Thursday, November 30, 2017

Book By CBS News Legend Bob Schieffer Provides Insights On Dealing With The Media



Bob Schieffer, a real newsman, has been a reporter for over 60 years, including four decades at CBS News.  He started out in newspapers.  He’s respected by the news media and citizens alike.  His new best-selling book is excellent.  Overload:  Finding the Truth in Today’s Deluge of News (Rowman & Littlefield) examines today’s journalism and how those who practice it view their profession.  Today’s journalism is a changing landscape and under attack from fake news, ad budget cuts, the Internet, and changing tastes of the American public.  Schieffer guides us through the media maze.

“We have access to more information that at any time in history,” says the book jacket copy.  “But are we more informed or just overwhelmed by so much information we can’t process?”

Schieffer talks a lot about the 2016 presidential election and the role all media played to inform people.

He shows some sobering stats:
·         1 reporter in 8 lived in New York, Washington, or Los Angles in 2004. By 2014 it was down to 1 in 5.
·         Over 125 daily newspapers shuttered over the last decade – and the majority of surviving ones have made drastic editorial staff cuts.
·         A recent study by the Pew Foundation showed that 21 of 50 states lacked a single daily with a DC-based reporter to cover Congress.  

Here are a few good excerpts from his book:  
·         Rumor and innuendo have always been a part of most cultures, but what has changed is universal access to the web and the ability to transit information, true or false, to literally billions of people in milliseconds.

·         For all of the industry’s bad news, newspapers keep finding innovative ways to keep publishing – on paper and online.  Some are partnering with nonprofits and journalism schools, nearly all have devised ways to do more with less, and some, like the Washington Post, have been fortunate to find new owners with deep pockets, but with its new owner and new editor, the Post has created a whole new culture in its sparkling new headquarters.

·         Fewer editors not only increase the possibility of mistakes but also require individual reporters to be well grounded in libel law and ethics. Learning on the job and having the backup of experienced editors are luxuries unavailable to many young journalists, and this puts new emphasis on what they need to know as they embark on that first job.  It is somewhat akin to pickup sandlot sports.  Sure you can learn the game without a coach, but a coach can help the learning process.

·         CONCLUSION:  Americans are so overwhelmed by information in the digital era they cannot process it.  It seems reasonable to conclude that specialists and some elites are more informed, especially if one judges advances in math and scientific fields.  But there is little to suggest we are more informed politically, which is especially difficult for those in the lower-income groups.  Research indicates that situation may be getting worse with increased reliance on mobile devices – a development that could further divide an already deeply divided country.

·         CONCLUSION:  Fake news made up out of whole cloth for political or financial profit poses a growing and dangerous threat to democracies both here and in Europe, all of which depend on informed electorates and faith in traditional institutions.

·         At the risk of stating the obvious, of all the changes brought on by the technological revolution, fake news is clearly the most dangerous and will be the hardest to eradicate.

·         Democracies depend on an informed electorate with access to independently gathered, accurate information that they can compare to the government’s version of events.  It is as vital as the right to vote.

·         Any effort by government or outside agents to impede or undermine the free flow of information is a serious and real threat to democracy and should never be taken lightly.  

·         Journalists have spent too much time worried about whether newspapers should continue to print their news on paper when we should have been worried about the story, not the surface on which it was printed.  There seems little question that the decline of newspapers has had an impact on politics.  In large rural areas it has not been a question of what kind of local news people were getting but whether they were getting any news at all.

·         The dearth of political news in so many areas poses an obvious danger:  if some entity doesn’t rise up to do what we once depended on local newspapers to do, we’ll have corruption in cities and towns across America on a scale we have never known.

·         The politician’s mission is to deliver a message.  Our job is to determine if it is true and what its implications will be for the electorate.

·         We should not assume that everyone in public life is corrupt or there for evil reasons, and we should never leave the impression that we are the exclusive fount of all wisdom.

·         We are not the opposition party.  We are reporters.  Our role is simply to ask questions and to keep asking until we get an answer.  That will not always make us popular, but it is clearly what the Founders intended. I am proud to be a reporter.

