Advertorials Pump Life Into Print

Marketing diguised as editorial or legitimate content is finding more receptive publishers who need the money to survive. But, these marketing advertorials should be clearly identified as commercials so as not to fool the naive and gullible.

Advertisers love this venue and are gaining more freedom of advertising control when they throw in the dollars. So, readers, as the old adage goes: "Believe nothing you read and only half of what you see!"

A few of these type of advertising models are springing up and getting around the accepted norm of clearly marking them with "advertising tags". One example given in the following article by Matt Kinsman, Executive Editor of Folio magazine, is Worth magazine:

Advertorials Give New Life to Print
But not labeling them as such is a mistake.
By Matt Kinsman 12/01/2009

Advertorials—the original "paid content"—are no stranger to magazines (FOLIO: does it too. See an example here.) Marketing that looks like content is always attractive to advertisers and as publishers agonize over plummeting print revenue and clients starting to do their own branded Webinars/events/lead gen, advertorials are a way to lure them back and maybe even hit budget for the first time this year.

Reader’s Digest’s Taste of Home recently said it will produce custom editorial columns that are more "synergistic" with advertisers’ promotional goals. Taste of Home created custom in-book sections that feature branded recipe cards for client Jimmy Dean that run next to the magazine’s own recipe cards section. According to RDA’s Taste of Home and Home & Garden Media Group vp and publisher Lora Gier, these sections are clearly marked as advertising and all advertroasial sections are "new pages" that don’t take away from existing editorial pages.

"The conversations we have are very strategic versus just discussing demographics and rates," Gier told FOLIO:. "We are winning exclusive business through these partnerships."

Advertorials Without the "Advertising" Tag

However, other publishers are pushing the boundaries of advertorials. A recent RIA Biz article gave a comprehensive look at a new advertorial program from Worth magazine, which was acquired by Sandow Media in 2008.

Worth charges financial advisors $2,495 per month or about $30,000 per year (the minimum commitment) to receive two-page profiles in six issues, free reprints, magazine subscriptions worth up to $11,000 for the advisor’s clients and a hard cover book with advisor profiles.

The article quotes Worth publisher Patrick Williams as saying, "Fifty-one million of assets under management just for the first issue. People say print media is dead but I have $51 million that says they are wrong." [It’s funny how marketers' complaints about print seem to disappear when they get to control the message.]

However, Worth isn’t labeling profiles as "advertising" but includes a sentence in the preamble of the profile section indicating they are paid for.

I’m all for vendor content and realize publishers (and editors) need to work more closely with advertisers but I don’t agree with advertorials that are anything less than clearly marked.

In 2006, FOLIO: did a cover story on the rise of Schofield Media Group, a publisher which at the time had grown to 10 magazines in the U.K., 14 in the U.S. and $40 million in revenue, thanks to a model that includes selling editorial case studies.

At the time, then Penton Media group publisher Terri Mollison said of Schofield's model, "How can any market derive what key trends or 'hot companies’ are worth reading about when the only criteria to select those companies is which vendors and distributors who are willing to pony up money to have accolades written about them?"

I wonder how many publishers are willing to take that same stand today.

National Geographic Kills Print Edition of Adventure

Oooh no! When they start messing with my old standard the National Geographic the volatile times in the publishing industry hits home even harder!

I received a Folio Magazine Alert yesterday announcing that the National Geographic "Adventure" series will be taken out of print version.

Jason Fell of Folio magazine gives this account:

After quietly exploring options for a sale, the National Geographic Society has decided to shutter the print edition of its Adventure spinoff title. The announcement was made today to staff.

“We’re tremendously proud of what [editor-in-chief] John Rasmus and his team have accomplished over the last 10 years,” National Geographic Magazine Group president John Griffin said in statement e-mailed to FOLIO:. “They have consistently delivered award winning editorial to an enthusiastic audience of readers and advertisers. But given the current advertising environment and the opportunities we see in emerging digital platforms, we think the time is right to transition the Adventure brand.”

Seventeen layoffs were associated with the closing, a spokesperson said. The majority of the cuts came from editorial and production.

The Adventure brand will live on, the group said, in a “multi-platform model,” including books, e-magazines, mobile applications and a Web site. It will continue to produce the National Geographic Adventure Awards.

Launched in March 1999, National Geographic Adventure carried a circulation of 625,000 and published eight times annually. Through the first nine months, the magazine saw ad pages fall 44 percent, according to PIB figures.

UPDATE: Not far behind Adventure in terms of ad page losses is National Geographic Traveler, which saw a nearly 40 percent decrease through the third quarter. Despite those losses, a spokesperson said National Geographic is "fully committed to Traveler, saying the magazine is still part of the group's "DNA."

The flagship National Geographic is down 21 percent in pages while Kids has held steady, growing roughly 1 percent, according to PIB.

RELATED LINKS
National Geographic Quietly Puts Adventure on the Block

Is There A Secret Formula To Writing A Best Seller?

