Ed. note: Just found this blog post tucked away in my Drafts folder. It was supposed to have been published in late July. Ooops! But better late than never. The information is still relevant.

When is a book worth more than a book? When it’s a limited edition, of course.

The folks at Taschen America recently published a limited run of 1,969 copies of MoonFire, a book by Norman Mailer commemorating the 1969 moon landing. Each of these copies, accompanied by a signed photograph of Buzz Aldrin, will sell for about $1,000. But even more exclusive are the 12 copies that will come bound with pieces of authentic moon rock; these copies are expected to fetch several hundred thousand dollars each.

Special editions, limited editions, product bundling, author inscriptions, and other enticements are all time-honoured ways for publishers to spur interest–and revenue–for a book.

Two more examples, this time from the world of fiction:

• When historical fantasy author Guy Gavriel Kay released Ysabel in 2007, his publishers offered up for auction the first book off the press. First printings of first editions are prized by collectors. The additional sweetener of having the very first completed book off the press and an inscription from the author helped the copy earn a price of more than $550 CDN.
• JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, handwrote and illustrated seven copies of a book of fairy tales. The volumes were bound in leather and decorated with semi-precious stones. Six copies were given away to friends, while the last was auctioned off for charity. The hammer price? About $3.3 million USD.

More than a few people are predicting that, as ebooks rise in popularity, print books will become increasingly prized for their production and collector values. While few authors have the drawing power of JK Rowling — or the ability to garner millions for a single volume — there are plenty of opportunities for self-publishers to create extra value around their books.

Could your book use a soundtrack?

Bruce Pollock, author of By The Time We Got to Woodstock, has compiled an iTunes playlist for each of his chapters about rock ‘n’ roll in 1969. The playlists, posted to his blog, are intended to stir interest in the book.

A book about music is a natural fit for a soundtrack — but what about a business book? Could you match a song to the mood or content of each of your chapters? Or even an entire playlist for each chapter?

The idea reminds me of a piece called the Soundtrack of Success that Fast Company put together in 2004. The magazine asked readers to write in with their favorite work-related song. I thought it was a fun question and submitted my song. Blow me down — it was chosen for the article! Naturally I sent the link around to a few people, driving traffic to the FC website.

Playlists won’t work for everyone but they could be a fast, easy way to add a multimedia element to a print release. At the very least, you and your readers might have a bit of fun. Like Fast Company, you could even encourage readers to contribute their own ideas for your playlist and get a lively conversation going.

What do you think? Leave a comment and let us know.

Yen Cheong over at the Book Publicity Blog recently posted a helpful list of firms and freelancers that do book publicity. Each listing indicates the type of books that firm or person deals in, so you can quickly find the ones who handle non-fiction.

You’ll find that most of the publicists are based in the US, though I did see one firm from Germany and there may be other international firms tucked away on the list.

HarperCollins just announced the release of a “video book” — a 23-minute video that encapsulates the information found in What Would Google Do?, a business book by Jeff Jarvis. The video sells on Amazon for $9.99.

But is the video really a book? What makes a book a book anyway?

In his brilliant examination of the e-book market, past and present, John Siracusa points to a key problem with terminology:

In the print world, the word “book” is used to refer to both the content and the medium. In the digital realm, “e-book” refers to the content only — or rather, that’s the intention.

This is not the case with music, for example, where the medium and the content are separate. The medium changes — vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD, MP3 — but music is still music. Music is the product. Music is what you’re buying. The medium is just a vessel, and that vessel changes ruthlessly. When a better, cheaper, faster, or more convenient medium appears, the music follows — with or without the content owners.

But books…there’s a lot of baggage attached to that name. Giant tomes, portable paperbacks, or standard hardcovers, they’re all recognizable as books. In the modern era, there have been no discontinuities of form on par with the those in the music industry to emphasize the separation of content and medium for the written word.

So a “book” is technically the medium — the printed pages bound between covers — but the information (non-fiction) or story (fiction) is the content, the stuff we’re really buying. In which case, to be really clear to the consumer, e-books shouldn’t be called e-books and videos containing information from a book shouldn’t be called video books.

If we look again to the music industry as an example, there are some packaging distinctions that help consumers know what they’re getting. People don’t buy music, they buy songs. Everybody knows that, generally speaking, a song will be 3 or 4 minutes long and follow certain conventions. Group a bunch of songs together and you have an album, also an agreed-upon convention. We’re still not talking about the medium (the CD or MP3 file) but some structure has been wrapped around the content, making it easier for us to understand, buy, and consume the product.

When it comes to information, we have chapters and we have books — one might argue that these are roughly analogous to songs and albums. But the word “book” is still firmly wedded to the medium as well. And so we arrive back where we started with only one word to describe both a collection of content and how that content is conveyed.

If you think that quibbling over word choice is a waste of time, consider the negative comments that have been fired at HarperCollins over the new Jeff Jarvis “v-book”.