READ THESE!!
The All new 2018 toolkit to promote a book -- 7th annual edition

Big Marketing Lessons From My All-Time Top 10 Blog Posts

Here are best author-publisher-publishing pro interviews of 2017

9 things all authors must get right in every media interview

Why is what you know about book marketing all wrong!

Should authors go big – or for a sure thing?

16 ways to increase book sales

Study this exclusive author media training video from T J Walker

What does it really take to land on a best-seller list?

Can you sell 10 copies of your book every day?

Great book PR lessons from kids, clergy, women, contractors & sportscasters

How do authors get on TV?


Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2017©. Born and raised in Brooklyn, now resides in Westchester. Named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

19 Self-Publishing Book Awards



You may want to gain some exposure for your book by placing high for a book award. Consider applying to any of the awards below for your independently published book:


Best Indie Book Award

Book of the Year Awards (IAN)

BookLife

CIPA EVVY Awards

Goodreads Choice Awards

Hugo Awards

IBPA Ben Franklin Awards

Indie Reader Discovery Awards

INDIEFAB Awards (Foreword Reviews)

International Book Awards

IPPY Awards

Kindle Book Awards

National Indie Excellence Book Awards

Nautilus Book Awards

New Apple Book Awards for Excellence in Publishing

American Book Fest

Shelf Unbound Best Indie/Self-Published Book Competition

Writer’s Digest Self-Published e-Book Awards

Axiom Best Business Book Awards


READ THESE!!
The All-New 2018 Toolkit to Promote a Book -- 7th annual edition

Big Marketing Lessons From My All-Time Top 10 Blog Posts

Here are best author-publisher-publishing pro interviews of 2017

Why is what you know about book marketing all wrong!

Should authors go big – or for a sure thing?

16 ways to increase book sales

Study this exclusive author media training video from T J Walker

What does it really take to land on a best-seller list?

Can you sell 10 copies of your book every day?

How do authors get on TV?


Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2017©. Born and raised in Brooklyn, now resides in Westchester. Named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

PR Industry Outnumbers Media and Jeopardizes Our Books



The flacks outnumber the hacks by at least a 5 to 1 margin.  Is there any surprise that we have a media filled with fake news, manipulated reporting, under-reporting, and news bought and paid for by the lobbyist-fueled PR industry?  What can or should be done about this?

In the United States, according to government figures, there are 50,400 reporters and 260,000 PR practitioners.  In a decade, the gap will widen so that PR people will actually outnumber journalists by a 6:1 ratio.

Additionally, today’s reporter is overworked and supports a media outlet that is understaffed.  How can the truth be discovered and preserved and defended if the process to uncover it is corrupted by so many factors and figures?  Further with a media diluted and suspect, how can authors write books based on missing facts, half-truths, or propaganda-fueled lies?

So many books get their ideas – or research – from news media reports.  But if the media is reporting what the PR stiffs push on them, how reflective is the reporting on the real world?  

The news media-fueled narrative of life is merely one possibility for today’s author to pursue.   Life holds so many stories and possibilities but in order for them to be unearthed and shared, writers will need to look beyond a PR-saturated media world.


READ THESE!!
The All new 2018 toolkit to promote a book -- 7th annual edition

Big Marketing Lessons From My All-Time Top 10 Blog Posts

Here are best author-publisher-publishing pro interviews of 2017

9 things all authors must get right in every media interview

Why is what you know about book marketing all wrong!

Should authors go big – or for a sure thing?

16 ways to increase book sales

Study this exclusive author media training video from T J Walker

What does it really take to land on a best-seller list?

Can you sell 10 copies of your book every day?

Great book PR lessons from kids, clergy, women, contractors & sportscasters

How do authors get on TV?


Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2017©. Born and raised in Brooklyn, now resides in Westchester. Named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs

Monday, November 27, 2017

18 Websites For Authors To Market Books



Writers are always looking for websites that provide support, information, and connections that can help them write, publish, and promote great books.  Here are 18 websites that should be utilized repeatedly:


Oh, and one other instrumental site -- www.BookMarketingBuzzBlog.blogspot.com !!

READ THESE!!
The All-New 2018 Toolkit to Promote a Book -- 7th annual edition

Big Marketing Lessons From My All-Time Top 10 Blog Posts

Here are best author-publisher-publishing pro interviews of 2017

Why is what you know about book marketing all wrong!

