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Publishers Weekly Industry

The Virtual Presence of Small Presses
Jenna Schnuer -- 3/23/98
Regardless of their size, many small publishers are finding the Web a good place to be
There's nothing like a bit of alcohol to loosen the tongue and get people talking. So when Storey Publishing decided to launch its first publishing niche Web site and create a Storey-centered community nearly two years ago, it couldn't have done better than to go with the target audience it chose: homebrewers. "We chose to launch Storey's Beer Page first partly on a gut feeling and partly because of input from specialists in the homebrewing field," said Storey's director of publicity, Katherine Myers. "We thought that lots of homebrewers were out surfing." The company also decided that it wouldn't hurt community relations to throw a bit of extra brew the readers' way, so it partnered with Beer Across America, a fermented version of the Book-of-the-Month Club, to offer one lucky visitor "beer for a year." The lure of free beer drove significant traffic to the recipe- and content-rich site. The initial community had been established and Storey became a meeting place for people to gather to meet each other and discuss their passion. "If you brew a batch of beer and it comes out skunky, you can have a conversation online about why that happened," said Myers. "People really develop online relationships."
Click Here for Do's

No press would ever publish a book, bury it in their backyard and sit around waiting for the orders to pour in. The same g s for Web sites. Marketing a site -- through a combination of methods -- is almost more important than deciding what g s on the site in the first place. And for publishers not ready to start building their own sites, there are also ways to utilize much that the Web has to offer. Here are a few tips:

Register your site. This is one of the best ways to insure that people can find you. Some of the most well-known directories and search engines are Yahoo, Infoseek, AltaVista , Excite, Lycos, WebCrawler and HotBot.

Link, link, link. Contact owners of other sites -- everything from stores on the Web to association sites -- to ask for links. Set up an area on your own site to provide reciprocal links so that you can offer swaps. Take my Web site, please.

Promote your site's URL. Put it on your business cards, your letterhead, book jackets, copyright page of your books. Tattoos optional.

Promote your authors. List author events on other Web sites -- you can't get too much publicity! One place to send your listings is Authors on the Highway, a free author-listing service from BookWire and Publishers Weekly.

Know your online bookseller. Stay in close contact with booksellers doing cybercommerce. Publisher after publisher remarked on increased sales via Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com once they had set up a Web presence. But those sales don't just happen automatically. The booksellers are also seeing the pros of working with small publishers. Amazon.com recently set up a program, Amazon Advantage, to increase visibility of small presses on its site. For more on the program, see www.amazon.com/advantage.

Lists and listservs. Be sure to sign up for-and participate in-e-mail lists and listservs. These electronic mailing lists have become a great way to reach a targeted audience.

Mailing lists. Set up your own mailing lists-for reviewers, for consumers, for anybody you want to reach. (One word of caution: netiquette recommends that you don't become a bulk e-mailer.)

Advertise. Consider buying ad space on other sites. When Storey Publishing first launched its Beer Page, the company bought a banner ad on Yahoo!. When Web surfers did a Yahoo! search for the term "beer," the Storey banner was ready and waiting. -J.S.

Storey's community-centered Web strategy has gone down so well that the publisher is planning to launch upwards of a dozen "subsites" to build communities for each of the topical interests it publishes for. Its second site, the herb gardening enthusiast-targeted Whole Herb, has already surpassed its older beer brother in popularity. To keep Storey's brand hanging over the door of each subsite they will all be bound together through the company's about-to-be-redesigned homepage, at www.storey.com. The design of each area will be tailored to each specific community. "To me it lends credibility because we will speak in [the target audience's] language," said Steven Morris, Storey's Web services manager.

Who's Out There

All that beer is just one example of what a small publisher can accomplish on the Web. Small presses are everywhere on the Internet, and they're using the medium for everything from building a community to selling their books -- often internationally. "The embarrassing truth is that it started as a follow-the-herd activity," said Kelly Monaghan, founder and publisher of New York City-based The Intrepid Traveler, publisher of "off-beat travel how-to." Luckily, nothing done on a Web site is ever set in stone -- it's one of the beauties of the medium -- so even a "we just did it to do it" site can quickly find a mission and a method. The Intrepid Traveler's site might have started out with an everybody-in-the-pool attitude, but Monaghan said that, over time, the marketing and sales benefits of the 10-month-old site "have far surpassed what I expected...and my only regret is that I didn't do it sooner. It's a great way of showing what you do." (For an extensive listing of publishers on the Web, visit the BookWire index.