A secret formula to a best-seller? Certainly there is no generic formula, not even in the same genre, I think. But, there may be a formula hidden within each of us if we write from a passion of what we are interested in and/or aroused by.

Lee Masterson, an excellent writer from Australia, wrote an insightful article addressing this topic and I am pleased to present her thoughts here:


The Secret Formula for Writing a Best-Selling Novel
by Lee Masterson

The Secret Formula for Writing a Best-Selling Novel is...

Wait for it...

Well, the truth is, there isn't one. That is, the formula is no secret.

Go ahead, browse your local bookstore, or search the net merrily if you like. You'll quickly learn that there are thousands of How-To books out there, all declaring that they can show you how to write a best-seller.

The problem here is that there are so many of these books available that the information begins to blur a little at the edges. They all offer good advice, but each seems to offer slightly different angles or varying approaches to applying techniques.

For this reason, it's often hard to determine which is right or wrong. Often these books, although helpful, are simply documenting a particular path one writer took to achieve publishing success. Unfortunately that same path may not work for another writer.

Writing in differing genres may require more specific information than a broad-based fiction manual. For example, a writer reading a How-To book on romantic fiction is not going to learn the best way to apply that information to writing science fiction. But the basic rules will be the same.

All stories, whether horror fiction or historical fantasy, all contain the same basic structure. They all have a beginning, middle and end, and they all have characters who must struggle through your plotline to reach a resolution. And all How-To books will agree on these basics.

In fact, most of them are pretty consistent in their foundations. The variances come from the individual author's own personal experiences and chosen genre.

Once you have a fair understanding of the guidelines offered in the self-help manuals, file those rules away and WRITE. Let your own unique imagination supply the finer details.

Write from your heart, not from a misguided notion of following someone else's rules. Write what you are happy writing. Tell yourself often that what works for one writer may never work for you. But above all, keep writing.

Look through each section in any bookstore. There will always be authors whose names are instantly recognizable as belonging to best-selling writers. Every fiction genre has its share of them, and they all began as comparative unknowns with one thing in common.

They all happened to stumble upon the magic ingredient for turning their passion into amazing success.

That ingredient is a passion for writing.

So that elusive secret formula really should be as simple as writing something you truly believe in. It should be as difficult as struggling through the isolation of the creation process.

It should be as crazy as daring to persist in the face of all adversity. It should be as frustrating as needing to resubmit your work again, even after you've received forty rejection slips.

But, above all, it must be as satisfying as wanting to write purely for the joy of writing.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lee Masterson is a freelance writer from South Australia. She is also the editor of Fiction Factor (http://www.fictionfactor.com/) - an online magazine for writers, offering tips and advice on getting published, articles to improve your writing skills, heaps of writer's resources and much more. Check out Lee's newest book, "Write, Create & Promote a Best-Seller" here and jump-start your writing career.

Query Letters

Today we are going into the teaching mode for a certain group of writers. Discussion will be the ALL IMPORTANT query letters to sell yourself and your project. 

Query letters are necessary to sell your written work to literary agents and publishers of all kinds. It is your pitch or written job interview if you will.

All query letters should be short and sweet and summarize your entire project succinctly. Ideally, the query letter should be one page. And this one page tome must include, at minimum, your qualifications and a Synopsis of your entire project...No small feat! It takes practice to write a good query that grabs and holds interest.

Allena Tapia of About.com has written a short five (5) point guide to get you started on the right track. Although she uses a query letter for an article, it also applies, as she notes, to book publishers as well:

By Allena Tapia
The point of your query letter is to sell an article or an idea for an article. This is the format and medium in which magazines, newspapers and book editors expect to be approached.

1.Use standard header information. Address your letter directly to the editor in charge of queries and manuscripts. Do your homework, and avoid sending queries and pitches blindly.

2.Open with a statement that makes the editor want to keep reading. This could either be a brief statement about your particular qualifications for this article, or an attention-grabbing introduction to the idea itself.

3.Spend more time detailing your idea. This is the area to make the sale convincing. Why does the editor care about this? Is it really timely? Does it fit in perfectly with the publications mission? Will it hook her readers? Often this is a good place to use quotes, anecdotes or samples from you proposed article.

4.Convince the editor to hire you. If you haven't done this above, convince the editor that you are the most qualified writer for this angle. Perhaps you've got an inside scoop. Maybe your subject has promised you, in particular, the first interview. This would also be the place to mention past credits or significant education in the subject. Whatever it is that makes you the best person to write this article, here is where you sell it.

5.Never make the editor work harder. Be sure to close with your contact information highly visible. In addition make sure the editor knows exactly where he/she can follow up on you, the writer. Do you have any clips, or perhaps a website? Don't make them look- put it right out in plain sight!

What You Need:
•Name and address of the submissions editor
•Word processing program
•Shining idea that no sane editor would ever pass up

The Keys to a Barnes and Noble Book Signing

Getting book signings at major bookstore chains is a real plus in marketing and selling your book. However, if you are self-published or have a print-on-demand (POD) book, it is more difficult to arrange these type of book signings.

