Lady Banks Bookshelf
Book Blogger Appreciation Week
#SIBA10 is Around the Corner – Mark Your Calendar
#SIBA10 is Around the Corner – Mark Your Calendar
This year, the SIBA Trade Show is being held at sister indie properties that are side by side by the seaside. And it is predicted that the air will be filled with book-talk among the southern book industry elite. The most successful Southern Social Networking Summit Redux will be offered on Thursday. Linda Barrett-Knopp of Malaprops’ credits the summit for Malaprops’ finding its sweet spot. We are also expecting a host of bloggers so that booksellers can Get in Bed with a Blogger. Education, Publishers, and Authors, oh my! The ever popular Moveable Feast is back along with many SIBA favorites. New this year is the Tweet Up a Rep and the Technology Pavilion where anyone visiting the exhibits can stop and learn a new piece of technology that will help you sell more books. Twitter, Facebook and Ustream, oh my!
See it all here: http://www.tradeshow.sibaweb.com/schedule
New for 2010! SIBA has partnered with Above the Treeline, provider of the book industry’s digital catalog Edelweiss, to provide Books@SIBA, a digital companion to their upcoming fall 2010 trade show taking place in Daytona, Florida on September 24 – 26. Books@SIBA will provide attendees, interested booksellers, bloggers, and other book industry professionals with an online resource to browse, share, tag, and order titles being featured at this year’s show. See http://www.abovethetreeline.com/booksatsiba
Here is the registration form for the SIBA Trade Show – http://www.sibaweb.com/pdf/tradeshow/2010/2010regformA.pdf
Bookseller as Therapist = Brilliant
I picked up a great magazine at my local grocery store yesterday and am so enamored of it. It is called ReadyMade and they appear to be doing a great job of connecting the content from print to online. So much of what I saw and read was enlightening as to how to combine the new options with the old but I was most drawn to the Required Reading article right up front on page 10. This is a brilliant idea, that with free online tools, can be easily replicated, packaged, and sold by indie bookstores in the south.
Basically, the idea is this: Bookseller as bibliotherapist — all of us are looking out for ways to improve our lives, whether spiritually, emotionally, or physically and we readers intersect with stories and books that inspire or entertain or educate us. So booksellers write book prescriptions – the right read for what ails you.
Written by Melissa Goldstein Photography by Levi Brown
A Filly Ate? Affiliate? Affiliation?
Get in Bed # 4 af·fil·i·ate/v. əˈfɪliˌeɪt; n. əˈfɪliɪt, -ˌeɪt/
A filly ate? Whaa?!
–verb (used with object)
1. to bring into close association or connection: The Book Lady’s Blog is affiliated with the Fountain Bookstore.
2. to attach or unite on terms of fellowship; associate (usually fol. by with in U.S. usage, by to in Brit. usage): to affiliate with an indie bookstore.
3. to trace the descent, derivation, or origin of: to affiliate a book.
4. to adopt. As in Get in Bed with…
5. Law . to fix the paternity of, as an illegitimate child: The mother affiliated her child upon John Doe. As in get in bed with…
–verb (used without object)
6. to associate oneself; be intimately united in action or interest. As in both book bloggers and booksellers have an affiliation for books and the right to read.
–noun
7. a branch organization. As in SIBA is an affiliate to bloggers and booksellers via its Get in Bed Blog Project.
8. Commerce . Book Bloggers can affiliate with Indie Bookstores and share in the profits of books sold via their blog. Indie Bookstores can affiliate with any commerce concern that seeks to sell books online by sharing in the profits of books sold via the commerce concern. As to commerce, affiliate and reseller and often interchanged.
a. a business concern owned or controlled in whole or in part by another concern. As in the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance is affiliated with its bookseller members.
b. a subsidiary. The Get in Bed Blog Project is an affiliate of Get in Bed with a Book Blogger.
9. a person who is affiliated; associate; auxiliary. SIBA’s core bookstore members are affiliated with SIBA.
Use affiliate in a Sentence: “I look forward to the day where all of SIBA’s Indie Bookstores are selling books and ebooks online via their own websites and via affiliates of the communities they already support like book bloggers, authors, local schools, churches, libraries, other retailers, and more than I can imagine.”
FOR WEEK FOUR:
For Bloggers:
1. Check out some affiliate options by clicking on affiliate & affiliation throughout the above dictionary entry. Consider applying to be an affiliate of an indie bookstore.
For Booksellers:
1. See if your online shopping cart option offers an affiliate program.That’s it. Stop. More next week unless you’d like to do this *****BONUS ACTIVITY*****
Book Bloggers Get in Bed with Baby Boomer Booksellers!
Get in Bed with a Bookseller #3
This information should not surprise anyone but, for the most part, booksellers are baby-boomers, and bloggers are not. Blogs have only been around in a big way for the past ten years while most bookstores that are thriving today are either brand new, or they are 25+ years old. And herein is an opportunity for you. Surviving and thriving over the last 15 years ensures outstanding bookstores that are well-established in the industry and able to provide you with contacts and information that could take years to gather on your own.
And because booksellers are often baby-boomers (as am I), we may have a tendency to think we know everything and many may need to be convinced to enter these partnerships. But together, we have the tools to convince them. So, what kinds of information does a bookseller want when considering a blogger as partner? Booksellers want someone who shares their passion for books as well as the First Amendment. That said,
FOR WEEK THREE:
1. Create a one-page with information you are willing to share about your blog. How many folks read it? What kinds of books do you review? Which is your most popular post? Where do you get your books from? Are you a customer/browser of their store/blog? What kinds of things can you assist with and what kinds of assistance do you need? How long have you been blogging? Why do you blog?
