#Twitter 102: The Zen of Social Media

This series is 'The Zen of Twitter'. It's not 'The Zen of Facebook' (or LinkedIn or Pinterest or Reddit, etc.), because the essence of those services at least seems straightforward to the average user. But Twitter's stark simplicity makes its purpose elusive, and its governing rules aren't self-evident.

In approaching these social platforms, I ask the same basic question you probably do: How can this help me achieve my goal?

I'm an author. The average author defines his (or her) goal as selling books. Therefore, the purpose of Twitter, to someone like me, is to sell books. Therefore, Twitter is for sending Tweet after Tweet about one's books.

Yet we can sense right away that this approach is, at best, limited. At worst, it's repellant. I've been in chat rooms full of authors who complain how sick they are of seeing endless sales Tweets, then turn around and crank out their daily quota. And when sales flag, they're likely to Tweet even harder.

Selling books - selling anything, really - is like making a butterfly land on your finger. Which is to say: You can't. You can only create an optimal situation for the butterfly to choose to land on your finger.

An artist should intuitively understand that concept, since creating worthwhile art is pretty much the same elusive process. The fact that so many fail to grasp this suggests that their work lacks this same ephemeral but vital quality.

For many users, social-media tools become a trap. The numbers these things measure can easily become the goal of using these platforms. Which, obviously, they should not be. In fact, so compelling does this stuff become that these tool providers encourage their users to broadcast these numbers, despite the fact that they are, in themselves, relatively meaningless noise. (Which many readers could merely wind up resenting.)

We've all encountered the SEO hucksters offering to 'sweeten' our Facebook 'likes', or our blog traffic, Twitter followers, etc., for a few bucks. That's very tempting to those of us who aren't celebrities (i.e., most of us) and subsist at the low end of the social totem pole.

Here's where this path leads, though. Recently I encountered a young, media-savvy author (I won't name him, no point calling him out) whose indie YA sci-fi book was selling well. He had a respectable number of Amazon reviews, plenty of 'likes' on his book's Facebook page, and tens of thousands of Twitter followers. It certainly looked as if his book was ripe to spill onto the laps of a much larger audience.

But when I checked his blog, I noticed very few comments on the posts. When I checked his Tweets, I saw that he was offering his followers rote cut-and-paste rote responses. (It was certainly not a newsfeed I'd sign up for, and the guy was no celebrity, so what was the appeal?) Also, he had no personal FB page, only a page for his book. Digging further into his website, I saw the remnants of SEO gaming (if you're savvy enough, you can spot at least some of them).

In theater parlance, this guy had 'papered the house'.

It's understandable to want to attract a crowd to one's business. But it's all-too-common to mistake a large number of 'followers' for a meaningful achievement. Twitter's not an end - it's a means to an end.

But what is that end for an author, if not to sell books? If we accept the premise that tweeting won't make that butterfly land on your finger, what is an achievable social-media goal? And if it's not earning income, why bother?

Speaking for myself: My goal is to elicit a core 'social behavior' from the social platforms I use. Achieving this goes beyond the usual rules, tricks, metrics, wiseguy-workarounds, 'helper' apps and other ephemera that are the red meat of most 'how-to' posts you'll find. To me, this is the Zen of Social Media.

Like a garden, social media must be cultivated. There is no better (i.e., faster) approach to what I, at least, consider its successful and proper implementation. In the next installment, I'll describe recent happy instances of the 'social behavior' that I've seen in my own little tended garden.

#Twitter 101: Desperately Seeking Zen

Let's start off by saying I'm no Twitter Expert. If you want advice from a Twitter Expert, there are tons of them out there. I can't vouch for their expertise one way or another, but they're out there.

Maybe you knew that before you came here, and came anyway. Maybe you just found out, and are now looking (understandably) for the exits. Maybe I'd better give you a reason to stick around!

Try this on for size: While I don't know much about Twitter, I do know something about Zen. And it is the essence of Zen to realize that one never completely knows the answer one seeks.

Yet Twitter Experts promise to completely unravel its mystery - some in just 24 hours!

So while my Twitter expertise falls well short of 'expert', on the Zen side of things I think I can hold my own. In fact, let's test that theory. Here's a search for the words 'Twitter' and 'Zen'. How many results pursue the true nature (Zen) of Twitter? Not many. Let's look at them.

Mashable offers Four Tips for Productive Tweeting: (1) Approach With a Beginner’s Mind, (2) Give What You Want to Receive, (3) Only Add Useful Content, and (4) See Differently. Good advice in general, and certainly a healthy (IMO) approach to what you send out there in that little box. But it does not try to parse the essence of Twitter.

Next: Ten Steps To Twitter Zen. Six more steps than the last post: (1) Be Yourself, Be Nice, (2) You Must Give In Order to Receive, (3) Follower Count Isn’t Everything, (4) Conversation Is Not One-Way, (5) Mix It Up A Little, (6) Know The Proper Way To DM (direct message), (7) A Non-Follow-Back Is Not Cause For Concern, (8) If You Want to Increase The Likelihood of a Follow Back… (9) You Can Always Unfollow, (10) Give Thanks. This comes a little closer to what we're after, but most of his advice is, again: 'Be courteous, interact, be generous'.

