I sat in on a Twitter discussion called #FollowReader yesterday. It’s a weekly discussion on Twitter with some topical guidelines for the bookish community, lightly moderated by @KatMeyer and @CharAbbott, who provide a new topic each week. Yesterday’s topic was “What you (as readers) want publishers to know,” but past topics ranged from libraries to book genres to discussions with Random House sales reps. You can catch up on past discussions with Kat’s recaps over at Follow the Reader.

This being my first #FollowReader, all I could manage to do was sit back and watch as the tweets popped up at lightning speed. Kat advised using TweetChat to participate because it let you retweet or reply directly and automatically included the chat’s hashtag in every post. It also updated in real time and would pause the updates if you needed to scroll down and view older tweets. TweetChat is an excellent tool, and I hope to be able to use more of it during next week’s discussion. This week though, tweets came in too fast for me to respond to someone without missing someone else.

It was a great discussion, lively with a broad range of posts. Issues with e-readers were voiced, from pricing to formats, as well as misleading blurbs and book covers. It wasn’t an hour set aside for simply complaining about publishers though; Kat made sure to ask what publishers were doing right. I would say it was a very encouraging chat, because the feedback from readers and publishers let us know what we should continue to do and what we need to work on. The best part for me though, was that I was immersed in a passionate group of people that could not stop talking about books (in a good way!). Kat is moderating from 4 – 5 pm on Thursdays, but the hashtag is used all week long to bring excellent ideas and discussions to the table.

Quick: What do a cow vase, a Sanka ashtray, and a rhino figurine all have in common? They are all the subjects of stories by writers like Ed Park, Luc Sante, Curtis Sittenfeld and Lydia Millet – stories featured in the Significant Objects Project.

The idea : “A talented, creative writer invents a story about an object. Invested with new significance by this fiction, the object should — according to our hypothesis — acquire not merely subjective but objective value. How to test our theory? Via eBay!”

http://significantobjects.com/

1) You can scout for talent. Twitter grants you incredible access to high profile writers. Interested in acquiring food books? Have a look at who @ruthreichl is following. The same goes for politics (@maddow) business (@tferriss) – any category you can think of.

2) Keep up with your competition. I didn’t know Hank Paulson’s memoir is being published this January by Grand Central, but now I do (thanks @katelaurielee).

3) Early buzz machine. Why leave it up to your publicist to promote the book the month before it goes on sale when you can start publicizing it the day it is acquired? You’d be surprised how eager people are to have a window into the creative process: And when the book does go on sale, you have one more channel for publicity.

4) Be there first. By getting up to the moment information, you can immediately respond to breaking news or approach a writer you stumble across.

5) Watch and learn from innovative people outside of book publishing. @tedtalks @hotdogsladies @doctorow @jkottke inspire me.

*Bonus! Community. A lot of editors still associate Twitter (and blogs in general) with snark culture. Twitter can actually provide a great sense of community and positive energy. People are passionate about books. Just look at @booknerdnyc @randomeditor @debbiestier @spiegelandgrau

PS: This video of old school journalists talking about twitter was the impetus for this blog post.

Novelist Thomas Pynchon is perhaps as well-known for his uber-reclusive tendencies as for his sprawling, byzantine books, such as V., Gravity’s Rainbow, and Mason & Dixon. This week, his new novel Inherent Vice hit the shelves, and Penguin Press has cleverly created some publicity for a man who has spent his career trying to avoid it. Instead of dragging him out from hiding, Penguin has crafted this coy little promotional video. It’s already generated all kinds of talk as to whether or not the video is being narrated by Pynchon himself. (As for Penguin, when GalleyCat asked to confirm or deny they would say only, “No comment.”) Well, if it isn’t Pynchon, whoever was responsible was cunning enough to hire a voice actor that sounded remarkably like Pynchon did during his voice-cameo on The Simpsons. Then again, who knows if that was really him, anyway? At any rate, it’s an interesting example of publicity generated not in spite of, but because of, an author’s wish to be left alone.

 
Alice.com is a new site that offers household supplies with free shipping on all items and, unlike Drugstore.com or Amazon Grocery, they don’t take a slice of the profit. Alice is still in Beta but they’ve already gotten a ton of press (fan videos are popping up all over youtube; see below). The promise of big box store pricing and free shipping without having to get in the car is indeed very appealing. I’ll be interested to see how Alice.com evolves-

The Keyword Search function in Google Analytics is one of my favorite features. “Porno” and “Animalsex” are consistently in our top 10 (thank you Isabella Rossellini)…and those searches often come from Turkey. Not sure what that means; I’m just sayin’…

Also of note here is that “haste yee back” is often in our top 10 search terms. Haste Yee Back is one of our most consistent commenters — and I have to say, always with a smile on his face, he’s got something sweet to say (Love you Haste Yee ).

