I’m curious. Through my association with Absolute Write’s forums and elsewhere, I have plenty of friends who are writers. And the greatest support one can give is to, of course, buy the book or written material. I’ve done that in a number of occasions.

However, it’s always awkward to want to promote a friend but not want to buy the material because … well, I don’t read that genre. And the Erotic Steampunk Romance book will just look awkward on my bookshelf (or in my Kindle).

So, in our interconnected, blogged, Facebooked, Twittered world, I’d like you to tell me how I can help you monetize your efforts and what gets people to ‘add to cart’ your work? I think, as Rob Kroese points out (and outlines with a fantastic accounting of the history of digital publishing), the barrel has gone off the waterfall and is descending into the digital medium. As this period becomes more a “Wild West” for publishers, book sellers, writers and creatives, so to it becomes an opportunity to explore new money streams and reach out in terms of marketing and branding.

I have some ideas, but I’d like you to share them with me here. I’ll use them. I swear.

The Nov. 7 session of #writechat led by the fantastic @writingspirit took a interesting turn when it delved into the notion of using a published song’s lyrics to help move a written story along. It’s a fascinating topic that delves into all sorts of areas, including Digital Millennium Copyright Act, artists’ rights, and whether not using song lyrics in a story is a good idea in the first place.

The discussion took a tangent around the age old question (for writers) of “Do I have to pay to use a song lyric, or lyrics, in my book?” Of course, the answer is yes and it’s been proven again and again. This article from Writing-World.com cites a number of examples (solid references toward the bottom). As someone writing a story with copious references to 1980s music (not necessarily lyrics), needless to say, the topic held my interest.

Some of the answers were standard ones. “Why are you even using song lyrics? Write your own songs.” My take: young and old writers have been and are inspired by music. Many of us associate moments of our own lives with whole songs (“Best of Both Worlds” by Van Halen is the latter-half of my teenage life) or excerpted lyrics (My own with cancer and some specific Ray LaMontagne lyrics). That effect has a carryover in to our creative works. And certainly, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”  However, it could be argued that the rule of law and the want of control of intellectual property is drying up inspiration through fear. “Oh, it seems your best-selling story was inspired by two lyrics from my rock ballad? That’ll be $250,000 plus a 2 percent of gross. And a credit.”

However, in keeping up with these things, this is a no-brainer. If you want to use the lyrics, you pay. Someone or something, like a Recording Industry Association of America-invested record company, owns those lyrics. Like any commodity, and because what’s been created has the rule of law on its side, the lyrics cost money to use. In the above cited example, that use could come to the tune of THOUSANDS of dollars. Plus, if you read reddit enough, you’ll know that RIAA is litigious to both behemoth and housewife.

Easy access to content and the capability to store and manipulate that content bolsters this problem. How many of you have looked for lyrics to that favorite song, found a website that hosted those lyrics and then pasted them into a Tweet or status update? And if so inspired, how many would copy and paste the same inspiring lyric into a work-in-progress? Many based on the tone of the #writechat. What if the song lyric or lyrics inspired the entire story? And sequels? The problem is this: if one bases a work or seeds a work with someone else’s content, and it’s one of the main components of driving that content along, then the entity that created the original content should get a cut.

Now, it’s up to courts to decide how “inspired” a particular work is and how to award damages. But, similarly, if I shot a photograph of the Bavarian landscape, and it ended up in a German tourism brochure without my permission, I’d seek damages. Why shouldn’t the same apply for lyrics to “Jumping Jack Flash,” “The Battle of Evermore,” or “Pac-Man Fever”? Three to five years ago, for-profit/fame/power bloggers/website owners could probably get away with excerpting content under “Fair Use” guise for their blogs, too, and still can. But mostly it’s about making money. There’s a reason I can’t see so many YouTube music videos in Germany: no one makes any money by allowing them to be seen here.