Let's lay our cards on the table: If you're an ass in real life, you'll be an ass on Twitter. And if you make a nuisance of yourself on Twitter, no advice of mine can possibly help you, aside from this: Get someone with the necessary social skills, creativity and wit to do your tweeting for you.


Back to the Ten Steps. Items (3) and (7-9) suggest what we're after, which is the nature of Twitter itself in terms of its design intent and function. We must also account, as Twitter must, for the behavior of the folks using it. As someone who once constructed messages for marketing and political campaigns, this is an area where I can claim some insight.

Next up: Free Course: A Zen Peacekeeper Guide to Twitter. This seems to be on the right track - and the price is right. In fact, it's too on-the-nose. We're immediately shown images of Buddha and a woman meditating. Not to mention links to yoga - and what's up with peacekeeping? Maybe it's just me, but I'm starting to feel a little squishy here.

Pressing on into the seldom-seen second page of Google's results, there's something called Achieving Twitter Zen. It's a list of possibly-useful software enhancements for using Twitter. Again, not what we're after.

Another post called Twitter Zen tells us: The social media microblogging site Twitter has a Zen quality. The premise of Twitter? Answer the question “what are you doing”? Each post, called a tweet is like a haiku – a fluid expression of a moment in time... unburdened by verbosity (there is a 140 character limit on Twitter posts) as our human travails and observations are expressed. Little life moments. Experienced and shared. Happening.


Another Twitter Zen post, this one by Stephen Foskett, offers a no-nonsense series of four concise lessons designed to cover the basics for the newbie. At a glance, it looks pretty thorough in that regard. Here it lays out what Twitter is, and isn't:

The most important concept to grasp is the fundamental nature of Twitter: It is an ongoing, global, democratic conversation. It is not a blog, USENET, Facebook or MySpace, or an instant message platform, though it does have certain elements of all of those.

That helps, though if you're a Twitter newbie you might also not know what a blog, USENET, Facebook or MySpace are, either. But it's a start, and this writer goes on to offer some good observations. It's worth reading.

Ask yourself: Is becoming a 'Twitter expert' your goal? Or is Twitter only a means to an end? I'm in the latter camp, and I suspect you are too. (Otherwise, you'd have left by now!)

With that in mind, I'll stick with the basic practices and tools in the posts ahead. I'll review what I'm doing and why, and what I believe the Zen of the thing is. The first practical lesson has already begun: The headline of this piece starts with a hash tag (#), which in the Twitterverse is shorthand for a searchable topic. This post appears not only on this blog, but as a Tweet that opens with a popular search term. I'll show how that works in a future installment.

Meanwhile, Mr. Foskett's piece looks like a solid Twitter primer, with some good 'Zen' points to expand on later.

Corruption vs. Wealth

It's passe, and even risible, to claim that America is the hope of the world. That idea died with Reagan, and his 'shining city on a hill'. Even Superman recently questioned the 'American Way' he once fought for (as his old TV show claimed).

It's not just from the left that one hears this relentless drumbeat, either. Jim Rogers, a staggeringly wealthy (by most standards) investor, uprooted his family from America, where he made his reputation and fortune, to China. China, he has often said, is the future.

At right is a chart from a very insightful website indicating the state of the world's corruption. What stands out to me is that the poorest countries are the most corrupt, with Africa the clear 'winner'.

From the site: 'Petty bribery increased the most in Chile, Colombia, Kenya, FYR Macedonia, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, Senegal and Thailand. And bribery was most often an activity of the poor and the young.'

Furthermore, the most corruption - hands-down - stemmed from representatives of political parties. As was once observed by The Sopranos - 'these guys make us look like amateurs'.

Also note that this chart holds that Asia has over twice the incidence of corruption as the US.

What does this mean? To me it means that wealth has an inverse ratio to moral (however you choose to define that) corruption. The more dishonest a society is, the poorer it will be.

We get quite an earful about the Bernie Madoffs of this world. But such headlines don't offer a clear indication of where a society is headed, because people like that have always existed. What matters is the integrity of a society, and what it truly believes and honors - not what it pays mere lip service to.

Our true societal values are masked with a flimsy cloak of political correctness. It's wrong to hate (at least openly) Jews or 'minority' races. But it is permissible, and even encouraged, to hate designated strawmen. Sarah Palin, for example, is someone for whom various forms of hatred are often expressed. It is likewise permissible, and encouraged, to hate those who do not conform to whatever is currently 'politically correct'.

In the end, the most decent, just and honorable societies will triumph. If that is China, so be it, but it is far from proven that a still-totalitarian state can lead billions to a higher moral level. If it's the USA, we have some soul-searching (and a lot of re-inventing) to do.

If it's some other nation that's destined to rise up and become 'the shining city' that leads the world, there are an awful lot of people right now who are wondering where on Earth that might be.

Riding the wave: Making a living as a novelist

On Facebook, James T. Jordan pointed out how far Patriots would have to go to catch the Suzanne Collins sales phenomenon Hunger Games.

True dat. But indie novels are sailing along on a great confluence of events right now (a subject for a subsequent post), and one does not need to launch quite the high-octane rocket that Collins (or John Locke or Amanda Hocking or Kerry Wilkinson... etc.) did in order to earn a decent living.

Authors with decent books who work effectively (and hard) at promotion are not necessarily making headlines, but they are making a living.

