He agrees to do a “Hudson Hustle Tour.” That would be 6 Airport Hudson News Stores in 24 Hours. Check it out on Facebook. Tell all of your friends who might be traveling on November 2nd and 3rd to come say hi…and follow along on Facebook and Twitter if you can’t make it.
Nurse Theresa Brown was struck with the swine flu two weeks ago, and she wrote a post on the New York Times Well blog about dealing with personal illnesses as a nurse. While it put her out of commission for a while, it also gave her renewed perspective on how her patients must face more challenging diagnoses.
You know when you go to a website from your phone (Blackberry, iPhone, Razr, etc.) — it takes a really really long time to load, and then when you finally get to the site, it’s hard to read, and size it properly? It’s almost too much for me to bear.
Well I’ve discovered a company that let’s you build your site as a mobile site, and then redirect traffic to the mobile site when it sees it’s coming from a phone. It’s crazy easy (think Tumblr easy), and so reasonable it’s practically free. Check them out at www.mofuse.com. You even get analytics as part of the deal. Fascinating!
Ok, now go to your phone and try it…Type in www.theharperstudio.com and see how fast it loads and readable it is and pretty it looks…and then come back and tell me what you think
For a long time we’ve been discussing how to maximize an author’s content for the various platforms that are emerging. Check out the amazing comments in this blog post from last February about building a dynamic experience for a phone. It was not long after that blog post that I read this article about Brad Inman in The New York Times. Amazingly, Brad was bringing the same vision to life.
As soon as I heard about the Vook, I knew I wanted to experiment, and the perfect author to start with was Gary.
Cut to six months later, and a baby Vook was born last night at 11:50 pm in the iTunes store.
In the video clip you see here, Gary discusses the future of media with US News reporter Rick Newman. There are a few pages in Crush It! about the future of media. During the writing process, we had a lot of discussion about how much to add in the book on this topic. We knew Gary’s vision would most likely be controversial, so the question became, do we add more to this section so he could flesh out his vision, or do we not spend more than a few pages, because after all, this isn’t a book about the future of media. We decided to leave it at just a few pages, but then went back to it for the Vook and have Rick interview Gary so it could be explained further.
It was so liberating to be able to expand out from the print book in areas where a video could enhance the written word, while at the same time, it was a challenge to come up with video content that was fresh and unique from Gary, who’s all over the Internet in video. I think we achieved what we set out to do with the Vook. This is whole new medium with so much potential.
1) The Experience — I know others are doing it now…but I did see it here first…and it is my favorite of all that I’ve seen. All of the videos are worth the watch…but if you’re going to watch just one, my favorite is the 35 Book Video.
2) Special Offers — Gary is the master great partnerships.
4) Tour Dates — This isn’t just the killer tour…note the RSVP buttons that lead to Facebook Fan pages where people RSVP for the events…and then the Recap feature at the bottom. Love.
5) About The Book — Not just boring catalog copy. It’s fun and energetic…but scroll down…don’t miss the “Myths” and “Learn” at the end.
The book cover Twitter avatars are pretty cool too.
Our pals Kiwa Iyobe and Susan Choi at Suite 2046 have been doing a FABULOUS job of putting together next week’s Tweet N Eat contest for the release of This Is Why You’re Fat. So far we have six trucks on board, including The Treats Truck, Wafels & Dinges, the Cravings Truck, Cupcake Stop, the Bistro Truck, and Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream. The locations of each truck will be tweeted out by @tiwyf on Twitter starting at 11 am on October 29, so make sure to follow them to get in on the action. The first five people to order the TIWYF special at each truck will receive a free book, and the first one to hit up all six trucks and tweet pics will win a private food truck party for 25 friends! (Grub Street, NBC New York, Midtown Lunch, and Crain’s New York, amongothers.) Make sure you spread the word and wear loose clothing on October 29th. SEE YOU ON THE STREET!
ABC News interviewed Jessica Amason, author of the book This Is Why You’re Fat, getting an early look at some of the highlights of the gross-food movement. Click through to read about all of the culinary creations and let us know what you think: gross, or tasty?Also, for those ready to take a big bite out of that Elvis Donut, the This Is Why You’re Fat team has an excellent food truck contest lined up for October 29. That Thursday, six mobile food vendors in Manhattan will prepare certain items that This Is Why You’re Fat will tweet about. The first person to hit all six and submit a photo of himself eating every item gets a food-truck party of his choice for 25 friends. Info on the trucks’ locations will be updated every 20 minutes, so if you want to participate, make sure you’re following @tiwyf.
