Dinosaurs stumbling badly into new media

As the publisher of a book review web site that is now entering it's third year, with it's third major re-themeing and having acheived a level of success, in terms of visitors, page views, ad revenues, Alexa ranking and Google Page Rank, I have become used to corresponding via e-mail with other web entrepreneurs and to working with other web publishers as well as with traditional book publishers and their publicity departments.

Sometimes an unsolicited approach can lead to a very mutually rewarding co-operation. And in my humble opinion, being successful on the web is all about building relationships. Relationships wiith other web publishers, with the source people in the field your web site covers and with your readers and audience. I have made tons of friends in online forums and through e-mail corresponce with strangers who responded to my web site. I am lucky that my spam filters mostly filter out the real junk. But this past week I had an un-solicited e-mail from a company (that apparently has "professional" level funding and PR. The PR agent (let's call her "Karen") wrote to tell me that she had "found my site" and thought that I "might want to share" with my readers the exciting news that HER COMPANY was introducing a new book promotion portal site. And surely I would love to give them some free publicity on my site. This was my reply to "Karen"

Hi Karen,

I checked out your site. I can't quite figure out whether you are very naive on how to approach and make deals with other web publishers or if you assume every site you find out there is a fan site that will be happy to promote your brand new un-ranked web site for free. It appears to me that what your firm is trying is a lot like Library Thing and Shelfari but you are trying to make it pay by having authors and/or their publishers pay for the privilege of being listed in your directory. Who knows, enough authors may take you up on it for you to make it a viable business, but honestly there is a Ton of competition in book promotion web sites and all of those sites (including yours and mine) are trying to reach the same Internet audience. (Do you even know what an Alexa rating is? Or Google Page Rank? Here's a hint, as of today mine are Much better than yours.)

My site is a Book Review site. Occasionally I make things a little bit more personal but mostly it is just all book reviews. I am in the process of opening my own online store to sell the books that I write about. I have never written about Library Thing or Shelfari, though at one time very early on I did use Library Thing widgets to display book covers in the side bar. I will not review your site for the same reason I never reviewed Library Thing or Shelfari. I review books, not websites. The publishers (of books) seem to get the book review web publishing community rather better than you do. They shower us with respect, advanced reading copies and review copies and NEVER ever require that we Post about let alone Recommend any particular title. By contrast you've approached a competing web publisher with an offer or suggestion that I give YOU free publicity. Like I said, I can't figure out if you're simply naive or utterly slimy.

If you would like to discuss advertising rates on http://libdrone.info or the possiblity or a reciprocal linking agreement, please let me know. You might consider having a third section of your site for book reviewers (in addition to readers and authors) since we are a Huge part of the book promotion scene. I hope this reply will be helpful to you in learning how better to approach established book review web publishers.

After two years of hard work and sweat equity I have steady, solid though not at all spectactular search engine traffic. I have 350 well tagged posts that will continue to draw search engine traffic. I have finished and ready to go a brand new template and some dynamite SEO optimized content about some of the Hottest and most popular books being published today in the can and ready to roll after the launch date. My e-mail address book has nearly a dozen publicists, including the Abolutely Fabulous Miriam Parker at Hachette, who could teach every newbie out there like "Karen" how to build a successful online book campaign a life time's worth of lessons.

My site revenue at this time and if I had to pay hosting fees (which due to the generostiy of one of my cherished friends who prefers to remain anonymous, I do not. Even though libdrone IS professionally hosted by an IT professional with specific expertise in the library and WordPress markets who, out of friendship gives me better hosting and tech support for my sites than the professionally funded "Karen" can buy at any price) my revenues would be barely break even. But unlike Karen I am working on a ten year marketing plan. And I actually took a lifetime of work in the book industry to learn how to deal with publishers and publicists and two years of hard sweat equity to learn about being an internet publisher in the book promotion field.

They tell writers that when you read something in a published book or magazine and you KNOW that you could have written it better, that's when you know you're Really a writer. I can now say that when you get a very naive letter from a newbie in your business who clearly doesn't know anything at all about the field she is entering, even though she has professional backing. Is the day you know that you are a Serious web publisher.

I am making progress

with the site re-design and re-launch. I am about 2/3 through reading Michael Connelly's The Scarecrow, which will be published by Little Brown on 5/26/09, the same day that I will re-launch libdrone.info and my new Amazon book store Libdrone Sells Books at libdrone.com. I have been thrilled to have the time away from producing regular blog content to work on the re-design. I am pleased with what I have to go so far, but my goals and methods for the site going forward are becoming clearer and I have been analyzing my traffic and realizing that fully 49% of my visitors are located outside of North America.