At the moment, the greatest benefits to small presses on the Web, beyond community-building, are on the marketing and promotion side. "Our site allows us substantial contact with readers that we wouldn't otherwise have. And it keeps us in touch between books," said Sue Robishaw of ManyTracks, based in Cooks, Mich. Although sales on the Web are growing, they have a long way to go before they can really be counted on.

Show Me the Money

While marketing on the Web is worth whatever effort a publisher can put into it, several publishers emphasized that online sales are also an important -- and growing -- benefit of setting up a Web site. While it is very important to establish relationships with Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and other online booksellers, direct sales clear more profit and can help a publisher establish brand loyalty with a reader. But one problem that must be combated in order to boost Web sales is the lack of consumer confidence in ordering over the Web. "You have to deal with public perception no matter how out of whack it is," said Intrepid Traveler's Monaghan. "I subscribe to the notion that you have more chance of having your card number messed with when you hand it to a waiter in a Manhattan bistro but it's simply a matter of meeting public perception." He is currently looking in to putting his site on a secure server to increase direct orders. Although it seems cumbersome, most orders to Intrepid Traveler come in via fax or traditional mail.

Wethersfield, Conn.-based Turtle Press's site is on a secure server and it has definitely paid off. "The Web is one of our best sales sources, right behind our direct-mail catalogue and bookstore sales," said company owner Cynthia Kim. "We receive daily orders from the Web site, both by phone and through our secure server. The addition of a shopping-cart system last fall has significantly boosted online orders and saves a tremendous amount of time and money that would otherwise be spent taking phone orders."

Publishers are also finding that the Web extends their reach to customers. "The real power is exposure internationally," said John Kremer, founder of the Fairfield, Ia.-based Open Horizons, which publishes Book Marketing Update. "That alone is reason to be on the Web. The possibility of foreign-right sales and direct foreign sales is huge."

"We have found that many of the online orders are coming from outside of the U.S. Happily, our international customers now have an easier way to reach us, across time zones and without telephone tolls," said Getty Trust Publications' Stacey Ravel Abarbael.

Finding New Authors

The Web d sn't just offer the chance to meet new customers, it can also introduce publishers to new authors. Navarre, Fla.- based Bookhome has depended on its Internet presence to find books to publish. The company was founded in '96. President Scott Gregory said it was hard to let agents and potential authors know what they were looking for because Bookhome wasn't listed in any major author or agent directories. "We're eager to spread the word that we're looking for quality proposals and manuscripts that are in line with our mission," said Gregory. (Bookhome specializes in relationship, business, parenting, lifestyle and self-help books.) Gregory posted the company's manuscript guidelines on the site and has heard from dozens of authors and agents who otherwise might not have found the press. "We spell out clearly who we are and what are goals are. I have been very impressed with the quality of the manuscripts we've received."
You Could Look It Up
The following Web resources were recommended by publishers interviewed for the piece
  • BookWire for extensive listings of publisher Web sites and in-depth information on the book publishing industry (also the home of Publishers Weekly on the Web).

  • Publishers Marketing Association was one of the most highly recommended sites by publishers interviewed for this piece.

  • Book Market is John Kremer's site. It's filled with information about marketing books both on and off the Web.

  • HotWired is the online component of Wired magazine. It's loaded with how-tos and is presented in a fun and stylish manner.

  • High Five is an online design magazine.

  • The Alertbox Subtitled Current Issues in Web Usability, this is an online magazine that details how people use the Web.

  • Web Review offers lots of how-to information on setting up a Web site.


In the Internet Age, a Serial Writer Asks, 'Who Needs Magazines?'