Newly-minted romance author Theresa Ragan regularly publishes sales reports. Releasing six books over the course of a year, she sold nearly 200,000 copies.

From this thread I teased out a few more stories:

Traditionally-published romance author Bella Andre was dropped by S&S. She went indie and sold 265,000 self-published e-books between the Spring of 2010 and the end of October 2011. (She later added that the total had spiked past 400,000 by Feb 17, 2012.)

It was 'smiles all round' at Jake Barton's place last year: "There’s no disputing Jake Barton, the alleged writer, has had a good year... just over 66,000 paid sales in the UK alone..."

J. Carson Black recounts her rise: "Darkness On The Edge Of Town was listed in June 2010 – and sold only one book. The following month, two books were purchased. It took eight months to hit sales of 100; with 137 in February 2011. Then things began to change. In March sales hit 1,280, and in April, I sold a staggering 10,000 books. If this wasn’t enough to make me scream with joy, in May sales hit more than 70,000 books. I was selling 2,000 books a day. Now Amazon’s mystery and thriller imprint, Thomas & Mercer, has signed me to their growing team of authors. To date (November 2011), I've sold over 300,000+ copies."


From the December 9, 2011 Wall Street Journal: "This past May, Ms. Chan decided to digitally publish [her book] herself, hoping to gain a few readers and some feedback. She bought some ads on Web sites targeting e-book readers, paid for a review from Kirkus Reviews, and strategically priced her book at 99 cents to encourage readers to try it. She's now attracting bids from foreign imprints, movie studios and audio-book publishers, without selling a single copy in print. The story of how Ms. Chan joined the ranks of best sellers [it has sold over 400,000 copies] by brand-name authors like Michael Connelly, James Patterson and Kathryn Stockett... is as much a tale of digital marketing savvy and strategic pricing as one of artistic triumph. Her breakout signals a monumental shift in the way books are packaged, priced and sold in the digital era." (Worth reading in its entirety.)

David Dalglish says he has sold over 175,000 of his books.

"It’s been one crazy year for two debut novelists writing under a new name, Saffina Desforges. Last Christmas [2010] the brand was completely unknown. Their book, Sugar & Spice, was barely a month old on Amazon and had sold precisely nothing. Not until February, three months after we launched, that we even made double figures!  It seemed the gatekeepers who had turned us away were right. Weeks became months. March became May. We were selling nothing. But by late summer, Sugar & Spice went on to break the 100,000 sales barrier."


E-book rock star Tina Folsom: Including my latest release, I've self-published eight full-length novels [since 2010], three novellas and three short stories, so 14 titles in total. In the last 12 months, I've sold over 300,000 copies of my books, and that excludes any freebies. My novels generally cost around $4.99-$5.99, my novellas $2.99 and my short stories 99 cents. The majority of those 300,000 units sold is attributed to my novels.


San Francisco Bay Area Author Barbara Freethy has sold over one million units of her self-published titles in 2011.  Unlike independently published authors who publish at the $0.99 price point to fuel sales, Freethy's books are primarily priced between $2.99 and $5.99. Her self-published books come from her extensive backlist, whose rights were reverted after the books went out of print. Freethy repackaged the books and put them on sale again, finding gold in books that had been taking up space in her closet.


Gemma Halliday Sells Her 1-Millionth Self-Published Ebook!!! 


Stephen Leather: "After selling close to half a million eBooks over the past twelve months I’m now taking a step back from self-publishing."


Victorine Lieske is a best-selling author and self-published her first book, Not What She Seems, in April of 2010.  In March of 2011 the book hit the New York Times best-selling ebook list, where it stayed on the list for six weeks. By May 2011 she had sold over 100,000 copies.


Terri Giuliano Long: Now, seven months after my discouraging conversation with the agent, my book has been in the Amazon top 200 for over five months – and sold over 80,000 copies.


You get the idea. Skipping the dues-paying tales and self-congratulations, the bottom line is that there are suddenly dozens of authors who have sold, according to Amazon, 50,000 or more books during 2011. Most of these folks you've never heard of - and probably will never hear from again, either, after the e-book bubble bursts. Some of the authors listed below, however, will by then have established their careers on this beachhead.

Rachel Abbott - Only the Innocent has been shifting more than 3,000 copies a day on Amazon.  

Susan Alison - over 50,000  

Dani Amore - 50,000

Bella Andre - over 400,000 as of Feb 17, 2012

Melody Anne - over 150,000  

Jake Barton - over 66,000 paid sales in the UK alone

Robert Bidinotto - 58,260

J. Carson Black - over 300,000

Cheryl Bolen - 145,000 

Catherine Bybee - 50,000 

Sarra Cannon - 50,000

Karen Cantwell - 50,000

Ruth Cardello - 50,000

Darcie Chan - over 400,000 copies

Mel Comley - over 50,000 since Sept 2011  

Blake Crouch - 50,000

Chris Culver - 50,000

David Dalglish - around 175,000

Carol Davis Luce - 50,000

Susan Denning - 50,000

Saffina Desforges - over 100,000

Mainak Dhar - almost 100,000  

Mark Edwards & Louis Voss - 50,000

Ellen Fischer - over 100,000  

Penelope Fletcher - over 50,000

Tina Folsom - over 300,000

Marie Force - 200,000 in the past year
Melissa Foster - 50,000

Barbara Freethy- over one million

Debora Geary - 50,000

Lee Goldberg - 50,000

Denise Grover Swank - 50,000

Allan Guthrie - over 63,000     

Gemma Halliday - over 1 million

Ruth Harris - 50,000

Liliana Hart - "should hit 100,000" in about a month  

Michael Hicks - 50,000

Amanda Hocking - Over the past 20 months she has sold 1.5m books and made $2.5m.