Should authors go big – or for a sure thing?

16 ways to increase book sales

Study this exclusive author media training video from T J Walker

What does it really take to land on a best-seller list?

Can you sell 10 copies of your book every day?

How do authors get on TV?


Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2017©. Born and raised in Brooklyn, now resides in Westchester. Named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs

Sunday, November 26, 2017

Which Online Persona Should Authors Choose?



What kind of personality do you want to show?

This may sound like a strange question.  After all, you are who you are.  If you are a bubbly, smiling person or a grumpy, shitfaced one, it’s not easy to change. When promoting your writings via social media and traditional media, what types of persona do you want to present?

The first rule to Personality 101 is be consistent. Whatever image or voice you care to share, do it uniformly.  You can’t be funny all of the time and then try to be politically serious – or vice versa.  If you are known for one thing, it’s hard to be seen as something else.

Second, think about a makeover.  Maybe you’re not as witty as you think you are.  Maybe your writing isn’t as sharp or clear as you believe it is.  Perhaps you aren’t as creative or edgy as you hoped to be.  Take a look at how you present yourself and look to see what can be improved.

Third, keep up with what others in your genre or space are saying and doing.  Study the social media activities of those who are popular, successful, or worthy of your admiration.  Borrow things that you like and that fit with the persona you seek to push out.

Fourth, make sure your vocabulary and content match the persona you seek to put out there.  Are you using the right jargon and making timely references to things?  Do you sound like the kind of person that you are trying to present?

Fifth, don’t look to be perfect or come off as a know-it-all.  Just be you.

Sixth, find a way to share and inquire, to engage by telling as well as asking.

Seventh, always be kind and polite.  Being rude won’t get you very far. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be opinionated, bold, challenging or strong-willed.  You can’t please everyone nor should you try to but you don’t have to go out of your way to be mean or corrosive.

Your persona needs to stick out and vary from the competition.  No one needs a “more of the same” blog or book or media outlet.  We want to be entertained AND informed.  We want facts and analysis of things important to us.  We want good-looking, intelligent, outgoing people to tell us what we need to know or do.  We want a personality-- not-just a resource -- to talk to us.  The public demands so much.  

So what kind of persona do you want to offer?


READ THESE!!
The All-New 2018 Toolkit to Promote a Book -- 7th annual edition

Big Marketing Lessons From My All-Time Top 10 Blog Posts

Here are best author-publisher-publishing pro interviews of 2017

Why is what you know about book marketing all wrong!

Should authors go big – or for a sure thing?

16 ways to increase book sales

Study this exclusive author media training video from T J Walker

What does it really take to land on a best-seller list?

Can you sell 10 copies of your book every day?

How do authors get on TV?
  
Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2017©. Born and raised in Brooklyn, now resides in Westchester. Named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs


Saturday, November 25, 2017

The Book Is Alive And Well



I recently read The Book:  A Cover-To-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time, by Keith Houston.  It’s all about the printed book, the ones that have mass and fill out a bookcase.  It’s about the best format a book can take – greater than e-books, clay tablets, papyrus scrolls, or wax writing boards.

While praising the printed book as the “world’s most important form of written record,” it notes it faces an unknown future:  “Just as paper superseded parchment, immovable type put scribes out of a job, and the codex, or paged book, overtook the papyrus scrolls, so competitors and electronic books threaten the very existence of the physical book.”

It speaks of the e-book’s appeal -- cheap, convenient, weightless, up-to-date -- and says “It takes a strong will to resist the lure of the e-book.”

Resist, we must.

I love physical books and they deserve to be with us forever.  But in order for this to happen, they will either co-exist with digital books or they will have to squash the e-book.  Right now print still dominates, thankfully, but who knows for how long.

To support the printed book, a book like Houston’s is needed, providing historical support for the beauty of paper-filled tomes.

Papyrus had a 3,000-year run as a writing material.  Eventually that got replaced – and perhaps like it, printed books will one day be supplanted by their digital counterpart.

Parchment, invented by King Eumenes II of Pergamon, a ruler of a Greek city-state around 200 B.C., replaced papyrus.  And other resources would come to be used to write and print on but in the end, paper has won out.  Interestingly, in the age of email, digital books, and websites, our dependence on paper has grown, not lessened.