Dickens did it; so did Dostoyevsky. Now Barry Beckham looks to join their venerable ranks. The editor of several editions of The Black Student's Guide to Colleges (the latest is from Madison) is pioneering a new form of serial writing. Without the interest of a print magazine to serialize his novelized nonfiction work You Have a Friend: The Rise and Fall and Rise of the Chase Manhattan Bank, Beckham is using e-mail to parcel out chunks of his latest book.

No publisher? No problem, if you're Beckham. When his agent, William Morris's Mel Berger, couldn't find takers for the yet-to-be-completed title, Beckham decided to move forward on his own. He put one chapter on the Web, and began soliciting orders, at a trade paper price of $9.95, for the complete book.

Innovators such as the Web site Bibliobytes and Electron Press have long used the Net to sell downloadable books on-line. But Beckham utilizes the new technology to further an older approach. Every other week, Beckham will send out another chapter of the story to subscribers. If you joined late, you can access past chapters, and quickly catch up with everyone else. He hopes the pace of the e-mails will create suspense, in the same way that well-known modern writers like Mario Puzo and Tom Wolfe used the technique in print, to great effect. For-profit book serializations on the Web are less typical. Authors are more likely to be distributed at no cost to the consumer, in the same way that Prodigy, hoping to drive traffic to its network, allowed users to read Greg Costikyan's By the Sword in serial form gratis.

Beckham's case illustrates the obvious advantage of Net publishing: no matter how specific your book, and no matter how many publishers find it commercially non-viable, the Net seals up even large cracks, allowing no books to fall through. After all, a corporate history, novelized as it might be, is widely viewed as appealing only to a narrow niche. More specifically, Beckham's serialization project shows how the Net can cut down the time it takes for the book to reach consumers hands after it is conceived in the author's mind. With the Net, you can read as Beckham writes. Beckham even admits that he has yet to complete his book and will struggle to "keep up" with readers. "This is probably the only way to sell something that hasn't been finished," he says proudly. The lure of the Net was so strong, in fact, that Beckham opted for this method over publishing it at his own small press. That press, though, d s give him an advantage . "A lot of the expense with something like this comes in setting up the Web site," said Glen Hauman, founder of Bibliobytes. "He already has that."

Before traditional book publishers and booksellers get alarmed, Beckham wants them to realize that he, for one, has no intention of replacing the conventional method. Like some serial writers of old, he hopes buzz about portions of the book will snare the attention of a house that will publish it in a complete, dead-tree form. "It gives me the opportunity to see if there's a market," Beckham said. "I see this as an intermediary step."

While he's at this stage, Beckham isn't lying down. He already has a chat room in place, where he hopes consumers will come online to discuss the book. And though he has no plans for a book tour, he d s speak dreamily about visiting cybercafes.
-Steven M. Zeitchik
Using the Web to launch new publishing projects has also worked for established small presses. An e-mail exchange between Internet travel writer Edward Hasbrouck and Moon Travel Handbooks publisher Bill Newlin was the basis for the '97 title The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World. The author has also become a contributor to the site by writing a column for Moon's online newsletter Travel Matters.
New Revenue Streams

"Under certain circumstances -- and travel is one of them -- branding can become very important," Newlin emphasizes. And Moon Travel has become a content provider for other Web sites. Time New Media has licensed the rights to mirror Moon's Road Trip USA site for its custom-published area for Toyota, www.carsandculture.com. Hysteria Publications is doing the same, but with humor paving the way to other sites rather than travel. "The Web is a great place for humor, so we're getting involved in providing other sites with funny material for their pages," said Hysteria publisher and CEO Deborah Werksman.

Because many publisher sites are turning into content-rich areas, some publishers are marketing their sites to potential advertisers. Manteo, N.C.- based Insiders' Publishing believes it has found a pot of gold through this source. "Already, our Internet advertising sales far exceed our print advertising sales, and we expect revenues from ad sales to exceed revenues from book sales in 1999," reports company president Michael McOwen. Archipelago Publishing publisher Eric Brandt is hoping that his site will also be a draw for advertisers. "We have resource centers on the site and are targeting potential sponsors for those sections," said Brandt. "We're looking for one-year commitments and $5000 to $10,000 per sponsor."