Debra Holland - 50,000

Sheila Horgan - well over 80,000

Hugh Howey - over 50,000  

Nancy C. Johnson - 50,000

Ty Johnston - over 60,000
Heather Killough-Walden - 50,000

Selena Kitt - half a million ebooks sold in 2011

J.A. Konrath - over 500,000 ebooks

Laura Landon - 50,000

Eve Langlais - over 56,000

Stephen Leather - close to half a million eBooks over the past twelve months

Jason Letts - almost 50,000  

Victorine Lieske - she self-pubbed her first book, Not What She Seems, in April 2010.  In March of 2011 the book hit the New York Times best-selling ebook list, where it stayed for six weeks. By May she had sold over 100,000 copies.

John Locke - more than 1,100,000 eBooks in five months

Terri Giuliano Long - my book has been in the Amazon top 200 for over five months – and sold over 80,000 copies.

Carol Davis Luce - 120,000 sales for 6 suspense novels in 6 months

CJ Lyons - 230,000 copies of one book in only two months and in almost a dozen countries. In addition to her six traditionally published novels, CJ now has nine books self e-published with sales of almost half a million books in 2011 alone.
H.P. Mallory - over 200,000 e-books in less than one year.  

KC May - 50,000

Bob Mayer - 347 eBooks in January 2011. By July, I was selling over 65,000 eBooks a month. By year's end, I had sold over 400,000 eBooks.

David McAfee - 50,000

Stephanie McAfee - my e-book sold 145,325 copies from January to August 2011

Courtney Milan - 50,000

Rick Murcer - 135,000 copies of two ebooks in 4.5 months

Scott Nicholson - 50,000

Anne Marie Novark - over 75,000     

Shayne Parkinson - over 50,000

Michael Prescott - 995,000

Rose Pressey - over 54,000 since April 2011  

Michael Prescott - 50,000

T.R. Ragan - in 10 months, she's sold over 160,000 books

Terri Reid - 60,000 ebooks in her first year

Adam Rendon - over 100,000

Lexi Revellian - 50,035 as of Feb 17, 2012

Shadonna Richards - 50,000

Imogen Rose - 50,000+

Nick Russell - 50,000      

L.J. Sellers - 50,000  

Michele Scott - Over 100,000 books in two months

Tori Scott - 50,000

LJ Sellers - 50,000

Christopher Smith - 50,000

Katie Stephens - 50,000  

Michael J Sullivan -Over 90,000 copies of five books     

Laura Taylor - 50,000

Vicki Tyley - 50,000

Michael Wallace - 50,000

Kathleen Valentine - nearly 50,000

Heather Killough-Walden - her series of four books sold over half-million copies.  

Michael Wallace - over 80,000

Kerry Wilkinson - his Jessica Daniel detective novels sold over 250,000 copies

Rachel Yu - over 60,000  

Corruption is largely a matter of opportunity

One of the contentions of Patriots is that human corruption is largely a matter of opportunity. "The 99%" aren't less corrupt than "the 1%", the opportunity for grant theft simply does not ordinarily present itself to most folks.

I was reminded of this by today's article re a lottery winner who cheated his co-workers out of their share of the winnings. But scroll down and see the stories of other lottery winners.

This was a central facet of the box-office blockbuster The Dark Knight, in which white-knight Harvey Dent - who could live freely and openly - was demonstrably 'corruptible', whereas Batman - who had to operate in secret - was not.

The Zen of Steve

"...Jobs’ chutzpah as the Valley’s most dramatic and effective showman was inspired... by the mythical Zen rogues who drank sake, caroused with whores, shunned temples, mocked hollow rituals, sat zazen in caves, and turn out to be the only ones worthy of inheriting the old master’s robe and bowl by the end of the story. Zen flourishes in irreverence, subversion, inscrutability, and self-mockery — all words that describe Jobs’ style but the last."

More and better insight into Steve Jobs than you'll find in that overblown biography: 'What Kind of Buddhist was Steve Jobs, Really?'

How to get removed from my Twitter feed

Post sensationalistic (and completely untrue) headlines like this one to sell your wares: "Amazon to stop selling books". (The link contains an ad for his book.) Besides being a complete waste of my time, it's disgusting, sleazy, and cheap. Good Riddance to "John Cox" or "Paul Dorset" or whatever this one's calling itself today. Ugh.

Public altruism: The refuge of scoundrels and thieves

We've all seen the impassioned Kony 2012 pleas. Got one posted to my front page on Facebook the other day, in fact. Well, I worked in New Jersey's political coal mines a few years. I've seen fraud and I've known more than a few phonies. I don't mean the pols - you expect it from them - I mean the 'reformers' elected via baldfaced vote fraud, the 'waterfront activists' in bed with developers, and of course the media looking steadfastly the other way, lest they tell an unpopular story.

I've smelled frauds before, and 'Kony 2012' had a familiar whiff. So I waited. And watched.

