you are stuck at the DMV or waiting for a meeting to start.

The biggest downside for me is still the screen -- harder to read than a computer. Another glitch happens almost every time you hit the "next page" button. It flips quickly enough, but often repeats the first sentence or two of the previous page on top of the new page, something that can grow annoying rapidly. I have yet to figure out how to alter the screen's brightness (yes, I realize that the manual must cover this but I have not gotten that far).

I have started carrying the Reader with me wherever I am and conducting my own market research -- looking either for validation that it is the next iPod or evidence that the paper book will never cease to exist. From bankers to bloggers, the initial reaction is always interest. The more technically inclined tinker with it a bit and scan a page or two; the less digital tend to examine the packaging. The overall response -- mostly positive, but no one seems inclined to rush out and buy one.

All the opinions together are probably best summed up by 800-CEO-Read's Todd Sattersten who was in Austin last week and had a few minutes to fiddle with the Reader over breakfast and discussion of his just completed Portfolio book, The 100 Best Business Books of All Time. "They just aren't there with it yet," says Todd, whose office holds both an earlier version of the Reader and a Kindle.

As for me, I'm a convert for my work reading, but not sure I will ever feel the urge to download War and Peace. The skeptics say I'll change my tune on an overseas flight. But anyone who has been stranded without a power cord knows, the pages of a book never need a battery.

Publishers Do Their Part to Save the Planet

The publishing industry is doing its part to go green with two major publishers now equipping its staff with Sony Readers.

New York magazine reported that The Hachette Book Group has distributed the electronic gadgets to its editors and sent out the word to agents that it wanted digital files and not paper submissions. Publisher Jonathan Karp is quoted as saying that not only are they working, but that "people are evangelical about it."

Last week, Random House followed suit, according to a piece in PW Daily which reports that the publisher bought the devices for its sales staff to read each season's titles.

For the high tech crowd, this may seem a no-brainer, but for an industry whose lifeblood is printed words on physical page, I believe it's a quantum leap ahead. I've spent nearly twenty years in offices full of shelves that groan under the weight of paper manuscripts held in the center with a rubber band. Hardly practical, it was somehow part of the mystery and romance of being in the book business to read pages BEFORE they made their way into a book.

But it is clear time for romance to cede to practicality and to the needs of the planet.

My Reader is due to arrive next week and while I wish I could claim it was all due to the noble mission of environmentalism -- I do admit that the major factor in my decision is just the sheer pain of dragging manuscripts through security and onto airplanes during my twice-monthly commute to New York. My shoulders hurt at the memory of my last trip when my bag held one business suit, two shirts, and five manuscripts.

I am sure I will be pleased when my Kinko's bill plummets. Whether I become evangelical about it is yet to be seen. I'll report back on how I like it here in the blog, a very "green" medium, by the way.

A Virtual Hug in the Cold, Digital World (or Yesterday a Blog Entry Fell into My Lap)

Yesterday was just one of those days. A storm zapped one of our routers, disabling the network and leaving us limping along. Forced to rely on an email system that was less than optimal and definitely not what I was used to, I committed what I can only guess is considered the worst of all technological and public relations sins. Unbeknownst to me, my email began adding the name ROBERT after each first name greeting I typed. Worse yet, it was in bright red font with a single line through it. Something along the lines of "Dear Andrea, ROBERT," Lovely. Just the personal, customized approach I was looking for.

Or not.

I realized what had happened when I got an almost immediate reply from someone on the West Coast, saying certainly I could "do better than this." It was followed quickly by another from a famed marketer with the single word -- "OUCH." Only on these notes could I see how my email was being delivered, with a flaming red errors and mark outs. Ouch is right, although as I went back through my sent items folder and discovered that I'd sent out nearly 300 notes with the same mistake, I wanted to declare myself dead rather than merely wounded.