I was visiting a friend today. This friend is a good bit younger than I am and is a music DJ and a techie who's been online forever. He was poo-pooh'ing "blogs" for the umpteenth time. somehow he thought blogging was like posting on mesage boards or getting your name on a web site. I took him to Blog Catalog and showed him what _I_ mean by blogs. I showed him that I was the number one non-paid listing for "Books" on BC. I went over and logged into my site and showed him my Firestats in my WP dashboard. and he looked at the 130 uniques per day viewing 550 some odd pageviews and said, hey you got yourself some decent traffic there. I pointed out that all of those visitors (and showed him the hits table, which blew his mind) had come from search engines and the fact that they viewed an average of more than 3.5 pages each indicated they were finding value and digging deeper into the site.

And for the first time since I dropped out of Entrecard when my friend (who never understood why I 'bothered' with 'just doing a blog' --you could be on MySpace, you know?) understood clearly my 10 year business plan of accumulating highly tagged, high quality original content that can appeal to a broad audience and consistently receive search visitors with No marketing expense to bring them in. And soon my Libdrone Sells Books store will be opening and I will once again, as when I first began my career be a direct seller of books. I can't wait to get the site finished and get back into the game and get started on Year 3 of my 10 year plan. Stick around, folks. You ain't seen nothing yet.

Check out my updated punch list if you want to see how the upgrade is coming:

Let publicists know about the break and re-luanch plans-- emailed Julie, Miriam and Tracee on 4/23 (done)


Let advertisers know about break and re-launch plans. msg'd all 8 advertisers on CMF. will take PW widget down during hiatus.

TRL on hiatus 4/29--5/26 4/29--migration post goes up. post is closed to comments. done

1) JD creates mirror--done

On mirror site:

2) change theme to http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/whiteplus

substitue existing header graphic for theme included graphic in new theme. re-size rather than crop the header image. make sure the barcode scanner's line shows--done

ask JD about changing font color in blog header-- working on editing header image. having trouble finding right font color for header


3) Consolidate all of the About pages under one About Page that has links to About Me And About This Blog, About The Links, About The Bookstore, About Books and Libraries, About My Audience, About Libdrone.com, Instructions for all in one About page below. working, largely done


Add widgets and privacy policy page-- this page may go under About or under something else but definitely buried.

Add review copies and submission page-- this can under Something, maybe taking place of suggestions and guest reviews page


4) Change dotCom page title to Blogroll. libdrone.com will become the book store page on it's own blog done

5) Review and Revise Suggestions and Guest Reviews page

6) Add bookstore page using Amazon's a store in Beta, working

7) Experiment and work with widgets and widget placements to get a very well designed an professional looking layout

Add a Welcome page that explains all of the changes


8) check and test EVERYTHING three times

9) Write and schedule May 26th, 27th, 28th and 29th posts about Michael Connelly's The Scarecrow--reading, Barry Eisler's Fault Lines rcvd, Steve Luxemborg's Annies Ghost rcvd, Joel Goldman's The Dead Man rcvd

consider) ??Renew paid Library Thing membership Re integrate Libary Thing Links to all posts less than one year old. Consider using Library Thing widgets to place long strings of book covers on bookstore page. to do that. Include a link to library thing profile in sidebar


May 24th-- JD points the URL to the new site a full day plus before the Resuming post goes live (gives time to work out any kinks and can put up a 'how do you like the new look' post as soon as the new site is up and running properly)


next upgrade (whenever) add non-blog page for V-Bulletin. meanwhile Comment On Book Blogs!




Hello,

From April 29th to May 26th my blog The Thin Red Line will be going on hiatus. The site will be up (and will continue to get traffic from search visitors, which is my main source of traffic) but I will not be posting any updates during this time. When I relaunch on May 26th, I will have a brand new look and theme and a number of new pages and site features. I am writing to you because you have an advertisement on my site that will be running during this planned hiatus. As I said, the site will be up and will no doubt continue to receive search visitors, so your ad will receive some impressions. If however, you feel that you want to pull the ad during the hiatus, just reply and let me know and I will request that your ad be canceled and your credits refunded. Alternatively, I would be happy to place an ad on your site when I re-launch next month. I wanted to let you know about this a few days in advance, just to keep you in the loop. Thank you for advertising on The Thin Red Line, which will be back for it's third great year starting 5/26.

Alan

plans continue

for the hiatus and site upgrade. My punch list is evolving:


Let publicists know about the break and re-luanch plans-- emailed Julie, Miriam and Tracee on 4/23 (done)


Let advertisers know about break and re-launch plans. msg'd all 8 advertisers on CMF. will take PW widget down during hiatus.