Sure 'nuff. Here's something posted a few days ago by someone else with a well-developed olfactory sense:

Scott MacDonald
"Taking down Kony is a good cause, but the group behind this video isn't all sweetness and light.
If you have a Facebook account, you've seen it by now: Make Him Famous: Kony 2012. Over the past few days, the 30-minute YouTube video has gone way past the tipping point – eight million page views and counting – to become a social-media tsunami... Taking down Kony is certainly a cause worth getting behind, but if the millions of people currently "liking" Kony 2012 spent just five minutes Googling Invisible Children, they might not be so full of liking anymore. The group has been criticized for years – most recently by Foreign Affair and The Independent – for manipulating the truth, directing donations to questionable recipients, using the bulk of the donations to support their own activities, and more."


The piece goes on to dissect the problem. But all this was written before the flying, flaming clown running this show pulled a PeeWee Herman:

Jason Russell, 33, the filmmaker behind the very viral “Kony 2012” campaign, was allegedly found masturbating in public and vandalizing cars...

No doubt there's more to come - and it won't get any better, either.

Thought I smelled somethin'.

Relationship between shutdowns of file-sharing sites and torrents

The evidence appears overwhelming: The recent shutdown of file-sharing sites seems to have had a direct correlation with a sharp uptick in torrents.

What's working (and what's not) on Pinterest

It's still growing like a weed. The quality of the images found on the top pinners' sites is only improving, and expanding nicely in its variety. But Pinterest does not do nearly enough to ensure that the original posters (both those who bring the images inside Pinterest as well as the original 'outside' posters) are properly linked and credited. There is technology that could improve this, but Pinterest is not employing it, at least not yet.

More thoughts here.

Google+'s inherent - and inherited - problem

Recently, Virginia Postrel threatened to take her business elsewhere if Facebook forced Timeline on her. Though her friends voiced support, the fact is that folks resist uprooting and re-establishing themselves on another social network without 'sufficient' cause, and Timeline is almost certainly an insufficient reason.

Google+ has been attempting to establish itself as FB's main rival. This is not an incidental effort on Google's part, but critical to its future growth. Yet despite Google's institutional muscle, the effort is a relative failure.

Various explanations have been offered for this, but I have found none of them satisfactory - until today. This piece from Nick Bilton's 'Bits' column for the NY Times, IMHO, nails it.

What do Bilton's conclusions mean for the future of Google+? Can they 'fix it'? Not really - the problem is inherent within the nature of the institution that is Google. Can 'the institution' be fixed, then? Our own history insists that broken or obsolete institutions periodically need to be 'altered or abolished'. Ask Linda Stone, sometime, about her efforts to change Microsoft's culture from the inside out.

If Google can't do it, can ANYone overtake the Facebook juggernaut? History tells us that it's not only possible, but eminently likely. It was not so long ago that AOL ruled the 'social media' scene, and thereafter it was MySpace. Both have long since fallen on hard times.

Could Google simply acquire the strongest FB competitor and win the social media wars that way? Again, the historical record speaks to us. This time it tells us that the answer is yes... and no. 'Yes', Google could certainly acquire an up-and-comer, and Yahoo once did with Flickr. Yes, start-ups need sugar daddies. But no, this strategy does not win the day for Google. Yahoo's wet-blanket corporate culture killed the spirit of innovation at Flickr, which could have evolved offshoots like, for instance, Instagram. The writing was on the wall when Flickr's founders walked away in frustration.

The real solution here lies in recalling just what it is Google really needs from Google+, which is: User information. Facebook won't give it up to Google, so Google attempted to build its own social network. And it failed - at least, it failed in terms of the scale it needs to achieve going forward. But that's not to say another emerging social network might not be able to reach an innovative accommodation with Google that gives the search giant much of what it needs without surrendering to a corporate kiss of death.

This is not just a 'possible' outcome, but a 'likely' one, and as such it's well worth keeping an eye out for.

"Shift Happens"

Here's a great find, cited by TED Books, and part of a series: "In the last twelve months, I’ve never bought fewer printed books — and I’ve never read so many books."

We are in the middle of the biggest boomlet in publishing since the mid '30's innovation of the paperback novel, which gave rise to the term 'pulp fiction' for cheap books that were quickly-wrought (but poorly done) so as to take advantage of the explosion. Bookstores closed in droves, and the dimestore novel (so-called because it was sold in 5-and-dime stores) reigned supreme. This period of great literary expansion gave rise to a few writing careers, particularly Kurt Vonnegut's. He was the dimestore paperback king in his early days, and from there fought his way to widespread recognition. 

Using App-Store Apps for Book Promotion

Today I received this thought-provoking piece by one of the many promo gurus around these days. I ignore most of them, as few have much that's original to say, but Aggie Villanueva's been doing this awhile. She says authors almost completely ignore apps as a means of promotion. I think she's right about this - it's certainly not something I've heard many (any?) authors talking about. Not that I need or want another promotional task to perform, but she makes a compelling case. One point stands out: Your promo blog has a MUCH better chance of being found among all the apps in Apple's store than it does among all the sites on the web. Can't argue there!

Patriots of Mars cover under review today

This site specializes in reviews of cover art. Today it's featuring The Patriots of Mars.

While I'm at it, I should mention the first 'review' of the book itself which appeared about a week ago. Although, the book in fact has not yet been released, so this is - what, a pre-review? A run-up to the release? A teaser, maybe?