I tramped off to the dinner table, a grim expression on my face. We play a game every night at dinner, one that I invented after discovering that asking my three kids how school was that day resulted in blank stares and single word replies. Instead, we now go around the table, playing high/low, with each person sharing the best thing and the worst thing that happened to them that day. I was last. When I had reached the end of my embarrassing email snafu, my fourteen year old, who rarely thinks I do anything right, looked me straight in the eye and said, "That's it?" She insisted that I was being ridiculous and only needed to send a brief explanation. "No one is perfect," she huffed before disappearing once again behind her bedroom door. No one indeed.

And that is when, lo and behold, our high tech, steely cold world dissolved. I sent my apology note, praying that I would not be blasted on someone's blog tomorrow for my mistake. Cheery note after sweet email began landing in my box. ABC was particularly kind, with several staffers there dismissing my mistake with a "no worries" reply. I felt more than loved when journalists at Time, Reuters, Good Morning America, The Wall Street Journal, Ad Age, MSNBC, CNBC, and dozens of others responded with nice notes, mostly saying how they or their colleagues have made similar mistakes. These notes outnumbered the attackers by a long shot, with 10 "no worries" for every one "how stupid are you?" " My favorite was signed with the sender's first name, followed by that bright red ROBERT. Gotta love him.

I must say that I felt buoyed by the fact that when presented with humanity and honest-to-goodness mistakes, even our beloved journalists, undoubtedly deluged by a rain of email every hour, stepped firmly to the plate with reassurances at hand. We're not advocating mistakes and have certainly learned to triple check when emailing, but we couldn't help basking in the nice people out there in cyberspace.

Our author Jack Mitchell, the bestselling author of Hug Your Customers and the just-launched Hug Your People, has been telling us for months that treating everyone you deal with in business with kindness and respect is the best kind of "hug" that exists in our sometimes impersonal world.

The media, apparently, is already well onto the idea. And I, for one, am extremely grateful.

(side note: I spent yesterday looking for a good topic to blog about. My colleague Dennis Welch, who's an amazing singer/songwriter in his other life told me, "Great country songs usually come from trouble - maybe blog entries do too."

Go Digital or Die

We in the publishing world have come a long way in recent weeks in putting real clout and actual staff behind our opinion that the importance of digital media in marketing a book is growing fast and, in fact, has probably hit what Malcolm Gladwell so elegantly dubbed "the tipping point." If digital media isn't the most important driver of getting public attention for a book, it is running a close second as information is now instant, paperless, visual and ever-present.

Two public relations firms, including this one, and a major publisher have recently announced plans to assign staff to newly created positions that specifically address the opportunities of Web 2.0, the blogging world and all things related to the Internet. While proud of us all, it's not hard for me to conjure an image of the geniuses at the Apple store, the Generation Y staffers at Google headquarters and probably most of our children saying, "What took you so long?"

Sara Schneider in our New York office has moved up to Associate Director and we officially redefined her duties to include creating a web-based strategy for every book the agency represents. We don't consider this a value-add for our clients, but rather a must-have for every project hoping to get widespread public attention.

In fact, we'd already dipped a toe in the digital water by starting this blog in the fall. Its purpose, in part, was to give all of us a chance to experience first-hand how to write, position and create traffic for a blog. I'm certain our first readers were only those whose paycheck I signed. But then marketing guru John Moore mentioned our blog in his blog, Brand Autopsy, and traffic jumped. We attended an event hosted by 800 CEO Read in December and a dozen bloggers there gave us shout outs, and we were on our way. The rules are being written and we, like our colleagues, want to be on the front line in learning them all and embracing the opportunities they create.

This week Simon & Schuster appointed Elinor Hirschorn to the newly created role of Chief Digital Officer, in a move it said "reflected the growing importance of digital publishing to traditional publishers." And in January David Hahn at Planned Television Arts was promoted to Managing Director will as part of his new duties will head a digital division, PTAInteractive.

