Forget Everything You’ve Ever Known About Book Publishing.

I’ve been planning on writing about writing for a couple of months now. As a writer-since-birth (aren’t we all?), my world is heavily and happily populated with other writers. In most ways, my fellow writers and I are simpatico. We’re soul mates. We’re creative kin. But there’s one way in which I’m decidedly different from my comrades: I saw it coming.

“It” of course is the Internet. It of course is the driving digital force that’s (pun intended) re-written everything, especially the already fragile world of publishing. New technology continues to rock the business of books. And I don’t mean the technology that gave us self-publishing and Kindles. I mean the uber-disruptive combination of enhanced bandwidth plus social media. As one of the rare writers (in my crowd anyway) who very early on embraced the “Interwebs” and later on, social media, I’ve been the proverbial canary in the mine, grown hoarse and embarrassingly bombastic at lunches, cocktail parties and phone conversations about the need to ‘get’ it. My original plan was to post a list of useful links and actionable ideas for writers here on GuruofNew.com . I still may do that. But I realized after reading Adam Penenberg’s article in Fast Company: Viral Loop Chronicles – Forget Everything You’ve Heard About Book Publishing — that unless a writer realizes the very foundation of our writer’s world has crumbled (drumroll) and is being feverishly re-built — no list of 10 Must-Have Links for Writers is going to matter one whit.

Consider this scuttlebutt: Agents now ask prospective authors how ‘big is your network’ — suggesting 100,000 as a good place to start, because if 10% of this combo of Follows, Friends, Fans and Connections buys the book, pub costs are covered.

Consider this scuttlebutt: Tim Ferriss, the author of New York Times bestseller “The 4-Hour Workweek,” is using PBwiki to organize reader feedback and participation for the second edition of his book. Tim’s innovative use of social media such as blogs and social networks won him numerous accolades for “The 4-Hour Workweek,” including his first book launch being named one of the top 50 product launches of 2007 by Advertising Age magazine, and simultaneously reaching #1 on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Businessweek bestseller lists.

I am assuming you noticed the operative phrase “product launches” — because that’s exactly what a book is these days. I’m not idealistic fool enough to think this is necessarily a bad thing or even a new thing.

Here’s an excerpt from Adam Penenburg’s article. Trust me — every writer needs to read it:

“Forget everything you’ve heard about book publishing.

For instance, recently at a party to celebrate the publication of my latest book, a number of people asked, “Is your publisher sending you on a tour to promote your book?”

Dicl;dsCKWDfce9qdck. Sorry, I was laughing so hard recounting this story that I hit my head on my keyboard.

These friends/colleagues/acquaintances/random people I met were inquiring about Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today’s Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves. It tells the stories of the fastest growing companies in history–Skype, Hotmail, eBay, PayPal, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and many more, all of which grew virally. By amassing such huge numbers of users without spending a dime on marketing, they were able to create multimillion and in some cases billion-dollar businesses practically overnight. They did it by creating a product that its users spread for them. In other words, to use it, they had to spread it. Never before in human history has it been possible to create this much wealth, this fast, and starting with so little. I’d like to think Viral Loop is partially inspirational. If they can create billion-dollar companies from scratch, why can’t you?

Most people have a vision of publishing that ceased to exist years ago: writers of yore traipsing bookstore to bookstore across America to offer readings and scrawl inscriptions to the handful of strangers who bothered to show up. It sounds so quaint. Alas, today’s publishers have little patience for such low-yield marketing efforts. Building a writer’s career isn’t part of the equation. It’s all about the bottom line. If legendary editor Maxwell Perkins, who patiently guided some of our nation’s greatest writers (Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe) were alive today, he’d probably be working in public relations.

Publishers don’t pump serious marketing money into a book unless they know it’s a hit, even after coughing up a six-figure advance. They don’t commit to ad budgets in contract negotiations and are loath to spend a dime on authors’ Web sites, travel, or any other expenses. That’s because so few of the books they publish actually “earn out,” that is, sell enough copies so that the author’s advance is covered by his or her sales. A book that sells enough copies to justify an author’s advance is about as common as a kind or thoughtful anonymous comment on Gawker.