Getting Started

The key to setting up a good Web site is in the research done before the first bit of HTML is even coded. Even the decision on whether to join up with one of many online publisher networks or set up a freestanding store can be a confusing one. Two sites that bring together a number of publishers under one roof are BookZone and ReadersNdex. Berrett-K hler has had a site on ReadersNdex for the last two years. "To date, it has been mostly an online catalogue of our books, with monthly featured titles," said senior publicity manager Karla Swatek. For B-K the cost of the ReadersNdex service is a per-title, per-year fee. (B-K is launching an independent site within the next several months. It will link to the ReadersNdex site and will house the company newsletter, a resource directory of experts and speakers, and possibly press materials, events calendars and author profiles.)

Although some publishers that decide to build their own site may house it on their own server, it is much easier and cheaper to begin by finding a host that rents out space on its server (a "cyberlandlord"). Although many Internet Service Providers (ISP) now offer this service, it is not guaranteed. (One way to research local Internet Service Providers is through a search on Yahoo.) In a report on selling products via the Web, John Kremer suggests the following Web hosting companies: OneHost ; ValueWeb (888-934-6788); and HiWay Technologies (800-339-4929 or www.hway.net). Another good source with easy step-by-step directions is Peter Kent's Poor Richard's Web Site (Top Floor Publishing).

Once a host has been found, the first order of business should be registering a domain name. Domain names are one of the most interesting business stories to arise out of the race to the Web. Although companies can use an extension of their host server's name, it is important to register a domain name to build a brand. Several large corporations about to build sites were amazed to find that early adopters of Web technology -- or just savvy Web users -- had registered their brand names for personal use or to resell. The result: confusion, big money and lawsuits. A lesson that has emerged from domain-mania is that flexibility in naming sites is an absolute necessity. To find out if a domain name has been taken check http://rs.internic.net/cgi-bin/whois. Once a free domain name has been found, it must be registered on InterNIC at http://rs.internic.net. (For extensive registration directions visit http://rs.internic.net/faq/how_register. html .) The charge for registration and the first two years is $100. After the first two years, the fee is $50 annually. Domain registration information can also be found at www.alldomains.com.

Once registration and hosting issues are settled it's time to start the actual work. While it can be fairly simple to learn how to build a Web site, it is guaranteed to be extremely time consuming. Publishers should decide whether they want to outsource the work -- which can be costly -- or take on the work themselves. The initial workload is at least 50 to 60 hours for a basic Web site. Beginners might want to employ a Web-authoring tool. These tools essentially write the code but some control is sacrificed in the process. (For reviews of Web authoring tools see PC Magazine Online, at www.zdnet.com/ pcmag/ features/htmlauthor/_open. htm.) For absolute control over the placement of every graphic and comma on a site, it is worthwhile to learn HTML (the language used to write Web pages). Classes on the subject have sprung up on almost every street corner and many publishers have released HTML guides. There are also some good Web sites on the subject (HotWired's Webmonkey -- www.hotwired.com/webmonkey/ -- is a must-use online tutorial).

The Site Itself

While many publisher sites provide basic catalogue information, publishers who offer at least a little something extra are being rewarded with increased traffic and sales. "You have to be service-oriented," said Book Marketing Update's Kremer. Betsy Bruce of AmandaLore Publishing, publisher of Boxing for Everyone, agrees. "I believe to attract people interested in the book you must offer information that a potential book buyer needs. We decided to compile a list of boxing gyms, and we post a twice-monthly column by our book's author, female boxing coach Cappy Kotz."

Single-title author and publisher Jim Donovan's book Handbook to a Happier Life has had a site for two years. "Part of my learning curve was that it is necessary to have information that is constantly changing for a site to thrive," said Donovan. So in January he added "Perk Up Your Day" to his site. Now, when readers stop by "they are greeted with a short, motivational message to start their day. It's a bit of work but I think it's worth it. Especially in publishing, having someone visit one time is not going to sell books."

While the amount of work that g s into setting up a Web site might seem even more overwhelming than the technical aspects of the process, it can be broken down bit by bit. There's no rush and the payoff for small publishers can be immense. At the very least, there is community; and the prospects for revenue look better every day.
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