2. Visit your local independent(s). Introduce yourself. See if the store offers an affiliate program.
That’s it. Stop. Go post something. More next week.
In Search of Book Bloggers; Without Geography You’re Nowhere
Find Book Bloggers Near YOU!
Now that you have your Twitter handle, we are going to identify book bloggers in our geographic area and reach out to them in some fashion. My first choice is to host a Bloggers in the Store Event where you invite bloggers to meet the staff, pick up a few galleys, and learn about the store and you. Down the road you might even add the blogger’s picks to your staff picks. Offer content for their website from your Top Ten Bestsellers of the Year to interviews with authors that appear at the store. The sky is the limit here. But there is no sky until you find the book bloggers.
Let me know you are participating in the Get in Bed Blog Project. Email me at wanda at sibaweb dot com. Thanks.
Visit the blog, get familiar with it, and post a comment or two on a recent post. While you are there, click on the contact or about button, and capture their email address. Also take the time to look at the web blogrolls. Often these are other bloggers that you can connect with. Build these relationships. Begin to build your email blogger list.
FOR WEEK THREE:
1. Visit GeoFollow, Location Based Twitter Directory http://geofollow.com/. Enter your state to get an idea of how many bookbloggers are around you. Now, I know these are Twitter folks and not all who Twitter are Book Bloggers, but all Book Bloggers do Twitter. Click through the profiles that show up in your search and find folks to follow and/or blogs to visit.
2. Begin to build your email blogger list.
That’s it. Stop. Go shelve something. More next week.
Awesome Readers Taking the Time to Share
Get in Bed with a Book Seller #2
Celebrate independents week!
No single thing can endear you more to an indie bookseller than an authentic understanding of the economic, cultural, & social ramifications in the potential extinction of local retail businesses generally, and bookstores specifically. So, this week, we are going to get that authentic understanding.
Hello Book Bloggers, meet AMIBA; AMIBA, say hello to this thriving online community. AMIBA is short for American Independent Business Alliance, and Book Bloggers is short for Awesome Readers Taking the Time to Share.
This is taken directly from the AMIBA site as I could not say it better:
When in the course of human events, it becomes appropriate for communities to assert their independence, to denounce uniformity and celebrate their uniqueness, a respect for freedom and human creativity requires independent businesses and peoples to declare those elements which make them interesting. Join us in this annual celebration of our Independents!
Think of your favorite shop, restaurant, bookstore or service provider. We’ll bet it’s a home town business. Independent locally-owned businesses are essential to a vital local economy and community character. They use the goods and services of other local businesses, serve as community hubs, and are vital components of healthy neighborhoods and strong city centers. They’re where the locals go. They’re owned by our friends and neighbors, or maybe even by you.
The threat to our communities is real. Dependence on absentee-owned businesses and corporate chains carries many unhealthy consequences. It’s not just local businesses who suffer — our communities are losing social, cultural and economic strength, a place for entrepreneurship, and the ability to determine our own futures. But we have a choice.
AMIBA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to helping communities and independent business thrive. Our proven organizing models and assistance can help prevent the displacement of local independent businesses, ensure ongoing opportunities for entrepreneurs, and advance citizen engagement in community social, cultural and economic well being. The evidence of success isn’t just anecdotal; concrete data demonstrate the power of these local Alliances.
FOR WEEK TWO:
1. Read about independents week.
2. Celebrate a local business in your blog this week. If you want to get in bed with a bookseller, I’d make it about an indie bookstore, and I’d stop by the store to take some photos and let them know about the blog post. Let your readers AND your local businesses know that you care.
3. Share the blog post with me so I can link back to it.That’s it. Stop. Go post something.
More next week unless you’d like to do this *****BONUS ACTIVITY*****
Get a Twitter Account Right Now!
Get in Bed With a Book Blogger #2
What good is Twitter?
I know how you feel about this. If you don’t have Twitter, or don’t use Twitter, or think Twitter is silly, or useless, please reconsider your decision not to participate. I rebuffed Twitter for a long time, didn’t get it, why only 140 characters, why would anyone care what I had for breakfast, or that I have a beautiful colon as declared by my doctor yesterday! What good is it? Who would I follow? Who would follow me? What does that even mean; followers!?!?
But I caved in and got a Twitter account to promote SIBA’s Free Book Stimulus Plan, and was amazed! Twitter is best when you want to know what your customers are saying about, and when you want your customers to know what you are marketing to them. Twitter is also best when trying to do anything else. And that is because it is a totally open platform much like the IPhone in that many apps have been written for Twitter so I need you to get a Twitter account today. It is FREE and it is POWERFUL!
Let me share a tale with you…I spent a Sunday morning trying to resolved an issue with my credit card company. I was angry after three hours with no result, and in a fit of frustration I tweeted the following:
3 hours, 6 phone numbers, 10 people! It seems that the managers at Company X are not allowed to speak to customers!
I even shared (in a screaming sound) with my husband that if Company X was smart, they’d have a Twitter account, but I was sure they did not! Imagine my surprise when I was tweeted back by Company X and they were able to resolve my issue in minutes. I then tweeted my gratitude and their competence. Company X could be Bookstore X, and Bookstore X could be YOU! Trust me here, and get your Twitter account today. I know you are asking – How does this help me get in bed with a book blogger?, and we will get to that, but for now:
FOR WEEK TWO:
1. Read Twitter 101 for Businesses.
2. Sign up for your Twitter Account.That’s it. Stop. Go shelve something.
More next week unless you’d like to do this *****BONUS ACTIVITY*****