There’s an old saying in publishing: Your agent hasn’t done his job if you earn back your advance. But, you might ask, how can a book be a hit if your publisher doesn’t get behind it?

Therein lies the mystery of marketing a book at a time the old rules don’t apply. As a former book editor of mine explained, publishers follow the broadcast TV model. You schedule a show for primetime and see if it develops an audience. If it does, you throw your weight behind it. If it doesn’t you pull the plug. Book publishing is a “hits” business, with a tiny fraction of huge sellers–thank you Dan Brown, Malcolm Gladwell, and soon, Sarah Palin–carrying the rest of us losers. Publishers don’t care about dropping money on 99 books if the 100th is a Tipping Point or Freakonomics. This also characterizes the music business and we can see how well that turned out, but I digress.

Instead of a publisher building your career, you’re on your own. And if you talk to editors you’ll get an earful. They wonder why authors don’t take a percentage of their advance to pay for their own marketing. Why should the publisher have to do it all? They paid you for the work, didn’t they? For too long authors have acted like crybabies, waiting for publishers to be like, well, publishers used to be. That was a long time ago, when editors used to, well, edit, but much of that responsibility has been passed on to literary agents.

I’m not kvetching, mind you. I can honestly say that Hyperion, which released Viral Loop, is the best publisher I’ve worked with. But there is nothing sexy about an author selling a book. It isn’t about cocktail parties, readings, and witty repartee at the Algonquin Hotel. Nowadays it’s about press coverage, social media, Facebook and Twitter, iPhone apps, virality, and the hope that if you hang on long enough and convince enough people to buy and read your book, they will market it for you.

How? Because if they like it–really like it–they will, without prompting, enthusiastically recommend your book to a friend, and so on, and so on (like the old “psst” shampoo commercial). It’s word-of-mouth, the gold standard of marketing, because a recommendation to buy comes from a trusted source like a friend or family member. This is how publishing has always worked, of course. It’s just the journey there that’s become particularly treacherous.

The hardest part for most authors is to create that initial large installed base of readers. Some like Gary Vaynerchuk, who dictated Crush It: Why Now Is The Time to Cash In On Your Passion, are, as Gary Vee would put it, “crushing it!” Most, however, fail.”

Guru’s Note: The Guru of New Group is here to help you with book strategy and social media. And we’ve got a great Book Tour guy who gets that IRL (In Real Life) still sells lots of books.

Oh and another thing. Here’s a great article on 15 Twitter Users Shaping the Future of Publishing.   And stay tuned for my upcoming posts on (yes!) the Vook and the Nook.

“Getting” The Mom Market: Three Winners

It’s my daughter’s birthday today.  Which means that my Momhood is front and center this morning, as I scroll back, way back to the day before being a Mom was rockstar cool and wearing your kids on your hips is hipper than Prada’s latest.

I remember the day a senior executive (and Mom) took me aside at my new job and whispered: “Never talk about your daughter. Don’t post her pictures. Don’t bring her to the office. No one should even know you have a kid.”

Nowdays, Momism is not only a badge of honor but also a booming business, thanks to some 83 million U.S. Moms who are spending 2 trillion + dollars a year on everything from baby spas www.skinspababy.com to NASCAR umbrella strollers.  Although the whisper in the VC world in Silicon Valley may be that the ‘Mom market is saturated’, the Guru thinks that conversely, the marketplace is going to continue to grow right along with every toddling step these kids take.  

Here are a couple of winners:

www.cubesandcrayons.com Cubes and Crayons, ‘office space and kid space’ is a concept well worth watching.  Launched in January 2008 by frustrated Mom and Founder MF Chapman, this savvy combination of full-time, flexible childcare and office space is already a hit and sure to spawn more mini-Mom communities where both Mom and kidlet benefit.

http://maternalinstinct.net/   Just up the road from Menlo Park’s Cubes and Crayons is Mom-marketing powerhouse Maternal Instinct. The brainchild of award-winning creative marketer, Kat Gordon, this talented team of Creative Problem Solvers knows exactly how to tap into the growing band of Mom Influencers.  Check out ‘What’s My Blanket’ for tips.

And finally, we Moms know that each and every one of our offspring is a creative genius.  Check out this latest winner, where self-publishing meets kids, Tikatok: beta.tikatok.net.