Just as academics learned to "publish or perish" to ensure their success, we in the publishing world must now embrace digital or risk losing our relevance not only to new readers, but those among us determined to ride the wave of the information age.

Tech Guru Dances with Timing Before and After Book's Release

When I met first met Roger McNamee, I was working with him to promote his book, The New Normal, which Portfolio published in 2004. Part big-time fund manager, part rock star (well, lead guitarist in his own band), former business manager for The Grateful Dead, and part high-tech geek who carried half a dozen gadgets on his belt, Roger was brilliant and intimidating, with a mind so facile and non-linear I always felt half a beat behind his pattern of thoughts.

When I opened the January issue of Portfolio magazine, there appeared a full page photo of Roger, his hair now shoulder length, standing next to Bono, his partner in Elevation Partners, a fund he was forming as the book was launching -- a situation that alternately brought him attention and held us back from talking to some in the media. Given the fund had not yet been completely raised, it was a sensitive time. We did score press coverage in Forbes, Fortune, Fast Company, Worth, and a large feature in USA TODAY, but many opportunities were lost when journalists wanted to discuss the story of a rock star partnering in a venture firm.

The New Normal described the world post-internet boom and asserted the ways in which technology was transforming our world. Roger was, in my opinion, WAY ahead of the curve. He was describing a social and business landscape in which HE lived but most of the rest of us had yet to fully join. As we tooled around Manhattan between interviews, he was glued to one of his gadgets, getting immediate response from friends, associates and even his wife, to his appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box" where he deftly delivered a three hour stint as guest host. I sat beside him carrying with what looked like a first generation cell phone, fretting all the while about what email was coming in my laptop, back at my hotel.

The article and Roger's new fund with Bono reminded me anew of the crucial issue of timing in releasing a book.

This is a slippery issue, one that in so many ways is beyond our control. We can't predict when the headlines will suddenly be dominated for weeks by indictments at Enron, when an accounting scandal will spread like quicksand through the major firms, or worst of all, when world catastrophe, be it a terrorist attack, a tsunami wave or a hurricane makes it all but impossible to reach anyone in the media at all.

The upside of timing is that it can boost a book's chances of coverage. Case in point from three titles I have worked on: Hard Sell, a witty and wise memoir by former pharmaceutical rep Jamie Reidy got an enormous boost during its 2005 publication when Pfizer, the company he used to work for, laid off large numbers of reps the week the book was released; There is No Such Thing as Business Ethics by John Maxwell got great coverage in the New York Times when he was interviewed about the wake of scandals at Enron and the big five accounting firms; and F'd Companies by Philip Kaplan scored ink throughout the campaign whenever another dot com venture fell to its knees.

You can't control timing, but you can be aware of it each and every day you're thinking about your book. Read the headlines with an eye toward how your opinion or book's content might be inserted in the news. And if you're reading all your news from a handheld gadget, remember that Roger McNamee was among those who predicted that the shift to electronic information was the wave of the future.

Business Books provide "practical magic" to PR Firm

This time last year, I wasn't baking cookies, shopping for holiday gifts or doing anything remotely holiday related. I was getting ready for the challenge of my life -- launching my own firm.

I would love to be able to claim that the minute I walked away from a steady paycheck and a job I'd devoted a decade to, that I slipped into the CEO's chair with a flourish. But as with so many things in life, it didn't work quite that way.

I'd say that the enormous thrill of being in charge lasted until about lunchtime on day one. The giddy feeling of accomplishment that came with writing "president' in the title line of my email signature was like bubbles in champagne -- great, and gone quickly. By afternoon, I realized that I actually had to do something to dig in and get my public relations firm in gear. I had to turn my great business idea into the semblance of something that actually, well, did business.

Lucky for me, I had a solid ten years of reading business books in my favor. What's more, I actually got paid to read some of those books that I turned to in year one, when I provided PR support to the authors. This came with the huge fringe benefit of tucking the pieces of wisdom into my back pocket for the day that I needed them. And it quickly became empty-the-pockets time. While I had taken some small steps toward my own firm, on January 1 this year it was, as my favorite-CEO Larry Bossidy would call it, "execution time."