Companies have been formed to stifle people that use content without permission. Moreover, there is a groundswell of movement to change copyright laws. That will mean it will take longer for items to enter the public domain, if ever at all, as the rights will belong to generations of families or corporations who seek to bolster their profit bases. The notion of a work no longer making money after 50 or 75 years and then being given to the public for good is fading fast. At what point do you believe Beatles music will enter the public domain? My guess will be at about the same time that Paul Atreides becomes emperor of the known universe.

“Don’t make money on the backs of our work.” That’s the theme here, regardless of how much you may dislike the RIAA, record companies, or anyone else perceived to big a compassionless cog in the big profit machine. As an artist, I can’t necessarily disagree with the notion. I want control to choose how I donate my works; not have them ‘Saved As’ and repurposed. Creative commons is great (and I’ve done plenty of free and CC  illustration and writing work), but in the end, established, working writers and artists will tell you that it won’t pay a mortgage or put food in mouths.

What’s your opinion?

PS. Be sure to catch #writechat on Twitter Sundays from noon-3 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.

(Image credit: soupgreens.com under Creative Commons and public domain)

This week, I performed an exercise in social media interactivity and privacy that I thought might help you.

I took the time to divide better than 750 people who are my “friends” on Facebook into categories of access by creating three lists — gold, silver and bronze. The categories are easy to define:

• Gold — All access. No change. The person sees everything. This meant the person is probably related to me, is a close friend or that I’ve had multiple person-to-person or online interactions that resulted in something positive in my life.
   
• Silver — A friend or an acquaintance. I’ve probably interacted more than one time with the person, but don’t know them quite well enough to put into the gold category. However, they receive almost all the same access as gold people.
• Bronze — An acquaintance. Someone with whom I have had very little or zero interaction. Someone I know through an online forum, a high school friend with whom I rarely interact or someone who I bumped into at conference. You can’t see my posts and you have access to a limited amount of information.

Once I divided the people into the three lists, I went into the “manage account” tab of and set the permissions using the “customize” tab, selecting those lists. It took some time, but I could specifically customize access to a great many things, including posts and photo albums. The entire event took about three total hours, including writing this article.

In all of the above, the keyword is “interaction.” The litmus test question was a simple one: Do you comment on my posts, photos or other items placed on my wall? How often? What sort of quality? In dividing up people into these lists, I discovered that:

• There are 266 people on the gold list, 464 on the silver and 22 on the bronze.
• I exorcised about 20 people from my friends list. I also deleted about 15 pages that I followed.
• I know every single one of the 752 people on my friends list through an online interaction or a face-to-face meeting. Or, we’re related.

My proclivity is to continue to give people access to my Facebook information. Some would argue that the 266 are really the ones I should keep. The others I should purge. I disagree. All of the people here connected with me or I connected with them for a reason. Plus, networking is networking, regardless of the platform. Further, I don’t friend everyone who requests it of me and I friend a sliver of those “recommended” to me by Facebook. Meanwhile, I’ve created a “fan” page (or what is now a “like” page) for a more specific purpose.

And while this was a good exercise to take note of the level of interactivity I have with people (and that they have with me), my level of privacy is unchanged. That is, I take care of my privacy settings before I reach the keyboard, not after. There’s a whole litany of things I will not publish on any platform, even email. I’ll continue to that standard on my Facebook wall, on my Twitter feed and elsewhere.

For better or worse, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and other social media sites are giant marketing channels. You market yourself. Others market themselves to you. In effect, you become a brand; a product or service that is marketed to hundreds, maybe thousands. In turn, your followers and friends are marketing and branding themselves with you. You do that in physical space with the way you dress, talk, walk, smile, stand and interact at work and at home.

Meanwhile, those social media channels are now used by credit houses, employers and anyone else with access to find out more about you. Couple that with the flood of information sold about mortgages, addresses and so on as found on a site like Spokeo, and it becomes that much more important to safeguard privacy before I reach for the bullhorn and begin to talk.