Once a few reviews of the finished product have appeared there will be a list-link reflecting on them, but you never forget your first. And this one was especially memorable, as Candice went well out of her way to not only review the book but to dig up information (mostly from this site) to frame her questions intelligently. She took a lot of trouble for someone she barely knew, and I felt touched and honored by that.

Thank you, Candice.

Imminent changes to design of Pinterest pages

News re changes to the layout of Pinterest's pages and some insight into the company's (brief) history, here. Worthwhile for anyone interested in this burgeoning social platform.

Free Irish ditties for St. Patrick's Day (just get Spotify)

Here, I've loaded up more Irish music than you can shake a Shillelagh at. You just need to install Spotify and click the link. (Or punch in "Irish" in the upper-left search box of the Spotify app for a tsunami of more tunes.)

I've been experimenting with Spotify, which for anyone unaware of it is a relatively new music service. Here's what I've found so far: 

(1) You can tell it's a new service - 2/3 of my [80,000+] songs they don't have licenses for, and therefore I can't post them. 

(2) Many of the songs they DID post for me now (one day later) 'cannot be found', and the service is asking me to 'try again'. Thanks a lot, boyos. 

(3) There's a world of 'net piracy trying to swoop down on these guys, and that is partly why many artists are hesitant to participate. (For example, The Beatles won't sign up.) 

(4) The main reason artists won't sign, though, is that they misunderstand the mindset of most fans. The thinking is, "Why would they buy our music if they can get it on Spotify for free?" Of course, that was once the 'music industry's' argument against radio. (Not to mention the handwringing and all-out war over recorded music in theaters! Which spelled the end of economic viability in the musical arts, exactly as forecast by music industry execs of an earlier era. Yessir.) 

What listeners today really want - and the late, great Steve Jobs got this - is to 'own' and control their music. Mainly, they want to build their own playlists, and Spotify (wisely) stops just short of allowing that. 

Despite the still-considerable issues the service has, 'social' music should take off. Whether Spotify will continue to lead the charge is unknown (remember, MySpace was once the king of social media, as was AOL before it. Today's leader is tomorrow's also-ran.). But the concept has now been demonstrated to be viable and vital. 

The great advantage of 'social music' for music lovers is the casual and immediate discoverability Spotify offers. It presents an opportunity to discover music through the ears and experience of people whose musical tastes you respect. Now - odds are, there are few people you think of that way, but with Spotify you'll find 'em, and fast.

This is what Apple wanted their 'Ping' to become, but the sticking point for them was dealing with Facebook, which is where the majority of listeners they want to reach hang out. Steve Jobs found Facebook's terms of engagement 'onerous'. Even after Ping's launch, things got even more fractious between the two companies -- Ping started out with the option to add friends using Facebook Connect, but Facebook blocked access when it discovered that Apple wasn't playing by the rules. FC is actually an open service - unless Facebook decides that it isn't -  and apparently it decided Apple's Ping network was an unwelcome guest. Apple removed the service from Ping, but you'll still see some notes around suggesting you can bring in friends from Facebook.

Facebook claimed the problem was that Apple would have simply sent them too much traffic, which seems suspicious. Some observers believe Facebook (i.e., Zuckerberg) was simply lying.

At the same time, since 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend', one can only wonder why Apple didn't turn immediately to MySpace. On the surface it would seem the two would have seen the mutual opportunities - and Apple already had a strong relationship with MySpace's owner at-the-time, Rupert Murdoch, who had recently launched a newspaper specifically for the iPad. (Murdoch, in fact, has lately admitted that on his watch 'they screwed up MySpace', and the new ownership says a vast remodeling is underway. So Apple may yet cut a deal that could torpedo the fledgling Spotify.)

Anyway, Spotify was leaner and hungrier than Apple. (Almost any company on the planet is leaner than Apple.) They agreed to whatever 'onerous' terms Zuckerberg dished out. The downside for users is that Spotify lacks Apple's clout in the music biz, and so the rollout of this service is likely to remain painfully slow. 

Despite the drawbacks and occasionally spotty service, I've downloaded about as much of my library onto the service as it will allow. Prior to this, I relied largely on the vast wealth of mostly-Blogspot blogs out there to discover new and/or forgotten music (especially 50's-era jazz). Now the opportunity looms for a broad and more-immediate wealth of experimentation. Or at least it does if Spotify gets its act together. They have a LOT of work still do do, and have barely scratched the surface of their true potential. Here's hoping. But if Apple/MySpace manage to come together and build a more compelling service, I'm there. The concept works - in theory. Now it's a question of who will MAKE the concept work, and from there become a dominant force in the music industry. My bet is it'll be the company who's there in the thick of things already, and holding more ready cash than the entire US government. 

Three guesses.

You have to fight to do what you love

You have to fight your worst tendencies, you have to fight for resources, and you have to fight for your rights. By Paul Graham, Steve Jobs, Robert Krulwich, Lewis Hyde, Hugh MacLeod, Alain de Botton, and the Holstee Manifesto, all wrapped up in a bow. 'Cause, you know, freedom isn't free.

Inside Pinterest's numbers

Despite the company's reluctance to release numbers, studies of Pinterest's external and internal behavior are coming to light.

The most revealing stat was something I had anticipated, and so was gratified to see confirmed: Over 80% of all pins (images collected by users) are re-pins (images found from within Pinterest, rather than from outside sites).  This means that new content is brought into the 'Pinterest Community' by only 20% of its users. The remaining 80%, in effect, 'vote' on how popular and viral that content will become.

A small minority, then, controls what the majority sees. But the majority does decide what of that content will rise to the surface. (See related: Pinclout)

It is also being demonstrated that the Big Kahunas of the Pinterest Community are its early adopters. Newer members are not showing the same commitment. There will be exceptions to this, of course. Despite this, Pinterest users in the aggregate show a level of continued involvement well above that of the average user of other social tools (Twitter, etc.).

Another stat that stands out is the tremendous breadth of linkage that comes out of Pinterest. Esty gets the lion's share of links, and this is understandable. Many artisans and small businesses who use Esty to sell their wares are setting up shop on Pinterest. After that comes Google Image Search, which is again understandable. Google is the prime means of finding images today, though eventually I expect Pinterest to reach a point where it supplants it. After that come Flickr and Tumblr, both geared to the aggregation of visual content.

Yet none of these major, well-known sites has more than 3% of all Pinterest's links. This is truly a long-tail phenomenon that reaches deep into the web.

Source: RJ Metrics

Google+ a 'virtual ghost town'

Recently, Virginia Postrel warned her followers that, if Facebook was going to force its 'Timeline' on her, she'd take her ball and play in Google+'s playground. Well, Facebook is behind it's planned schedule to port everyone to Timeline, but it has not changed its corporate mind. But if you plan to hoof it to the Dark Side (what IS the opposite of the Dark Side in Star Wars, anyway?), these headlines tell you what you have to look forward to:

• Google's Social Network Is a Virtual Ghost Town
• The only people I know that use Google+ regularly are people who work at Google (and Robert Scoble)

Analyzing Pinterest's power

Stats:

Pinterest's traffic-driving stats, compared with more established social networks in terms of 2012 traffic (so far) compared with 2011:

According to Mashable, YouTube has had modest growth from 0.98% to 1.05%, Google+ fell from 0.24% to 0.22% and Gmail fell from 3.69% to 3.62%. Facebook, currently the top traffic-driver, went from 25.6% to 26.4%.

Last year Pinterest was responsible for generating 0.17% of traffic. In 2012, it is responsible for 3.6%, the biggest change in any network this year.

This puts it just behind the microblog giant Twitter, which drives 3.61% of referrals. For a website to emerge from nowhere to just a hundredth of a percent behind Twitter is stunning. But for a website to have reached this level in less than half the time of Twitter (the first Tweet was sent on March 21, 2006, whereas Pinterest was launched as a closed beta in March 2010) is unprecedented. Clearly, Pinterest is the Next Big Thing - and it is nowhere near its full potential.

While Pinterest may not drive the most traffic, it is experiencing huge traffic increases, and jumping aboard now could be in your best interest. For example, between September and December 2011, Pinterest experienced a 329% increase in traffic, one of the biggest booms ever experienced by any social network.

Why it works:

Pinterest is easy to learn, but why it's so popular - and how to best use it to generate useful traffic  - are complex and interesting subjects. The ease of use, of course, is a big factor in its acceptance. And because the images are curated by humans rather than either machines or business interests, the images chosen by the best curators (pinners) tend to be of better and more consistent quality than those found by other means.

The old saw has it that a picture is worth 1,000 words. We're also warned not to judge a book by its cover, yet we inevitably do. To the human mind, a picture is a far more efficient information carrier than words. A picture is generally less precise, and more open to interpretation, than 1,000 words can be. However, a picture may be interpreted, and an impression formed, far more quickly than those thousand words. In an age of information overload, this means a lot.

Because of this, there is a real and significant raw power in Pinterest's simple stacking of image thumbnails. For example, here is a list of book covers from the Philip K. Dick site, and here is my Pinterest 'board' of those covers. While one can find a cover by book title very efficiently on the PKD site, in terms of finding an intriguing cover (i.e., the way most people ultimately choose a book) Pinterest has it beat.

Another example is the very popular pop artist Shag. Here is Shag's handsome and well-organized site, where a great deal of his work resides. Here is my Pinterest board of Shag's images. Now: Which site lets you see Shag's work at a glance?

A Google Image Search resembles a Pinterest board. But the better Pintarest 'pinners' (image curators) offer better image finds, and unlike Google they link directly to the image source. (Google is no doubt aware of this rapidly-emerging competition for its service.) Note also that Pinterest makes the identification of the more-popular images easy, via 'likes' and 'repins' (the sincerest form of Pinterest flattery).

Why (smart) site owners don't object to Pinterest's pilfering:

See Stats, above. Pinterest drives traffic to these sites like nobody's business. And I suspect that this traffic is highly-motivated rather than random. These folks are seeing something that they want more of.

But what do the pinners get out of it?

For many, Pinterest appeals to the 'scrapbooking instinct'. About 80% of the site's users are women, and this demographic skews similarly to scrapbooking, which is a huge business in itself (and has been for a decade or so now). These folks want nothing more than to collect images of things or ideas that appeal to them.

But beyond that, the real secret of Pinterest is that it has found the key to enforcing link responsibility. And it has done this brilliantly, by making it painless and almost completely transparent.