TRL on hiatus 4/29--5/26 4/29--migration post goes up. post is closed to comments.

1) JD creates mirror

On mirror site:

2) change theme to http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/whiteplus

substitue existing header graphic for theme included graphic in new theme. re-size rather than crop the header image. make sure the barcode scanner's line shows


3) Consolidate all of the About pages under one About Page that has links to About Me And About This Blog, About The Links, About The Bookstore, About Books and Libraries, About My Audience, About Libdrone.com,


Add widgets and privacy policy page-- this page may go under About or under something else but definitely buried.

Add review copies and submission page-- this can under Something


4) Change dotCom page title to Blogroll. continue to promote the libdrone.com addy but get rid of the too cutesy dotCOM page name

5) Review and Revise Suggestions and Guest Reviews page

6) Add bookstore page using Amazon's a store AND Powell's bookshelf pages. "Freedom of Choice"

Ask JD about putting up a second WP blog to use for the sales and blogroll pages. gives me a second sidebar to sell ads in. And now that I am signed up for Amazon I CAN do the LibraryThing THING as below, on the store site

7) Experiment and work with widgets and widget placements to get a very well designed an professional looking layout

Add a Welcome page that explains all of the changes


8) check and test EVERYTHING three times

9) Write and schedule May 26th, 27th, 28th and 29th posts about Michael Connelly's The Scarecrow, Barry Eisler's Fault Lines, Steve Luxemborg's Annies Ghost, Joel Goldman's The Dead Man


consider) ??Renew paid Library Thing membership Re integrate Libary Thing Links to all posts less than one year old. Consider using Library Thing widgets to place long strings of book covers on some pages. (but would have to sign up for Amazon to get paid and don't really want to do that. Include a link to library thing profile in sidebar leaning maybe to Yes on this

May 24th-- JD points the URL to the new site a full day plus before the Resuming post goes live

(gives time to work out any kinks and can put up a 'how do you like the new look' post as soon as the new site is up and running properly)


sent to advertisers:




Hello,

From April 29th to May 26th my blog The Thin Red Line will be going on hiatus. The site

will be up (and will continue to get traffic from search visitors, which is my main source of

traffic) but I will not be posting any updates during this time. When I relaunch on May

26th, I will have a brand new look and theme and a number of new pages and site features. I

am writing to you because you have an advertisement on my site that will be running during this

planned hiatus. As I said, the site will be up and will no doubt continue to receive search

visitors, so your ad will receive some impressions. If however, you feel that you want to

pull the ad during the hiatus, just reply and let me know and I will request that your ad be

canceled and your credits refunded. Alternatively, I would be happy to place an ad on your

site when I re-launch next month. I wanted to let you know about this a few days in advance,

just to keep you in the loop. Thank you for advertising on The Thin Red Line, which will

be back for it's third great year starting 5/26.

Alan

coming changes over on libdrone

In a little more than month from now The Thin Red Line will be Two Years Old and in preparation for that milestone I am going to take a hiatus from publishing libdrone.info from April 29 to May 26th. When my hiatus begins I will have written and published 351 posts, an average of 3.36 or so posts per week. (Under promise, over deliver. That's why I changed my announced post frequency from "almost daily" to thrice weekly. The daily posting target was frankly too much work. And I spend a great deal of time selecting and reading the books that I review (it actually got me in trouble, at least to the degree of a Warning for reading on duty last week; oops) and I definitely want some time to reflect, review, revise and re-launch the site into my third year. This is my tentative plan for the hiatus and relaunch:

TRL on hiatus 4/29--5/26 4/29--migration post goes up. post is closed to comments.

1) JD creates mirror

On mirror site:

2) change theme to http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/whiteplus

substitue existing header graphic for theme included graphic in new theme. re-size rather than crop the header image. make sure the barcode scanner's line shows


3) Consolidate all of the About pages under one About Page that has links to About Me And About This Blog, About The Links, About The Bookstore, About Books and Libraries, About My Audience, About Libdrone.com,


Add widgets and privacy policy page-- this page may go under About or under something else but definitely buried. another buried page??

4) Change dotCom page title to Blogroll. continue to promote the libdrone.com URL but get rid of the too cutesy dotCOM page name

5) Review and Revise Suggestions and Guest Reviews page

6) Add bookstore page using powell's partner bookshelves

7) Experiment and work with widgets and widget placements to get a very well designed and professional looking layout

8) check and test EVERYTHING three times

9) Write and schedule May 26th post about Michael Connelly's The Scarecrow


May 24th-- JD points the URL to the new site a full day plus before the Resuming post goes live.