With this exercise complete, I now need to see how it works and fine tune it. And again, I’ll emphasize: the lists are about interactivity, not privacy. Privacy is solved before I reach the keyboard, not after. I’m sure I’ll move some people from one list to another. However, this is probably the right solution for privacy and interactivity.

I’ve begun trimming fan pages on Facebook. I’m doing this because there are plenty of fan pages that are putting out news that I’m simply not interested in, though I do have an interest in the product, service or organization that is running the page.

My expectation on becoming a fan on one of Facebook’s fan pages is that I will be treated like, well, a fan. Also, that I will meet other fans of the brand. And I will, eventually, socialize and conversate these brands into something more. That may mean a purchase. They may mean attending an event. I could mean a behavioral change, but I’m 40, so that would be a stretch. In any case, my expectations are for me to able to approach these brands on a one-to-one basis, and feel like that they belong to me.

Star Wars, Marvel Comics and many video games tend to do these things well. They are brands that know how to handle fans (and fanboys, for that matter). They give back. They talk to their fans. So, it’s no surprise that as many companies begin this journey into social media, they just don’t know how to have a one-to-one engagement like Star Wars or Marvel does. In particular, the American military brand  is having a hard go in the space. (Disclaimer: I’m a DOD employee; this is my own a opinion and not necessarily that of the DOD)

Right now, there are hundreds of military units clamoring for attention in the social space. You can find a fan page for many military units and government organizations from San Jose, California to the sands of Afghanistan. Some do well. However, the majority seem to see the fan page (and the Twitter feed and other forms of social media) as a means of pushing a news release. No conversation. No questions asked. No two-way engagement. This may be a case of rookie nerves. It may also be a case of simply not knowing the social space. There are a myriad othersreasons I suppose. However, it could also be military people following an age-old paradigm.

It goes something like this: “We have an event we want publicized. Let’s put our news release (choose one: on the fax machine/in email/on the fan page/in the Twitter feed) and send it on its way. We’ll then move onto the next release. The end.” And that’s that. No engagement to encourage publication. No socialization of the issue to create awareness and availability, or to show passion or care on the issue. Simply, here it is, like it or not. We’ll be over here moving onto whatever is next.

I don’t want to be a fan of that. I don’t need your news. I’m a fan of you. I like your unit. I like your drink. I like your book. I like the author. However, I don’t like when you don’t pay me and the other fans the least bit of attention. It makes me want to become a fan of someone else who is more like me and more willing to engage me and my interests in your brand. Now, I know. Fan is short for fanatic. But every fan of any brand has expectations. Fanatics, passers by and other levels of people who want to engage the brand matter. So, too, are the people who aren’t ‘fans’ that you want to have engaged as part of your communcation strategy.

As an author and someone trying to market his own writing, I want to engage my fans. I want them to buy my writing. I want them to buy the next bit of writing as well. And based on the current economic climate and the given information landscape, I’m betting my fellow writer friends want that, too. So, my thoughts on being good to fans might look something like this:

• Give me something on your fan page, blog or Twitter feed that I cannot get anywhere else. John Mayer, the musician, does this brilliantly on his Twitter feed. So does Neil Gaiman and others.
• When you do this, be interesting. The person running your social media stream should understand celebrity, have a personality and meld all that with the company brand and communication strategy. If he or she does that, you’ll be a rock star in all the right places. If he or she does not, bumpkins.
• Engage me. Ask questions. Offer me the opportunity to have input (other than the money out of my wallet going into yours)
• Praise me every once in a while. I’m here for a reason. I’d like a stroke every now and then for no other reason than I’m a fan.
• Tell me what you expect of me as a fan. I’ll give that back to you 10 fold.