Houston notes:  “World consumption of paper has doubled since 1980, with each resident of the U.S.A. consuming the equivalent of 5.57 forty-foot trees in 2012.  That is to say, an average American gets through almost 500 pounds of paper in a year.”

The book talked about mass deacidification and how in the 1930s, “it was discovered that wood-pulp paper slowly, inexorably disintegrates even without the presence of excess bleach or acidilignin, a complex molecule found abundantly in wood, reacts to ultraviolet light to destroy the cellulose that binds paper together.  In the 1980s, when the Library of Congress first tackled the issue of brittle books, it estimated that 25 percent of books owned by large American research libraries – 75 million volumes in all – would crumble to dust if handled.  A slow fire was consuming books across the world and something had to be done.”

The book is a fascinating read, especially for philologists (who study the development of language) and those who love to learn about the written word.  Below are some random excerpts that may be of appeal to you:

The Birth of Writing
Modern day linguists think that the idea of writing-that visual signs could be used to represent spoken words, sounds or concepts – came to Egypt from nearby Sumer, in what is now northeastern Iraq.

3000 B.C. The Scroll
The Egyptians invented something else, too, during that frantic period at the dawn of writing.  To borrow the Oxford English Dictionary’s words on the subject, Egypt’s scribes had figured out how to combine individual sheets of papyrus to make “portable volume[s] consisting of a series of written, printed, or illustrated pages bound together for ease of reading”;  they had invented the book, in other words, in the form of the papyrus scroll.  As evidenced by the papyri preserved Egypt’s arid climate, and as described in Pliny’s second-century buyer’s guide, the books of the ancient world were made from long series of papyrus sheets trimmed to matching heights and pasted together, to be rolled up for storage and unrolled for reading.  What we do not know, however, is why the scroll ever came about in the first place.

The Scribe
Whether or not a scribe understood a word of the text he was copying, progress was slow and methodical.  Each letter was constructed stroke by stroke in iron gall ink, and a conscientious scribe would pause to sharpen his quill tens of times each day to maintain an even line.  The penknife with which he did that, in fact, was every bit as important as his pen: with it, he could prick holes for guidelines; scrape off a mistake before its ink soaked into the page; or hold springy parchment flat so as to write upon it more easily.  At the end of all this he would have picked up the completed page, cast an expert eye over its neatly ruled lines and disciplined text, and then passed it on to a colleague practiced in the graphic arts.

The Illuminated Manuscript
The writing of books evolved in fits and starts.  If we could plat a line tracing that history, it would be punctuated with abrupt spikes announcing the invention of hieroglyphs, papyrus, movable type, and any one of a hundred other innovations, large and small.  The story of book illustration is a similar one, and one of the key inflection points on our hypothetical graph – a skyrocketing discontinuity that dwarfs what come before and paved the way for what followed-marks the arrival, in medieval times, of the illuminated manuscript.

Bookbinding
Like papermaking, movable type, and woodcut printing, book-binding was not a craft disposed to great inventive leaps.  Occasionally, a bookbinder was moved to experiment with some radical alteration to the basic formula of the book – two books bound to a single wooden covering board, for instance, or a series of books concertinaed together like an unholy orihon but with the adoption of double-cord binding, the form of the book was effectively standardized.  From the time of the St. Cuthbert Gospel, the Ragyndrudis Codex, and their medieval ilk, through to the encyclopedias Britannica and Webster’s dictionaries that lined nineteenth-century bookshelves, the evolution of the book was a gentle one, borne onward on a tide of tinkering, refinements, and changes in material.

READ THESE!!
The All-New 2018 Toolkit to Promote a Book -- 7th annual edition

Big Marketing Lessons From My All-Time Top 10 Blog Posts

Here are best author-publisher-publishing pro interviews of 2017

Why is what you know about book marketing all wrong!

Should authors go big – or for a sure thing?

16 ways to increase book sales

Study this exclusive author media training video from T J Walker

What does it really take to land on a best-seller list?

Can you sell 10 copies of your book every day?

How do authors get on TV?


Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2017©. Born and raised in Brooklyn, now resides in Westchester. Named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs