Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicists blogged about a great idea today: book posters. Really groovy, beautifully designed book posters like the ones bands use to promote their gigs.

Yah! Imagine teenagers pinning up glossy posters of their favourite books in bedrooms across the land.  Collectible book posters, framed or mounted, as sophisticated decor in boardrooms. Book posters hanging from the walls as funky conversation pieces in living rooms, restaurants, and art galleries.

Can you envision the marvellous artworks we’d have today if publishers had been creating book posters in the 1920s and ’30s? Promotions for Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway splashed across a canvas more expansive than a dust jacket. If the travel and advertising posters from this era on anything to go on, we’d have some truly outstanding artifacts from publishing’s history.

Heck, for some books they could even have used a larger version of the dust jacket. The first edition jacket for Fitzgerald’s Tender Is The Night is as beautiful as a travel poster already.

So why aren’t we doing it today? Phenix & Phenix were talking about having e-posters to put on blogs and websites:

I think these posters work very effectively. So much more exciting than a plain email that says, “Hi blogger, my author has a reading at this place on this day…mind posting something about it??” No. Let’s rockstar it up a bit. Give the blogger some bling to post.

But there’s no reason that limited edition prints couldn’t also be made available. If print books are on their way to becoming the collectible version of an e-book, why couldn’t a poster become an additional collectible, in addition to serving a marketing purpose?

What’s your take? How might you use a book or author poster, if you had one? Or if you think a poster wouldn’t work for your book, why not?

According to figures released in 2008, 9% of Americans downloaded an MP3 in the previous 12 months, a figure that had doubled over the previous year. It’s a habit that’s been shaking up the music industry and will certainly affect authors too.

As in the music business, the audio book business is moving away from sales of physical CDs toward selling sound files that can be downloaded to an iPod or other MP3 player. And, just like musicians, authors increasingly find themselves giving away free samples for potential customers to have a listen before they buy the whole volume.

As an author, you can distribute these sound files through your corporate web site, your blog, book sales sites, and social networking sites. There are also a number of podcast directories that can point potential listeners in your direction.

Recording a podcast of a single voice reading a book excerpt is actually a simple process that can be divided into five steps:

1. Adapting your script
2. Assembling hardware and software
3. Recording and editing
4. Converting your recording to an MP3 file
5. Uploading the file to the Internet

1. Adapting your script
Whether you are creating a “free sample” podcast to promote your book, or a full-fledged audio book for commercial sale, there are three basic considerations to keep in mind when you re-write the book as an audio script:

First, are there charts, graphs, or illustrations that you’ll need to write descriptions for and then integrate into the flow of your text? While a see fig 1 notation might work in your printed book, it won’t work on an audio file.

Secondly, what is the best way to divide the flow of your ideas? In printed form, chapters and subheads provide logical places for the reader to pause for reflection or take a break from reading. Audio books, on the other hand, tend to be listened to during the daily commute or session on the elliptical trainer, activities that take about 30 minutes. According to Podcast Free America, the typical spoken word podcast is 3 to 5 minutes long, about the same length as a song. That means your listener should have time to listen to between 6 and 10 “chapters” of your book on the Step-Master each morning.

Thirdly, what sound effects will provide aural interest where illustrations and design added visual interest to your book? Music, audio clips from interview recordings, even sound clips from sound stock libraries can add an extra dimension to your podcast.

2. Assembling the hardware and software
You may need less equipment than you think to create an MP3 file of your book or book excerpt. If your computer has a high-speed Internet connection, a headset with microphone, and software such as Audacity that will let you record sound onto your computer, you already have everything you need to create a basic podcast of your own voice.

3. Recording and editing your podcast
According to Dave Dwyer writing for Busted Halo, using Audacity to record and edit podcasts is much like using a word processing program. His step-by-step instructions for recording using Audacity can be found here. Complete instructions for how to edit your podcast with sound effects and music are available from Guides and Tutorials.com.

4. Converting the file
The audio file you’ve created on your computer will need to be converted to the MP3 format in order to be distributed as a podcast. You’ll need to download a LAME encoder that will work with Audacity to convert your recording to an MP3 file.

5. Uploading the file
If you maintain your own web presence, you or the person who maintains your web site will know how to upload and link to the file from your own website. You can then link to it from your social media profiles, as well as from your blog. If you need some space on a server to host your file, choose a syndication service like the Podcast Directory or LibSyn to take care of your podcast storage and distribution.

I’ll admit it. I’m something of a contradiction.

In my work for clients, I am constantly exploring the newest ideas in publishing, looking for ways to innovate and adapt. I find that exciting.

At the same time, I thrill to everything old. I love old books, old paper, the old models. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are especially intriguing to me.

So when I came across this Printer’s Dictionary and Guide Book, published in 1892, I just had to snap it up for my collection. Issued by Kelsey Press out of Meriden, Connecticut and priced at 25 cents a copy, the guide is a small, hard cover volume of advice for the would-be printing press operator.

Click thumbnails to enlarge.

The sub-title sums it up:

Containing Webster’s spelling and division of the most used words of the English language and chapters on job work, punctuation, useful receipts, etc. Not complete treatises, but a brief, handy guide for every day use, for professional and amateur.

It just so happens that the front and back contain ads for printing services and equipment from Kelsey Press. It’s a clever little piece of marketing, an early information product.

Click thumbnail to enlarge.

While most of the advice it contains is now antiquated, some of it is strangely timeless, including these tips on how to start and conduct a small paper:

Arrange a definite plan, to begin with. Give your paper some distinguishing feature, and not follow in the old ruts. If you are personally interested in some particular art, science or sport, you can, if you have energy, make your journal popular among others interested in the same subject. Or a paper can be made popular by making the leading matter village news, wit and humor, puzzles, rebuses, and the like. Church papers help the work much. Subjects are plenty. Choose one to your taste or ability, and make it your specialty. Make your paper alive with that subject, and fill the space not occupied therewith by pleasant miscellany. In a small sheet long, prosy articles appear out of place. It is seldom that a single article occupy more than a page of paper, and a column and a half article should be considered long.

Having perfected your plan for conducting a paper, you choose a name for it, which requires considerable thought. You want one appropriate to your leading subject. Let it be as short and striking as possible. There is much in a name. Whether you propose to circulate the paper free, as an advertisement or otherwise, or to make money out of it, it is best to fix upon it a subscription price; it gives it an apparent value even if given away…

So there you have it. Your “paper” — book, blog, articles — should have a focus that you’re passionate about. Make it your specialty and others with the same passion will be drawn to you. Keep your content and your name short and punchy. Value your work, even if it’s given away for free.

Maybe my love of new and old aren’t such a contradiction after all. A look at where we’ve been can sometimes provide guidance on the road to where we’re going.

With all the excitement and novelty and momentum surrounding social media tools such as Twitter, people sometimes forget the “social” part of the equation.

Twitter is like any other community or network where abiding by a few friendly rules helps everyone get along.

You know that annoying n00b who shows up at parties and networking events? You know the one I mean — the person who dominates the conversation with loud talk that’s all about them. The person who’s telling you all about their manuscript or book before you’ve even had a chance to finish saying your name.

Don’t be the Twitter equivalent of that n00b. Instead, practice the Twitter KISS: Keep It Short and Sociable.

Short: Well, duh. You only get 140 characters per tweet. That’s the easy part.
AND
Sociable: That’s the really important part.

Being sociable on Twitter means:

• Participating in conversations
• Asking and answering questions
• Being helpful to others for no immediate gain
• Being supportive of others
• Being enthusiastic
• Freely sharing resources and information
• Building relationships

Yes, you can talk about yourself sometimes. That’s part of sharing. But make sure the conversation isn’t all about you all the time.

And don’t forget that Twitter isn’t a way to lob your manuscript or book idea over the virtual transom of every publishing employee in the land to see if someone wants it.

If you’re not using the Twitter KISS, you might find yourself getting the kiss-off.

Part of being a self-published author is figuring out ways to get as much mileage as you can out of everything you create. Producing your book is a time-consuming effort. It pays to look for ways you can repackage, tweak, pare down, extend, translate, or extend the content for greater reach and greater revenue.

One repackaging tactic is to sell downloads of individual chapters, on top of making the full book available. The thinking behind the strategy is to appeal to people who might want to explore only one or two specific tactics in a book, or who might want information immediately through downloading.

This past year, Random House began selling individual chapters of Made To Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath for $2.99 a pop. Made to Stick had already sold 220,000 hard cover copies before the single chapters were made available. It’s hard to say whether sales of the printed book would have been cannibalized by offering the single chapters earlier. My guess, however, would be that selling single chapters would only boost sales. The low price encourages readers to take a nibble with minimal risk. As more and more people download a chapter and share the content with others (yes, it will happen — so embrace it), the more your book buzz is spread.

Selling by the chapter is not quite the same thing as serialization. Publishing a book as a serial implies that readers will eventually read the whole book through installments that are delivered in sequential order. By-the-chapter sales allow a reader to buy one chapter, with no commitment to buy any others.

Selling single chapters works best for non-fiction since each piece has to more or less stand on its own. Travel publishers, for example, can benefit from selling sections on specific cities or areas from within full country guides. Lonely Planet is already doing this through what they call their Pick & Mix menu. Other topics that lend themselves to single-chapter sales include business (one strategy, idea, or tip explained), essay or story anthologies, cooking, and fitness.

Parallels have naturally been drawn between publishing and the music industry. In music, we have seen a shift from full album sales, purchased on recorded media such as a CD, to individual song downloads. In publishing, while I doubt that piecemeal downloads will eclipse sales of the full product, I do think it likely that individual chapter downloads will increase in popularity.

Chapter pricing is still very much up in the air due to its relative newness. Random House charges $2.99 per chapter for Made to Stick. Lonely Planet charges $2 to $5 per chapter, basing the price on the length of the chapter and the price of the book from which it was excerpted. If the music industry can again be looked to as a sign of things to come in publishing, we may see chapters eventually priced at $.99 each.

Are you an author or publisher who has tried single chapter sales? As a reader, what are your thoughts on buying one or two chapters from a full book?