The argument over book pricing started to heat up with Amazon and then BN.com offering e-books at $9.99; now that Wal-Mart and Amazon have started offering the top ten industry hardcovers for $10.00 each, that argument is reaching a boil. Beyond the news stories about this “price war,” there is a lot of traffic on blogs, Twitter, etc…about what this means for authors and publishers. For instance, on today’s “ShelfAwareness” Robert D. Utter of the Other Tiger bookstore in Westerly, R.I. says,
What ARE the economics? How much money are these two behemoths losing on each sale when costs are taken into account? What would the P&L and balance sheets look like for this model? At what point is their behavior illegal and anticompetitive?
To answer him briefly, retailers pay publishers roughly 50% of the suggested retail price for books. For instance, when Wal-Mart buys a $35.00 book from Scribner, they pay Scribner about $17.50. If Wal-Mart then chooses to sell that book for $10.00, they are losing about $7.50 per copy sold. So, the “P&L” doesn’t look so good in this case for Wal-Mart, but clearly there are larger agendas involved for these companies, who are willing to use these books as “loss leaders” to establish their predominance on the retailing landscape. Their behavior is not illegal or anticompetitive; in fact, it would be illegal for publishers to tell any American retailer what to charge for a book; that’s why it’s called a “suggested” retail price.
The short-term results of this price war are some losses for Wal-Mart and Amazon, and some brisk sales for the publishers whose books have been chosen. But the “road kill” here are the accounts who can’t afford to participate in the race—traditional booksellers. And in the long term, these large retailers may succeed in convincing consumers that $10.00 is the right price for a book, whether digital or physical. That would put an enormous squeeze on an already-squeezed business, since of the $12.50 we get now for a $25.00 book, we spend about $2.00 to produce each copy, about $1.00 to market each copy, and another $1.00 or so on freight and warehousing, etc., leaving us roughly $8.50 out of which we must pay the author (who would get $4.25 if this were a profit-share, or $3.75 if this were a 15% royalty) and cover our significant overheads, before we end up with a slim profit.
If you can tear your eyes away from the photo for just a second, I would like to point out that Kevin Michael Connolly is taking his memoir, DOUBLE TAKE, on the road. Kevin has posted his national book tour schedule over on his blog, and he also provided a handy public Google calendar to give you a better look at where he’ll be for the next month or so. Check it out and see if Kevin will be stopping by a town near you!
Now back to the photo. Kevin isn’t doing handstands just for the heck of it (okay, maybe he is)…there is a bigger picture here. Kevin is challenging Stephen Colbert to a handstand contest, and he needs a little help:
there is one thing I desperately, desperately need your help with. I’m not trying sell anything here – buy my book or not, it’s entirely up to you – but what I do need from you is a small amount of your time to help lobby Colbert (of Comedy Central’s, The Colbert Report). People have begun lobbying Colbert to put me on his show under the challenge of a handstand contest (during which, I’m hoping we’ll talk about the book, of course). First one to fall has to eat a hardcover copy of Double Take.
So here’s what I need you to do:
Copy and paste the message below into the “Comment” field at Comedy Central’s site to see a Colbert’s first inverted interview! Oh, and don’t forget to select “The Colbert Report” from the drop down list. Here’s the link: http://www.comedycentral.com/help/questionsCC.jhtml
“THE HANDSTAND CHALLENGE: COLBERT VS. CONNOLLY
THE CHALLENGE: Holding a handstand for as long as possible. First one to fall has to eat a hardcover copy of the book Double Take. Winner gets eternal glory.
THE CONTENDERS:
Kevin Michael Connolly, 24-year-old legless guy and author of the new memoir, Double Take.
Stephen Colbert, anemic political satirist and host of The Colbert Report.
Please take a couple of minutes to submit a comment and challenge Colbert to a handstand contest with Kevin. I’m not taking sides or anything, but you know you want to see Colbert eat a book.
How does the man who shows up on TVs in gas stations and billboards in New Jersey top that?