In other words: The copying of images, videos and text - intellectual property - is a rampant problem on the 'net. The pressure to drive numbers and create new content quickly has had three unhealthy side-effects: (1) It has led to a great deal of rushed, throwaway content (and precious little thoughtful analysis). (2) It has led to outrageous, wholesale plagiarism often without so much as a link to the original source. (The Huffington Post, to name only one example, has become synonymous with this, and the situation is unlikely to improve since their AOL acquisition.) This is a tremendous disincentive for the creation of original content. (3) It has led directly to a Federal crackdown on file-sharing sites which has had a chilling effect on legitimate file-sharing. This effort is certain to continue, and historically likely to overstep its bounds.

By contrast, Pinterest is designed to automatically assign credit (outside links) where credit is due. These links are clearly effective in terms of Pinterest's demonstrable traffic-driving capabilities. More significant than even this, though, is the fact that Pinterest ensures link responsibility within the site as well.

This is the wellspring of Pinterest's power. The site makes it extremely easy to swipe images from other users. In fact, Pinterest downright encourages this. On its surface, this would appear to work against the interests of anyone doing the heavy lifting of mining the web for the best image content. After all, why bother doing hours of grunt work if someone can come along and swipe the fruits of your labors in minutes?

Here's why: When users acquire an image from within Pinterest, the image's finder (as well as the outside link) is linked. This means the most popular images propagate many internal links as well as outside links. This rewards both the original source of the image and the best curators ('pinners'). Users who grok this and want to move up in Pinterest's hierarchy will tend to avoid swiping images already found on Pintarest, and instead hunt down new ones.

For instance, this Batman board of mine has drawn an enormous amount of re-pinning (image swiping).  Each swipe is also a link which brings new traffic to the board. In its few days of existence, this board has attracted over 100 followers. Many of these followers also become followers of my other boards. How many followers 'Batmania' might attract, in a year when Pinterest is growing like a weed and a major Batman film is to be released, is hard to say - but this modest-sized board of 60 tattoo images has racked up over 90,000 followers so far.

Of all social sites, Pinterest is the lone pure meritocracy

This may be a hidden reason women are drawn to Pinterest: Its inherent fairness. If you've been nurturing an old-boy network since college, if you're a TV star, if you're richer than Soros or trendier than Lada Gaga or if you're on the NY Yankees, your popular standing will drive traffic to your Facebook page or your Twitter feed.

But such matters cut no ice for Pinterest users. All they want are the best images of the subjects that interest them, and frankly it seems unlikely that Derek Jeter or The Donald could be bothered to hunt for them. If you have the taste, the time, the inclination and the right subject, you could be living in a van down by the river and still rack up 100,000 or more Pinterest followers in a relatively short time.

But... why WOULD you want to be a prolific pinner?


What's the point of building a Pinterest following? Good question. The whole 'business model' of this is only now emerging. Crass commercialism is frowned upon by the Pinterest brass, but Pinterest power-users nevertheless are finding innovative ways of leveraging their investment of time and effort. This woman, for example, has so far earned nearly 120,000 followers (and a dollop of notoriety) for a board that features attractive St. Patrick's Day cards she sells online. If we live in a world where 1,000 fans can make a career (a theory admittedly in some dispute), perhaps 120,000 followers can at least earn Charmaine Zoe a little side income.

Stat source: SexySocial Media, which cited - but ironically, did not link - Mashable.

BONUS: A Pinterest board with guides for using Pinterest.

Linda Stone's Booklist and the Community Center

Just found this booklist from Linda Stone, full of thoughts on contemporary life. What struck me was the potential for a lot of cross-pollenization, which possibly neither Linda nor the authors are aware of.

For instance, I'm currently engaged in securing some future direction for the Symposia Bookstore in Hoboken. This is (to my knowledge) the last surviving bookstore (aside from a comic book store or two) in all of Hudson County, NJ. It's an endangered species. The marketplace environment for bookstores is obviously toxic.

Many bookstores traditionally become de facto community centers, and that's been the non-profit Symposia's main function in its decade of existence. Getting back to Linda's list, it contains "Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives" and "Bowling Alone : The Collapse and Revival of American Community". So: social networks are important, and they're undergoing significant change. Then we come to titles such as "Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media", which suggests that Twitter, Facebook et al may have become our new community centers.

It would be encouraging to believe that the folks you see everywhere glued to their smartphone screens are engaged in something meaningful and uplifting, rather than being an army of brain-dead zombies as the facile, cynical media portrays them. Of course, since most folks are playing Angry Birds, the truth is likely to be somewhere in-between.

What this means for the average community center is that they are less vital for a community than they once were. This is part of a gradual decline that began with the telephone. What the role of a place like Symposia is, today, is something to be explored - hopefully before such places are extinct.

One experiment in reinventing the community center took place in Brooklyn, where Dave Eggers' Superhero Supply Company was launched. This effort focuses on tutoring, and was discussed in this TED Talk. (That last link is a very entertaining video, very much worth your time.)

How to write more:

Screw around less. What a concept.

These are 17 things you should stop doing, so theoretically it's not even as if you had to gird yourself for some new initiative. And they're pretty good, too. Brief and brusque - and you know they're right.

Number five was unexpected, a pleasant surprise that refers back to this discussion re the role of the subconscious in creative endeavors.