The plan probably isn't complete in that I also need to plan policies and procedures to deal with advertisers. My post announcing the hiatus that will be up (but Not commentable on) the entire time I am offline is written and assumes an openly celebratory tone and announces a very special book selection for the come back. This is my first experience doing a written plan for a blot or website transition. Have you given your site a major makeover? If you did, please leave a comment and let me know any tips or suggestions you have.

I have removed the Entrecard widget

from this site. The fact that the Only way to not have paid ads appearing here was to manually decline them, one by one, every day, no matter what my ad settings were was the straw that finally broke my long suffering back. This particular blog exists Only as my personal little soap box and I quite honestly don't care if anyone reads here or not. I kept the widget because I have so many friends who are still using Entrecard that I wanted to be able to continue to drop when I visit them, but it appears to me that Entrecard itself no longer welcomes this more limited use of their service so I am finally out, after being one of the ones who Really promoted this service at the beginning and more lately one of the growing chorus of critics.

Like watching a train wreck, where it's so gory but you just Can't look away, I suspect that I will continue to be an Entrecard observer and critic. And for sure, I will do a post celebrating its demise when Graham finally manages to drive all the way off the cliff. See you at the CMFads forum.

Mailbox Monday

It's an exciting day over at the books blog. Lyndi at Nice2All gave The Thin Red Line a Rave Review, and I am aglow at the wonderful compliments. Meanwhile, my ad for the dot com page is running right alongside the review (Thank You CMFads) and I am feeling a great deal of satisfaction in Lyndi's advice (don't change a thing). It appears to me that I get about 100--150 regular readers per day and I definitely get feedback that these people like what they see. I am starting to feel like a successful blogger again, more so than at any time since my Entrecard-ending traffic drop.

I am really, Really, REALLY homping that CMFads will grow into what Entrecard _could_ have become, had it been managed by people I know and trust, like Ben, Stan and Turnip. A place where thoughtful and quality bloggers will feel genuinely at home and can gain meaningful notice, as opposed to a system that sadly has become largely a meaningless link exchange, where the most Popular blog , in All of Entrecard, for TWO YEARS IN A ROW (as Turnip recently broke) is a splog, run by the same scraper who maintains 5 blogs (each of which drop the required 300 per day) with all the credits gained used to advertise the "main" site. Monkey Tales? More like horseshit, imho.

I suppose it is disingenuous to keep the EC widget on this personal site, even while deploring what Entrecard has become, but some of my real blog friends still use that site and I Do like being able to leave a card and it seems only fair to have a place where they can leave cards for me. Like most serious bloggers, I am Not eager to choose sides in some kind of power struggle. I just want solutions that Work. And CMFads is delivering that in spades.

Oh, and since this is a Mailbox Monday I will note that this week's mail brough an advanced reading copy of Afraid by Jack Kilborn, a thriller that was previously published in the UK that is being released in the US in paperback in April by Hachette's Grand Central Publishing unit (Thank You Miriam Parker!) and a published copy of Lord of Corruption by Kyle Mills, which I will be giving away, probably to my one thousandth commenter on the The Thin Red Line im association with an April review date.

One final thought, today. I have been thinking of trying to organize some kind of South Puget Sound bloggers group where we could meet up face to face, like at the library meeting room maybe once a month just to talk and get to know each other and look at ways we can work together to butter All of our bread. If you are a blogger in the South Sound area and would be interested in attending a get together, please shoot an e-mail to me at drone AT libdrone DOT info.

I honestly don't know

how those bloggers with multiple blogs do it. I had been thinking of trying to make Purely Personal a weekly updated blog, though it is Friday night and tomorrow morning at 8am I am back to work another week and I just never did get around to coming up with a post to go here. On the books blog, I have posted today's and pre-posted Monday's entries and have read Wednesday's book and just need to write the review, when I can find the time.

I am getting some traffic from the ads I have placed on CMF, but my unique count is just down in the toilet and I don't know what to do about it. So many people have come in and said "wow, this place is great" but they just don't seem to generate much traffic. I have greatly expanded the number of books blogs in my RSS feeds page, libdrone.com but have not yet figured out how to promote this page. I also haven't taken any steps towards signing up for the affiliate programs and setting up special sites designed just to drive traffic to affiliate links. I seem to be somewhat ambivalent about the whole project.

Meanwhile another week has gone by. I did finally e-mail my mother, but expect she is still peeved with me for putting it off for so long. (she didn't write back as yet). Ron and I both had shrink appts on Tuesday. My meds are working and I just got another 6 months renewal, but Ron's meds were completely changed and so far he seems to be doing well on Wellbutrin and Librium. Fingers crossed. Need to go ahead and publish this and get to bed so I can be bright eyed at work tomorrow. Here's hoping your week has gone well.

a