As the writer, I must be part of that engagement team. I must understand how people consume information about the thing I am trying to make money from. I must understand how I can best create the opportunities for people to act upon and monetize the content I create. I must be more than a writer in this regard. It’s hard, but it must be done. Traditional media is transforming faster than Optimus Prime in a Michael Bay film. As an author, I (and the people who would help me with my publicity) must transform, too.

The fan pages that I am pruning this week failed in some or all these regards. They’re easy to find. Will you be trimming your fan page quotient like I did? Tell me if you do and why.

This morning, when I opened Twitter for the first time, I had 289 followers.  I made one tweet about my new lease on my house (grr) and, five minutes later, I had 12 new followers.  Surprisingly, they all had something in common: they all wanted me to LOVE the new ‘Star Trek’ film. Also …

• They were all women, apparently all between the ages of 16 and 24.
• They all were following at least 900 people but only had, say, 24 followers.Â
• And they all kept saying the same things: “OMG!  The new Star Trek!”  and “Well, looks like I’ll have to be late to work but I saw Star Trek,” and other youthful, edgy sort of ‘ZOMG!!!111!!!’ web quips about the film.Â

Surrogates all, sent out into the Twitter ecosystem.  Probably paid with free tickets or minimal compensation (or some sort of casting couch promise).  If real people, I picture them curled up with their laptops tweeting away madly from scripts given to them by Paramount or some other marketing firm like telemarketers with specific times (like when show times starts on the East, Central, Mountain and Pacific time zones), sentences and more.Â

Reviews are almost all positive for the new film.  Momentum has been building for sometime.  Admittedly, I am as excited to see the film as anyone.  So, what Paramount is doing in the Twitter space is smart — flooding it with people (or bots, which is more likely) that are saying the same things reviewers and the general consensus is saying about the film.

Look at it this way: when you’re at a party, you don’t want it to run out of liquor.  Hype is the intoxicant that keeps the box office tally climbing and the patrons in the drunken, happy stupor.  Besides, movies make most of their bank in the first two weeks of release or they just don’t make it. So, this makes sense and the surrogates will probably drop off before Memorial Day.

The tactic is not new.  Even the magician has a plant in the crowd to help him with his gag.  Surely, the recent American presidential campaign used the virtual surrogate in a way never before seen.  There are more examples.  So, it wouldn’t be fair to lump this in with all the wonderful advances Web 2.0 distribution makes.Â

However, to my recollection, this is the first real whack across the face with marketing I’ve had Twitter give me.  The results being that ‘Star Trek’ stays a “trended” topic for the weekend (and when viewing those trends, that what you see is the marketing hype mixed in with real opinion), if not longer, and that the high people get from seeing the film sustains and bring them back for a second viewing.

With better than 9 million people on Twitter and 145 million (or more, depending on your source) on facebook, as well as a smattering of social media diaspora elsewhere, the marketing tactic makes sense.  That is, after all, where the young eyeballs with all the disposable income have gone.  And besides, social media is more intimate thean television, radio or what remains of print.  It’s a great hook for an emotionally charged medium to make its bank.

I wanted to be mad that I’d been flooded by this marketing campaign (besides,  I’m guessing they are elsewhere, too), but I was too caught up in how clever (and overt) it is.    Whether they are bots or real people, there’s power in numbers.  A great majority of Twitter users will believe they are being followed by another ‘Star Trek’ fan. Every little psychological push to get us into the theater or back to the theater or just saying good things about the film will work on at least a few of us.

When you get a few surrogates latched on to your Twitter account, I’d like to know your reaction.

Brings up some great points and anecdotal.  Still, cable news is turning a profit.  So, grain of salt and all that:

These days to be an anchor on on one of the three news networks gives you the audience of a rock star. More and more the field becomes less about breaking news and more about personality and opinion — and that’s the beginning of their end. While various tech pundits write sermons about the demise of newspapers due to the net, the real story that everyone is missing is that cable news networks are slowing having nothing to do with actual news.

http://www.fanboy.com/2009/04/cable-news-dead.html