Dog Bites Website 357
In early March my eleventh book A Dog Year; Twelve Months, Four Dogs and Me was published by Random House/Villard. For several months I've been working on a bottom-up, Net-based marketing program that permits me to push my own book in my own way, rather than rely on big publishing or big media. That led me to the banner ad on this site a lot of you have seen and e-mailed me about. So why am I buying a banner ad, on Slashdot of all places, to tout my new book about a year with four dogs? It's a chance for me to tick off the yowling hordes, which is always fun. Some will shriek that a dog saga has little to do with open source, technology or selling things on the Net. But it does, and I'm happy -- eager, even -- to explain why.
I do most of my hyping for A Dog Year in the expected places -- in media interviews and on various dog-related sites, mailing lists and forums.
My reason for advertising here, too, is that I believe the Net offers the best place for individual entrepreneurs of all kinds -- writers, game creators, artists, musicians, software designers -- to skirt conventional costs, limitations and marketing practices and find their own audiences. To me, that's a big part of the "open" in open source. Younger people raised on the Net don't pay nearly as much attention to mainstream media as their elders, so we have to reach them where they are. The good news is that we can.
In fact, Net communications themselves have become increasingly segmented and targeted. Much has become subterranean, centered on mailing lists, IM and other limited-entry venues. In the weeks before my book's publication, I concentrated on these grass-roots venues, contacting websites, subscribing to mailing lists, e-mailing excerpts of my book to people who were interested. People on special interests lists and chat rooms don't mind being pitched on subjects they're interested in. They don't consider it spam. What they hate is being bombarded with messages for things they don't care about, which is what traditional media does. Besides which, I can't afford to take an ad out in Time magazine or on the ABC Evening News.
Elsewhere, individual entrepreneurs and creators find it more and more difficult to survive. The megacorporations who've taken over much of culture and media are primarily interested in best-selling mega-products -- Britney Spears, John Grisham -- not idiosyncratic ones like mine. They have a point, too. My last book found its own audience, or rather its audience found it. It did all right, but didn't sell much beyond it's core audience. To successfully market a book like Running To The Mountain or A Dog Year (at least in the conventional way) could cost more money than my publisher expects to earn. And interesting, I believe the Running To The Mountain excerpt that ran on Slashdot sold more books than a subsequent appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show.
The Net, at least in theory, can bypass that stalemate and create radical new opportunities for artists of all kinds. So I don't mind paying for my own ad. I think it has worked.
Individuals are under attack all across our culture, from the likes of Microsoft and Wal-Mart and Sony to publishing conglomerates. The Net can be a way out for people like me (us), whether we're telling the story of our dogs or coming up with new software. What's why I bought a banner on Slashdot. If it works, it could sell some books, sure. I have no apologies to make for that. But it could also help demonstrate to writers and other people struggling to survive in a mass-market world that the Open Source idea is only fractionally about software. It's about individualism, free expression, and a culture open to us all.
What does advertising have to do with open source? (Score:1, Interesting)
Open source is about writing a program and giving out the code so others can learn from it/improve it.
Banner ads are... Ads. Internet advertising != open source.
Re:Advert as content? (Score:5, Interesting)
Looks like Jon wanted to make sure everyone saw this.
Wasn't he talking about authors being able to sell (Score:3, Interesting)
Or I just may be an idealist and do not believe this would just be a page long ad.
dam(adiue)
Re:Advert as content? (Score:0, Interesting)
would be happening. It was taken to be one of
the sorry jokes of the day. Of course, it has
been happening everywhere in commercial
publishing for quite a while.
The really sorry joke was that the april fools
announcement was true.
Actually though, this Katz article is one of his
least obnoxious. I wish him luck selling his books.
He deserves to make some money, and whether he
succeeds or fails, we all may be able to learn something
from his efforts.
open books (Score:2, Interesting)
Baen Free Library (Score:2, Interesting)
Katz, if you're really interested in reaching the widest possible audience, you might want to consider switching publishers.
The Baen Free Library [baen.com] has a wide selection of books you download off the net for free -- But before you ask, "well, how do I get paid?", you may want to look at the statistics they've posted for free downloads encouraging sales. I know I'd be alot more comfortable purchasing a book about a year w/ dogs if I could read part of it first.
Just my two drachma.
Re:JohnKatz is lame. (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, his movie reviews were sometimes lame
But this is a perfect example of why Mr. Katz has made my "block" list. He takes an opportunity to sell his book in a sloppily done manner (For the love of God proofread your damn headlines!). To paraphrase, Katz advertises on
I bet I can count the number of responses that are "on-topic" (appears to be either a response about a Katz book or internet advertising) on one hand.
To end, I'd just like to give the obligatory, and justly earned, "Katz sucks".
