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The 16th annual Independent Publisher Book Awards, honoring the year’s best independently published titles, is now accepting entries until March 15th, 2012 for books with 2011 and 2012 copyrights or that are released in 2011 or early 2012.

42Rules are submitting the following titles for consideration –42 Rules for a Web Presence that Wins and 42 Rules for Your New Leadership Role.

The “IPPY” Awards were conceived as a broad-based, unaffiliated awards program open to all members of the independent publishing industry, and are open to authors and publishers worldwide who produce books written in English and intended for the North American market. We define “independent” as 1) independently owned and operated; 2) operated by a foundation or university; or 3) long-time independents that became incorporated but operate autonomously and publish fewer than 50 titles a year. To learn more click here.

Amazon.com entered the publishing industry by purchasing a self publishing company and allowing authors to publish their titles on-demand with them. Due to changes in agreements Amazon.com has with other publishers Barnes & Nobles announced in February, 2012 that it will only carry Amazon.com published titles online and not in their brick stores. How this decision will affect Barnes& Noble’s sales remains to be seen. What effect, if any, will this have on your purchasing decisions?

Publishers Weekly has a great article “Looking for the 50{6d2d557e9d00bd0668d81f1c684edf6bee4f94716c136688ced4e9a613f7f134} Solution” that covers the impact the digital revolution in books is going to affect publishing houses. Independent publishers are typically more prepared to cope with this change but the large publishing houses have to prepare in advance. To find out what executives from nine publishers have to say read the article here.

More important to us is….What do you think?

A popular phrase in marketing is “Return On Investment” or ROI.  We always want to know the ROI of the marketing tactics we use and this is sometimes easy to determine.  Where it gets murky is when it comes to social media.  There isn’t a way to monitor social media impact at present because social media is not meant to be a marketing or sales channel.  Social media is the opportunity to build relationships with present and future customers, build your brand and create a positive reputation.  Most of this can’t be quantified.

In my opinion the best practices in social media include:

1.  Build relationships.  Tweeting a couple of times a week or posting to your Facebook profile or Fan Page once in a while isn’t going to build relationships.  You need to monitor your accounts for visitor response at least twice a week if you’re just starting out and more often when you become more experienced.  Answer questions, “like” responses and thank people for commenting.  If you have the time check out the profile of your most vocal fans and follow them as well.

2.  Don’t start a flame war.  Build your reputation by responding positively and constructively to criticism.  Show enthusiasm for suggestions even if they aren’t spot on.  Move potentially destructive conversations off social media and on to e-mail or telephone.   Do feel free to remove comments that are spammy or inappropriate and report people who continuously spam you.  Building your reputation doesn’t mean you have to be a doormat and you have the right to protect your brand.

3.  Monitor conversations about you or your book.  People may be talking about you in a positive or negative manner on their own social media accounts so it’s important that you search for mentions of your book title and respond appropriately.  You can setup Google Alerts to monitor some of this but you must also manually search social media sites proactively.  You’ll be surprised at what you learn and much of it will be positive.

4.  Use social media to promote but not sell.  No one wants to follow someone on Twitter just to hear over and over again “Buy my book. Buy my book.  Buy my book.” It is permissible, however, to mention a product discreetly.

If you get frustrated with the time you spend on social media remind yourself that you are building relationships and no one can put a price on that!

Gigaom blog has a fascinating post entitled “How Amazon Is Helping To Sustain Long-Form Journalism” that covers the best and the worst of how Amazon is shaping the publishing industry. You can read the entire post here.

The benefits of being a published author are many but some of our favorites include the fact that a book will make you a subject matter expert, you take an active role in promoting your industry, you earn a level of respect not equipped by many of your peers, you attract more clients and build your business and you build your own sense of pride that cannot help but get give you confidence.  If you need more convincing read “42 Rules For Driving Success With Books” by Mitchell Levy at http://42rules.com/book/42-rules-for-driving-success-with-books/

Mari Anne Vanella, CEO & Founder of The Vanella Group, Inc. is the author of the award-winning book “42 Rules of Cold Calling Executives”. She has been nominated for the 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management in 2011award and shares the honor with top executives from Marketo, Salesforce, Eloqua, and CBS Interactive. Voting is open to the public and will run through the end of November. Voters may cast votes for up to three nominees here www.salesleadmgmtassn.com/50most2011/top50_vote.htm

“42 Rules of Cold Calling Executives” is a popular book and has received much praise in the sales industry. Having an award winning book that generates a great deal of interest and publicity can be a significant factor in promoting the career of the author. You can learn more about Mari Anne at http://42rules.com/book/42-rules-of-cold-calling-executives/

42Rules is relaunching their blog and will focus on all aspects of publishing. You’ll learn about publishing news and events, writing, book promotion, publishing trends and awards. If you would like to do a guest post on one of these topics please contact us and let us know!