Eoin Purcell's Blog

Inside Google Book Search has a funny little post today called: A New Chapter For Authors.

From that:

The book sold above expectations when it was first published in 2002. But three years later, after Foote decided to include it in Book Search, she had a wave of new orders, and started getting email from readers she wasn’t able to reach before.

Google is holding itself out as a great tool for authors, and in truth it is. Its search capacity is amzing. I just hope that it remains one of a number of options for authors and not the only option going forward.

The more I work in this industry the more one key feature comes to the fore, marketing. People don’t really NEED books. That is a sad reality. There is no reason for 1000 or 20,000 or 2,000,000 people to buy any book.

A book will not help them to breathe and work and walk and talk and sing and swim or to do any of the things that people do from day to day. It will not make them rich (though it might inspire them to become rich). It will not provide them with food or drink. People, in short, need a reason to buy a book.

It is a concept to remind yourself of every single day if you intend to get involved in the publishing industry. if you cannot create a reason for a book to be bought then there will be no sales. Every book cover must suggest itself to the buying public as a potential purchase and indeed must compete with the other “essential” and “non-essential” products that that consumer could buy.

And a cover is not enough. You can have a pretty cover that misses the mark and an ugly cover that connects with a potential buyer. You can have a book that to the elite appears predictable and clunky but raises the pulse of the majority of readers.

For no other reason than its exceptional marketing you should admire Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. It has created millions of purchases and a global hit. Even reaching one percent of the sales it has racked up would be an incredible achievement for most books.

By far the majority of discussion on the web seems to be about how to publish books, either how to get your book taken on board by a large publisher or the best way to self-publish. But if one does not consider the importance of marketing and with that marketing, effective distribution, then you may as well burn your money. That goes for your choice of publishing firm too if you do decide to go with a traditional publisher. If they have no defined plans for publicity, your book may well sink amid the large numbers of books published each year in all major markets.

I read a rather good blog called Disillusioned Lefty which today has a post called How To Write. now normally I would run a mile before blogging about bloggers writing about blogging but this post has solid resonance for writers of all shades be they bloggers or not. Go read and enjoy.

I have mentioned before that MySpace is a huge publisher, well in Ireland (And its strange that I don’t mention it more given that I live here) Bebo.com is the king of the jungle. Everyone is on Bebo it seems sometimes.

But there is more to online publishing in Ireland than Bebo or even MySpace which does have a large share of the market. Gatesby Publishing, the company behind New York Dog have launched a blog which is to all intents and purposes a rip off of Gawker and they have called it Blogorrah. You can check out a sample post here and a rather sceptical view of them here at Blurred Keys a good Irish media blog.

Our three leading newspapers are online. The Irish Times with Ireland.com has a paid subscription service that really, to my mind, is not worth it. The Irish Examiner has the least annoying site and the Irish Independent has a free subscription model that is just frustrating. Most shockingly only Ireland.com offers and RSS feed.

There are dozens and dozens of blogs of course. but one key feature that the Irish Blogosphere has is an online simple syndicator called irishblogs which posts slugs of registered blogs as soon as the feed spits them into their database. I rather like this site and the local nature of it as it is a manageable level. I can see too how over time a site like this might well develop. There are rudimentary features for “bumping” stories but they rarely seem to make a difference.

As for Book Publishers the large ones have decent sites but nothing to shout about and our book retailers are much the same. Indeed I much prefer to shop online at play.com or amazon.co.uk than bother with the awful easons.ie.

What strikes me the most about Ireland and online publishing here is how much of the sector is dominated by individuals. The vibrancy of personal posting and blog building si destined to be affected by the emergence of sites like Blogorrah over time of course, but for now it is great to see an active blogosphere here.

But I probably don’t:
Linkie Winkie is confusing a few people so far.

Check it out

Some thoughts on Updike and Kelly.
Here

Richard Charkin ponders the wonders of Oxfordshire publishing prowess.
Here

Someone else learns from Slate magazine and publishes a magazine on iTunes (Does it make me out of date if this still confuses me?).
Here

Google announced on it official blog yesterday that:

WBG, a German publisher, today decided to drop its petition for a preliminary injunction against the Google Books Library Project. WBG (whose legal action was supported by the German Publishers Association as an industry model) made the decision after being told by the Copyright Chamber of the Regional Court of Hamburg that its petition was unlikely to succeed.

The news is good for ordinary consumers and not as important for Google as it may seem. For the consumer it means that Google Book Search will become more effective over time as its right to display snippets seems to be now legally justified. Google Book Search has the edge in terms of search even if others have snazzier readers on hand. This change will not improve its offering to a great extent but perhaps it will free up resources within Google to concentrate on improving the overall product.
Businesses though, if they have any sense, will see this as spur to move ahead with their own projects to create digital databases of their own books, either singly or as part of a collective.

Some of you may have noticed two recent additions to the collection of feed icons on the right hand column. If you have not, take a look. They are the results of a truly innovative site and company called xFruits.

One is a mobile version of my RSS* feed. The newest one however is something that amazes me. It allows you to export pages of my blog into a PDF file simply by clicking it. now it ain’t the fastest piece of technology in the world but then neither is PDF generating so I will forgive that flaw but god it is useful.

On my way home yesterday I wanted to look over my recent blog posts and see if they had hidden trends or really are as random as they seem to me. I click the button and printed the results. A crisp 6-page document was the result with the only price being the powered by xFruits sign at the base of each page.

xFruits have really impressed me with these two services and although I don’t use the others that they currently offer I can see the usefulness of them.

Go visit the webpage and enhance your site.

*Really Simple Syndication for the uninitiated. A way for you to get my blog on your desktop without visiting my website all you need is a feed reader. Use feedreader, its free and exceptionally simple yet has great features for the advanced user.

if:book has an interesting and thought provoking post on the future and purpose of peer review.
Here

While you are at it perhaps you should also be visiting the publication that is causing much of the trouble, Nature.
Here

I was in the mood to blog about bookselling and bookshops but having done some initial research I can see I need to do some more before reaching a conclusion so instead I will link to a fine article on Ganett about rural bookshops.
Here

Having written many articles since my initial Trend VS Fad post I am happy to say that one idea is firmly entrenched in my mind, that Books and Publishers and the Web are now firmly and symbiotically locked together. The relationship has yet to resolve itself into a fully matured one but there can be no doubt that the book/Web convergence is a trend not a fad.

Before anyone jumps on me and says: “Well of course it is. How stupid do you have to be to doubt that?” I say nothing is inevitable. There are many reasons Publishers might resist the Web and some still do. Readers still feel threatened by the Web and online content and most companies are unsure how to react and interact with the network and their own customers.

Books as we know them will remain, possibly as the expensive niche product that they once were, but I feel sure that over time (and whether we want them or not) new types of Books will emerge that marry the certainties of paper with the potential of the network.

The Web and Online Books offer enormous benefits to everyone but as I discussed yesterday these benefits may not necessarily accrue to Book Publishers. Indeed new and dangerous competitors could emerge. Some we may not even have thought of yet.

It may well be that venerable names will cease to trade as they get their online strategy hopelessly wrong or invest too much in a technology before its time is due or even simply by being unfortunately un-hip.

But I can see no escape for publishers, I can see no other avenue for books and the web will be enormously enriched by the changing of attitudes this trend will enforce. As we grow used to the idea of Wikipedia and the web offering quality content, online books will support and indeed raise the expectation that online information is as good as that found in a book. Instead of being an almost forgotten section of a bibliography the web links consulted will become the primary and books the secondary.

There is no escape. It will happen. All that remains is the excitement of how, when, why, who and of course the winners and losers.