But, do not despair! There are ways around the obstacles to obtain major bookstore signings AND other means available to you: independent bookstore signings and speaking engagements with backroom sales that allow you to keep more of the retail price, to name two.

Sallie Goetsch, a writer and small business consultant, has written an insightful article on ezinearticles.com explaining how to best obtain book signings, what the major chain book stores have to go through to provide you with one and what you need to have in place to land a major signing. I present her article here for your information:

Dan Poynter wrote in Successful Nonfiction that authors should never host autograph parties. Instead of merely signing their books, the thing to do was offer "mini-seminars." In an August 27th, 2006 interview with Tee Morris for "The Survival Guide to Writing Fantasy," Annie Hololob, Community Relations Manager for the Harrisonburg, VA Barnes & Noble, confirms the value of making your book signing into an event. (Tee himself apparently has a habit of staging sword fights during his book signings, which definitely livens things up.) If you want to have an event at a Barnes & Noble, the Community Relations Manager is the person to talk to. This is the person who knows whether the store's customers are the right market for your book, or whether you'd do better at a store in a different city. (My local Barnes & Noble, for instance, doesn't even have author events, just a children's story time.) This is the person whose good side you want to get on.

There are two important things you need before you start assembling your press kit and cultivating the CRM at your local Barnes & Noble, however. Without them, there's no way the store can carry your books. Large chain bookstores have to operate by certain rules in order to stay in business, and those rules may exclude you and your book for reasons that have nothing to do with your merits as a writer.

Distribution

In order for BN to order, stock, and sell your books, they have to be available through a wholesaler or distributor such as Ingram or Baker & Taylor--one BN already has a relationship with. That means BN can buy the book at a wholesale price, usually 40-60% off the cover price, without going to extra trouble to special-order it. If your book is traditionally published, there should be no problem with this. One of the reasons for choosing to go with a major publisher or established small press is that they are already BN Vendors of Record. The traditionally self-published, those like Dan Poynter who start their own publishing companies, can become Vendors of Record by filling out the BN Publisher Information Form.

The authors who run into real trouble in the distribution department are those with POD books. These books may be good-looking and high quality. They may even be available through Baker & Taylor or Ingram. But unless ordered in very high quantities, they are offered only for the retail price. BN's standard order when dealing with a new publisher is two copies of every title. Even an order of 30-50 books for a signing isn't going to provide enough of a profit margin to make it worth the bookstore's while. And because Print on Demand books are literally printed only when ordered, each copy is much more expensive to produce than a comparable mass-produced book.

Returns

The other thing that keeps POD books-and their authors-out of chain stores like Barnes & Noble is the lack of a returns policy. Bookstores expect to be able to return all unsold books to a publisher, and not to pay the publisher for any of the books until after they sell. Unsold books aren't even returned intact: the covers get ripped off and they're sent away to be pulped. (I kid you not. I was horrified to learn this, even after reading all those warnings about not buying books without covers.)

POD houses don't warehouse books and can't provide that kind of returns policy, and very few self-published authors are going to want to. But no matter how barbaric a practice pulping is, it's a fact of life at all major book outlets, and Barnes & Noble didn't invent it. Nor does a Community Relations Manager have the power to bend the rules about this, however flexible s/he may be about the form your signing takes if you can meet the store's requirements.

Alternatives

If you're a self-published or POD author and touring the major chain bookstores is something you can't live without, you can try to interest a traditional publisher in your book, though you need to make sure that you really own the book in its current form before you do this. (Most POD houses lay claim to the final, formatted version of your book, though the content remains yours.)

Or you can skip Barnes & Noble altogether and hold your book events elsewhere. Independent bookstores are often in a better position than large chains to take a chance on an author, though they, too, need to be able to buy the books at a low enough price to make a profit. Public libraries are almost always willing to accept the donation of a book or two and host a reading.

And, of course, if you make your living as a speaker, back-of-room sales may be your best bet and an opportunity to take advantage of the plus side of self-publishing and POD: getting to keep a far greater percentage of the book's retail price.

Will Authors Bypass Publishers In The Future ?

I have previously hit on this subject in past posts and find that Mike Shatzkin (The Shatzkin Files) also feels that authors will exercise more control over the publishing process in the near future (it's beginning already!).

Partial excerpt from the 25 Nov 2009 posting on The Shatzkin Files:

"We have observed previously that the day will likely come when Big Authors will go straight to electronic distribution for some ebooks, bypassing the publishers to collect bigger royalties. What could be the first shot of that battle, and a reflection of the ideas in this post as well, may have been fired in the UK where Sony has announced a special edition James Patterson ebook which will contain the new book, “Cross Country”, a month before its general release plus other excerpts and a special letter from James Patterson. Of course, that deal was probably made by the publisher with Patterson’s cooperation, but it points to possibilities that should make publishers nervous.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING !

I wish all my friends & followers & everyone else a very Happy & Prosperous Thanksgiving Day !

Hope every single day after today is a better one than the day before.

Good Luck In All You Do,

John R. Austin & Family