The Washington Post describes the content of the video:

The 23-minute video has Jarvis speaking into a single camera with a white background. Instead of reading directly from the book, which was published last month by the company’s Collins Business imprint, Jarvis runs through the basic concepts in the book…

One commenter’s response:

It is impossible to pack the depth, research and resonance of What Would Google Do? (or any other long-form work) into a 23-minute video.

Clearly, he doesn’t consider the video to be the book in visual format, not a v-book. Instead, he considers the video an excellent marketing tool and says HarperCollins would have been smarter to give it away for free rather than charging for it.

So, could HarperCollins have avoided much of the criticism levelled at them if they hadn’t tried to tout the video as a different version of the book? I say yes. Semantics could have made a difference here.

Note: I have to give HarperCollins props for at least trying something new, even if it didn’t quite pan out the way they might have liked. They’re innovating, and no doubt they (and others) will learn with each new step about what works and what doesn’t.

Following my post last week on podcasting for authors, TIME magazine ran an article on the very same topic.

Many authors having a hard time finding a publishing deal are turning to podcasts as a way to build a fanbase for their books. Then, like sci-fi novelist J.C. Hutchins, they’re able to turn that reader support into a comfy contract with a publisher. Or, they’re able to goose sales for a print edition of their own.

Disappointingly, the article only discussed novelists. Have you had success using podcasts to distribute or market your non-fiction title? Click the Comments link to tell us about it.

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.

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?

It’s that time of year. Time for literary awards.

In Canada, the publishing industry is buzzing with the recent announcements of who won the prestigious Giller Prize, Governor General’s Literary Awards, and the Writer’s Trust Non-Fiction Prize, among others. Not only are the prize purses significant, but the prize insignia on the cover designates the book as a winner. It stands out on the shelves and encourages holiday sales.

What’s frustrating for “do-it-yourself” authors — though hardly surprising — is that none of these high-profile awards are available to self-published books.

But that’s not to say that self-publishers are out of luck altogether. There are several awards programs that focus exclusively on self-published works, or that warmly welcome a self-published effort.

While these smaller awards don’t have the profile of the mainstream prizes, they are certainly a boost to crediblity and exposure. Adding “award-winning” to the list of terms that describes your book is always a good thing.

With that in mind, it can be very worthwhile to submit your book to one or more awards programs. Here are four of the bigger and better known prizes for self-published books:

• The Benjamin Franklin Awards
• The IPPYs
• The Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards
• The Axiom Business Book Awards

The Ben Franklin, IPPY, and Writer’s Digest programs are all currently accepting entries for their 2009 awards. The Axioms just closed submissions for their 2009 awards, but if you have a business book, check back with them in May 2009 when the 2010 program will open up.

And may the best books win!

Regardless of how it was published, just because a book exists, does not mean readers will buy it. For sales to happen, you have to find innovative and cost-effective ways to let your intended audiences know about your book.

Many authors have already developed a potential readership through their blogs or their interactions on other Internet-based communities. If you haven’t, finding these communities of interest and participating in them is not difficult. One of the easiest ways to make your product known to them is to sponsor or participate in a contest.

Let’s look at two examples of blogging/interest community contests.

Example #1:

The blog badge pictured above is part of a publicity campaign surrounding the release of Cell Hell: 55 Cell Phone Users You’d Like to Silence by Dr. Mike O’Malley. Bloggers can grab the badge at the publisher’s site when they enter the blogging competition. It’s certainly a great way to engage a larger audience in thinking about the author’s topic. At last count, the site had gathered 46 entries. That’s 46 different bloggers writing about cell phone etiquette (and 46 different blog-reading audiences hearing about the topic) in competition for $1,000 in prize money donated by the author.

There are only two problems: First, the prizes are awarded randomly in the end. There is no reward for blogging skill, for depth of engagement in the topic, or for audience discussion in which the author could participate. Second, contest entrants are obligated to link back to the contest announcement on the blog of origin. They aren’t obligated to link back to, or even mention, the author’s book sales site or the book itself.

Example #2:

Once Written is an eclectic site offering a variety of features and information for both writers and readers. The mix of audiences does make for a slightly strange editorial mission, but both readers and writers are part of one larger group: bibliophiles, or people who love books.

Each month, the site hosts a number of book giveaways. This contest, like the rest of the site, features an eclectic mix too. There is literary fiction, popular fiction, non-fiction, and sometimes poetry or children’s books.

According to information on the site, authors can participate in the giveaways for $75 plus the cost of the books and shipping. While this is definitely a bargain promotions package, there are still no links to book sales or publishers’ sites.

The Take Away?
Obviously, you can spend as much or as little on book promotion as you like. Analyzing these two examples is a great place to start identifying promotional channels. What do you think — in these two examples, does the pay-off match the expense of sponsorship or participation?