“Someone is going to sue the Huffington Post” said Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. “It’s not just about the volume of the content that it appropriates, it’s about the value.” Since March when that article ran in Time magazine, Benton’s position on “distributive journalism” has been a subject of great debate online (and in our office! Our own author Gary Vaynerchuk takes on the subject in his book Crush It!). Today the Nieman Lab points to UCLA IP Law Professor Doug Lichtman’s podcast on fair use in which he interviews NYT General Counsel Ken Richieri. Diverging from other large media companies in his assessment, Richieri concludes that aggregation may constitute “unfair competition” but it really isn’t about copyright:

I mean, I think the big issue online and the pressure publishers are feeling is that publishers online are having a hard time replicating the economics that they saw offline. And many of them are looking at that through the lens of copyright…. I think where I would just draw a distinction is I am not so sure that copyright is really the culprit in a lot of this…that that’s an imperfect lens and an imperfect remedy.

Listen to the podcast here.

Back in the day…my day that is…when you applied for an entry level position in Book Publishing, you had to take a typing test and type at least 60 words per minute to even be considered. I am not kidding.

Now, basic knowledge of HTML is the new requirement for membership. At least according to me. Seriously, Kathryn, our Rotational Associate, came to us with HTML skills, and it comes in handy every single day — to the point where I realized I needed to learn 101 HTML skills to stay ahead of the curve.

Cut to a few weeks ago when I got an email from Maggie Hilliard at DailyLit telling me that their newly formed Digital Publishing Group was offering up a “free,” basic HTML class (I say this very quietly for fear that everyone’s going to realize what I already know — which is to say that this group is a gift to publishing and I’m afraid there won’t be room for me if I miss the email and don’t RSVP fast enough). To make this offer even more insanely appealing, the class was being taught by DailyLit founder Susan Danziger‘s husband, Albert Wenger, a partner at Union Square Ventures. Check out their portfolio and you’ll know why I placed such high value on this offering.

Space was limited. First RSVP, first serve.

To say I hit the “Reply YES” button so fast your head would spin, would be an understatement.

The class took place last night. I’d say there were about 25 people there — seemed to be a mix of age and gender (though mostly women, and mostly younger!) — and I’m proud to say there were 5 HarperCollins peeps in the crowd (woo hoo @DominicanPie — I should have known you’d be there. I knew as soon as I met you that you get it.).

It was the most potent, amazing, useful, 2.5 hours I’ve spent in a long, long, time.

THANK YOU ALBERT! And thank you Susan Danizger and Maggie Hilliard for bringing this group together. You guys are amazing, and Book Publishing is lucky to have you.

As soon as I heard about DailyLit, I knew it was going to be a hit. There is no question in my mind that serving up books to readers – either through mobile devices or on their computers — is part the future of publishing. HarperStudio successfully experimented with DailyLit as a marketing opportunity for our first three books.

The effort resulted in the following:

–WHO IS MARK TWAIN?: 1013 subscriptions

–BURN THIS BOOK: 529 subscriptions

–EMERIL AT THE GRILL: 751 subscriptions

And if anyone out there hasn’t tried a book on DailyLit, you really must. You’ll be surprised at how fast they go down.

I asked Susan Danziger, the founder of DailyLit, a few questions:

1) What’s the biggest surprise you’ve found about your readers?

Our readers tend to be passionate, engaged readers 60% of whom have read between 10 and over 50 books in the last year (more than I’ve managed to do without DailyLit!)

2) Are most people reading fiction or non-fiction?

Most people are reading fiction since we started with classic, fiction books and then introduced non-fiction with contemporary works such as business series from Tom Peters and Seth Godin, language courses from Berlitz, and recipes from Emeril’s cookbook.

3) What’s been your most popular book and why?

Pride and Prejudice (available for free) has been the most popular book; no surprise that it’s been a huge hit.

4) Are most people reading DailyLit on their phones or computers? (not sure you can tell this)

Most people have been reading DailyLit on their computers at home or at work. We have a number of folks who read books via email so that their bosses think they’re reading work-related emails; others who read on their mobile phone while at Starbucks or even while brushing teeth in their bathroom, and even one fellow who reads in bed to avoid sex with his wife!

5) When we first spoke a year ago, publishers were nervous about giving you these books DRM-free. Has that evolved at all?

Yes, publishers are definitely less concerned about the DRM issue these days. Since each of our books are divided into up to hundreds of installments, publishers have interpreted that as its own kind of DRM. Also, publishers realize that DailyLit is a great way to virally market their titles. For instance, we integrated with Twitter so that if you link your DailyLit profile to your Twitter account, books you start reading will be automatically tweeted to your followers. The first book we launched with this program in place, Who is Mark Twain?, let over 17,600 followers (from 33 tweets) know about that book in a period of 2-3 days (and according to my contact over at Powells.com, it made their bestseller list!)

DailyLit (www.dailylit.com) is the leading publisher of serialized books in digital form. DailyLit currently features over 1400 classic and contemporary books available for free or for a small fee. Short book installments are sent via e-mail or RSS feed and arrive in a reader’s inbox (or RSS feedreader), which can be read on a desktop, laptop or mobile device (including an iPhone or Blackberry) according to the schedule set by each reader (e.g. 7:00am every weekday). Installments can be read in fewer than 5 minutes, and additional installments are available on demand. DailyLit’s titles include bestselling and award winning titles, from literary fiction and non-fiction to romance and science fiction. Co-founded by a team of publishing professionals and technology experts, DailyLit is headquartered in Mamaroneck, New York.