1. Identify your silo/niche/subject and position yourself as a category expert. General publishing is in for a world of hurt over the next few years. There is a reason why we’ve seen some big publishers this year launching new imprints. This is something that needs to be considered at the publisher, series, author and title level.

2. Build a community and engage daily. Things like brand, sales, followers, etc. will all come from this. Pando Daily is nearing 20k followers on Twitter, which is where they first announced the eBook. In just 12 hours, their ebook moved up from a sales rank of #4,871 to #672 in the Kindle store. And that was overnight. This a function of building the community first to tap into.

3. Pay attention to the news cycle and have tools in place to allow you to collect around a specific topic. It’s no coincidence that they are releasing this Facebook IPO eBook today. Traditional publishing has been good at this… looking long term. But not so good at building books that repsond in the short term. That is changing. Ten years ago, only marketers thought about the news cycle. Now publishers, acquisitions editors, authors and product folks need to be paying attention.

4. Build your product and add value. Don’t just collect all of your posts from one category. Add something. Make it worth your community’s time. For this product they gathered the folks who have been posting about Facebook and asked for some exclusive essays on the topic. And it can’t be too much, the eBook only has about 74 pages. They also had a solid cover design done. All of which add value. This is something the Pando Daily folks understood even bringing some publishing help from the NSFW Corporation news magazine start-up.

5. Promote and sell where your community is. This is the one they missed. I can’t find the book on Kobo, Nook, Google, etc. By restricting to one platform they are allowing a third-party’s technology, accounts, payment processing and walls to restrict their content. I hope they take the time to build an ePub so they can push their book out on more channels.

I hope publishers everywhere are watching outfits like Pando Daily. They are fast. They are low overhead. They are sharp. And they are fighting for the same eyeballs, dollars and readers that traditional book publishers are.

This week the JCLC system turned on its Overdrive-powered eBook network. So far it’s very very cool. The only complaints I have are tied to the CRAZY complicated hoops Adobe Digital Editions (which you will have to download) has in place. But that’s no fault of the library system and is required by most publishers anyway. But once you get the Adobe Digital Editions set up right, it’s great.

Via my JCLC account, I have “checked out” an eBook and am reading it on both my laptop and on my desktop. I have not tried to put it on my Sony eReader yet, as it needs a new battery and won’t hold a charge (yeah yeah, I know. That’s not a problem people reading print books have, but hey… did I mention, I just checked out a book at 11pm!) Anyway….

Here is the one tip I can offer: Once you download your eBook file (it has a .acm extension), “right click” (or ctrl-click) and choose “Open With…” and navigate to Adobe Digital Editions. The permission drm-wrapped file that is downloaded is not a straight up ePub and this seems to work better than opening Adobe Digital Editions and trying to import the .acm file into the library.

Cool factoids of the new system:

• You get to choose your “check out period”. You elect 7 days, 14 days or 21 days at checkout.
• You can checkout up to 5 titles at a time
• Every digital file has icons showing which platforms/devices that book can be read on
• So far there are 477 fiction books and 435 non-fiction books listed

The eBooks are not Kindle-friendly nor iDevice-friendly, but here is a list of all compatible devices. I’m going to take a look at checking out books to the Sony Reader and various iDevices.

Kudos to the JCLC System in bringing another great service to us. You guys really are something Birmingham can brag about.

The first thing I tried to do was open some pdf’s, mobi, epub and prc files…

I had created earlier for use on my phone and Sony Reader, but the B&N app wouldn’t open them. The B&N reader uses the Palm Database (.pdb) format. So you can use Calibre or Stanza Desktop (both free) to convert any document you want into a .pdb file and then open on the B&N Reader. I converted five different files and documents to .pdb and had no issues.

The B&N app is a free download and opens with a view of the user manual. Via a browser, you can log-in to your B&N user account and you’ll see that they have placed some free books in there for you. All are public domain, plus a Merriam Webster’s Dictionary. Just click to download and read on your computer. I downloaded the Dracula book and flipped through it. The B&N app has a great internal linking set-up. Finding your way from the index to the page, to your notes and back to the index is great. Even easier than the Kindle’s system. So reference reading is going to be easier here, plus you can view books in spreads, rather than a page at the time.

One thing I did notice, though haven’t tried yet, is the way Barnes & Noble is dealing with the DRM issue. If you download a locked book to your machine, it can be read on the Reader, but you have to enter the purchaser’s credit card number “as they key” to unlock the book. I’m surprised they didn’t come up with another system, but such is the DRM world.

One fun thing they added was the ability to create eReader themes. This is nice in that sometimes you want to adjust brightness, colors and contrast if you are reading a lot on screen. It helps ease eye strain if you can adjust as needed, but Barnes & Noble went one step further in allowing users to share their custom themes with friends and other users. Not sure if publishers can ‘brand’ these themes yet, but they have to be moving in that direction.

With Barnes & Noble releasing their own eReader yet-to-be-named Plastic Logic device, in early 2010, to compete directly with Amzon’s Kindle, this is a platform to watch.

In my mind, the winner will be:

1. The first that makes it easiest to flip between pages and reference material in a book.
2. The first to nail syncing. It’s great that I can read the same book on my iPhone, Kindle and desktop. But I want each device to ‘know’ where I was, so that I don’t have to hunt around for my spot. Since there are no true “page numbers” it’s hard to find your last spot, if you’re reading on multiple devices.

Not too mention the marketing side of things. I guess one side could say “you’ll sell fewer books, because all of your hardcore readers have been reading while it’s been written”. Which might hold true for a few folks. But can you imagine the buzz this would build within the programming community? Or how much of a boost the book might get from folks talking about/buying a book that they were involved in producing? The system has a sign-in for commenters so that they can be credited in the final book, if their contribution is used. O’Reilly also provides RSS feeds for the various sections so that a commenter can keep up with that specific section of the text.

Obviously, this idea wouldn’t work for every type of book and the progamming community is a good place to start. It’s not the first book to be published from crwodsourced information, but it’s the first time, I’m aware of, a major publisher has added a crowdsourced component to the traditional publishing workflow. Which means that it gets checked and balanced by author and editor, which may be enough to sway a few naysayers.

I wonder what Andrew Keen would think of this community/professional mashup? Ha!

In the interview he had with Guy Kawaski, Anderson does say that he expects the free version of his book to spur print sales. Something many in the industry are watching, I know. How does a publisher make money at giving their products away for free? While I’m sure the book will contain nothing as useful or solid as the formula filled The Art and Science of Book Publishing, Anderson says

“If you can convert 5 percent of users to paid, you can cover your costs. Anything above that, and it becomes extremely popular.”

I haven’t started crunching the numbers yet, but that seems to assume a very slim overhead. But it gives us a starting point. Something for the industry to aim for or pass. We’ll see. Five percent it is.

One of these days I am going to have to make it to SXSW…. but until then, thank the internet gods for blogs and twitter.

More and more publishers seem to be taking advantage of Google Books in the early stages of promoting their titles. I wonder if HarperCollinsCanada plans to leave the entire book up (which released today)or take it down eventually? Either way. I’m stoked about this being put out there for us and will dutifully spread the word! Ha! See? I’m a sucker for book marketers.

So, click on over and give the entire book a look, if you’re interested.

According to their site, the Booksmith will have copies of all 29 Roth titles available and will be serving wine (to help fortify your courage to throw out questions to Roth, on this national stage).

Roth’s new title (with a ho-hum so-so cover) drops a couple of weeks from now and is titled Indignation.