Here's what I learned:
From The E-Myth by Michael Gerber, I was reminded that I now had TWO jobs. One doing the PR work I was familiar with and one was running this thing called a company and involved things like payroll and tech support.
From First, Break All The Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, I learned that I could flout conventional wisdom in selecting and rewarding my team.
From Seduced by Success by Bob Herbold, I learned not to get giddy with my company checkbook when my first clients climbed on board.
From The Middle Class Millionaire by Russ Alan Prince and Lewis Schiff, I learned that entrepreneurs who stayed with their line of business even in the face of setbacks and failures, are the ones most likely to succeed. I also learned to worship Ben Franklin, but you won't understand why until this book actually launches in February!
And in the aforementioned Execution by Larry Bossidy, I learned that the best leaders have the confidence and power to push their plans into reality.

I realize this is anecdotal evidence of the power of business books, but it comes from everything I do and see every day.

Year one has been quite the ride. The end of it finds me very grateful for everything I've learned and with a heart full of thanks for my team, Dennis Welch, Sara Schneider and Lew Campbell, who never hesitated to do anything and everything it took to move us ahead.

And for those of you who also have not purchased your holiday gifts, consider a business book? You really can't go wrong.

Windy City Hosts Writers

I rarely need reminders about why I love what I do. Since the day I was four, learning to read perched on my father's lap, his patient fingers running under the headlines of The Chicago Tribune, I was hooked. The day I could read those headlines to him, we headed down the block for my first library card, a trip we repeated every week until the day I headed to college.

My love of books has never wavered and I've never earned a dime doing anything that wasn't connected to words, first as a journalist and then in publishing.

But this week, I had the rare experience of falling in love all over again. Leaving balmy Austin for the windy city, I was off to my second annual "Pow-Wow", a conference run by 800 CEO READ where roughly 50 people from all walks of the publishing world gather. So nervous about my duty to discuss publicity and marketing, I admit I didn't give much thought to the grander purpose at hand -- the rare opportunity to spend two days with people who write, publish, edit, market, distribute and sell business books.

It didn't take long to get swept away. In a day and time when social networking is the hottest buzz word and "relationships" are things that can happen virtually, it is a rare and amazing thing to spend face time with people who share a passion for books that collectively capture the best business ideas of our time. Gathered together in the kitschy, 1950s decor at Catalyst Ranch. we plopped into armchairs, around chrome dining tables, grabbing sodas from the old Frigidaire in the back of the room, got comfortable and started to learn from one another.

Nick Morgan of Public Words gave a captivating talk about how ideas can go from good to great. Susan Williams, publisher of Jossey-Bass, took us inside her world of acquiring and advocating books as they come to market. Ben McConnell and David Meerman Scott were among the experts who gave a great insider's guide to the brave new world of blogging, while Todd Sattersten of 800 CEO READ served as host, moderator, interviewer and tour guide. There wasn't a session where I didn't see people taping away on their laptops to capture what was being said or waving their hands like eager third graders to ask a question. When was the last time you had THAT experience at a conference?

In a world where cut throat competition is celebrated and civility too often gets lost, it truly was magic to watch people who compete for contracts, shelf space, and media time, willingly reach out to those around them to offer insight from their own experiences that would help their colleagues. I'm guessing that no one left this two day session without learning at least one thing about publishing that had never crossed their mind.

Just as it was so famously suggested that it takes a village to raise a child, it sure couldn't hurt to have this kind of community around when you next release your book into the world as a permanent record to be viewed, judged, bought, and read. Everyone can benefit from a hand at their back and this week, I think 50 people just got a safety net as they go bravely forth to bring us great books.

Thanks to Jack, Todd, Kate, Rebecca and the rest of the gang at 8CR for pulling off a great event!