Re:Advert as content? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure that I see the problem with this article. I would say that it makes a valid point about the possibilities of grassroots advertising and the individual creator on the net. There is no doubt that it also advertises JonKatz's new book, but using the same engine that the article comments on--which in some circles might be considered clever. There is probably some argument that this article is such "preaching to the choir" that the newsworthiness of grassroots online advertising is reduced and only the advertisement remains. However, the generally negative reaction to the article suggests that maybe the point is news (or at least a good topic for discussion). Comments that relate less to the obvious fact that there is advertising in the article and more to whether or not such article/advertisements are a boon or bane to open online communities would certainly be more interesting. I support the use of online communities for grassroots marketing, understanding that the marketer must try to walk the line between contributing to the community and mere profiteering. Perhaps, this article crosses that line, but I wouldn't have thought so.
As a writer, I'd say he has half a point here. (Score:4, Interesting)
Putting aside Katzbashing, he has a point: the Internet is giving hobbyists and individual enterprenuers new avenues for getting their work out there.
Writing is one of the best examples, even better than musicians or possibly game creators, since the web is at heart a text based medium. The traditional publishing method (submissions, rejections, contracts, printings, promotions, sales, yadda) is laborious and iffy... online, you just post your webpage and you're done. Advertising to subcultural niches that would find your work interesting can be very effective; success/popularity can be found in modest amounts while completely bypassing the traditional channels.
But something Katz isn't seeing here is that online grassroots success != bigtime financial success. If someone wants to make it as a mainstream author on the NYT best seller list, putting your work on a website and grassrooting is not going to do that. Selling anything online, particularly with the 'I Want It Free' mentality, is difficult at best. If you're fine with 'smalltime' work or hobbyist tinkering, though, that's probably okay for you (assuming you can afford the bandwidth to make it happen; webcomic authors have this problem in spades).
Case example, which I swear is not a plug. Myself, everything I've ever written is out there [pixelscapes.com] for free. The majority of it fits into the niche subculture of 'anime fanfiction', so that works perfectly; I couldn't make money off it anyway, and grassroots hype and advertising makes perfect sense. Plus, using the audience I build from that, I can branch off into things like my original works [pixelscapes.com] which I CAN market. But being the next John Grisham by my internet doodlings? No. Even if I was at that level of writing quality (frankly, I think I am...) I know this is not the road to that goal.
So yes, new doors are opened by the potential of online promotion and distribution. But they're not the SAME doors you could open going the usual way.
Yes, you are (Score:2, Interesting)
My Fiendish Plan (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, this is an insult to the readers of Slashdot (or, at least, me). I've long been a proponent of Rob and Jeff's freedom in choosing topics for the site, but this is a bit much. (And, while it was Katz that put this article up, I highly doubt that he did so without the knowledge of Rob and Jeff.) All this article is is an advertisement for Katz's newest book, with some tenuous ties to topics of interest to Slashdot readers that Katz can point to and say, "See? It's on topic!".
Yeah, Slashdot's been going downhill, but I had hoped it would never sink this low.
--Phil (Now sorry he ever voted to "keep the gasbag".)
What is broken in the publishing industry? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is this something new? Hasn't this always been the case with used books? Why is it now a newsflash?
And while we're on the topic, what other industry has more than 50% of its products returned to the manufacturer? This seems to suggest something wrong with the whole deal. I'd think that this suggests that publishers over-publish (relative to demand). Apparently market reasearch isn't a strong point of authors or publishers.
The rising cost of books has been driving people to be far more selective. I know I am, when I'm paying $11 Cdn for a novel and $35-45 Cdn for a hardcover new release (the latte obviously much moreso).
And yet, at the same time, I see the web as a vast and powerful marketing tool with low cost (relative to newspaper or TV ads) and I see modern micropublishing capabilities as one way to cut costs.
I saw a special on PBS from Australia that let people publish a few hundred page hardcover in runs of 100 copies for as cheap as Aus $1000 if they were willing to do their own typesetting/formatting. This was a very basic book (black and white, no or few illos), but if I can do small print runs for such a cheap price ($550 USD for 100 copies), then surely there is something very broken about the conventional publishing scene, no?
And is it any wonder when students buying a textbook end up paying $120 for something they use two chapters out of get ticked off? What hapened to some of the initiatives to do chapter-wise production of texts? I know plenty of books I'd like a chapter or two out of, but won't spend $50-150 for! So instead of the author getting something (and the publisher too I guess), they get Nada/Nothing/Zip/Zilch/Squat/No $$$.
Instead of running around hammering Amazon for its book selling strategy, trying to defend IP via vampiric legalism, or jacking the prices of books to insane levels, why don't the authors and publishers start looking at more innovative ways to deliver cost-effective services and services which meet the actual needs/desires rather than those they (in an out-of-touch fashion) seem to imagine to be the case? Or would that require more work and more cranial sweat?
Denmark isn't the only place where something is awry.... conventional publishing seems to be more than a bit broken to my mind....