Most relevant news, techniques and tools for authors looking to promote their books inexpensively off and online. We refer to and utilize many of the Guerrilla Marketing techniques and have created some of our own geared specifically to book promotion and marketing. Our website is the ground where we put into practice our marketing efforts. Membership is FREE.
Which search engines to target?
Websites Made For Affiliate Programs - Better Than Contextual Advertisement?
White Paper Success with Michael Stelzner
Some experts just know how to deliver a quality seminar. Michael Stelzner gets a standing ovation for his live event in San Diego yesterday. He really knows white papers, and hardly stopped for air. He delivered non-stop, valuable information interspersed with exercises and still had plenty of time for audience questions.
I have to admit I don't always like going to live seminars, especially the ones with loud rock music and excessive group activities. I'm there to learn, not to chit-chat...and I love rock, just not in a seminar setting. Michael used classical music. And the food was delicious too.
Many of the participants were writers and eager to learn. And for good reason. Some are charged with writing their company's white papers. Others, freelancers, were eager to become proficient because white paper writers earn high fees.
A white paper can cost from $1000 to $6000, depending on the experience of the writer...(a good reason to gain experience, I'd say.) I'm working on our 2nd white paper now and can hardly wait to "bill" Denise $6000! (Well, since it's our 2nd one...)
During the event, we wrote an outline for a white paper of our own. I did one for Customized Newsletter Services, and just need to fill in the important parts. Here's Michael's suggested outline for
a business benefits-oriented white paper:
Introduction: what is the problem and the general solution in the first few paragraphs
Market Drivers: what is driving the market toward our solution
Problems: identify the top 3 to 5 issues related to the problem
Generic Solutions: Introduce the solution in a generic way (no mention of brands here)
� � => Define: clearly define the solution
� � => Benefits: Explain how it overcomes the problems listed earlier
� � => What to Look For: list top 10 considerations when looking for a solution
Specific Solution: Discuss the specific advantages of your product, service or solution
Call to Action: Provide a logical next step and include company contact information
When you think about this outline, it could also work for an advertorial, article or other persuasive copy. What do you think?
I'm a big fan of Michael Katz.�
I read his "E-Newsletter on E-Newsletters", and love his funny writing style. He is a leading expert on electronic newsletters and is head Chief Penguin of Blue Penguin Development, Inc.
Michael recently joined the Blogosphere with his blog It Sure Beats Working,� Michael Katz's sure-fire advice and steadfast encouragement for the first-time, mid-life, solo professional.
Be sure to read his post on "No Competition Out There." While you're there, subscribe to get updates by email, you'll love his stuff.
Welcome to the blogosphere, Michael. For anyone interested in relationship marketing, and writing ezines, you'll like reading Michael Katz.
Quality of Online Content is King Once Again
The launch of Google's in video ads brought some interesting facts to the fore - it's not the flushing felines and lip-syncing college kids of user-generated video that supposedly draws so any eyeballs that got the ad dollars. Marketers are more interested in paying customers than a slew of eyeballs just there to see a weird video. Go figure!
"There's a huge audience built around user-generated content but no evidence that it is a profitable business," said Peter Hoskins, who recently succeeded ManiaTV's founder, Drew Massey, as CEO.
Marketers are looking for quality content says David Verklin, Carat Americas CEO and ManiaTV board member. "YouTube has hundreds of channels of professionally produced content. Simply put, user-created content is being held to ever higher and higher standards."
Increasingly, user-generated videos have to compete for attention with professional, premium content, reports Ad Age. A music video from Avril Lavigne is beginning to approach Judson Laipply's "Evolution of Dance" as YouTube's most viewed video.
What does this mean for your PR campaigns? You do need to tap into the vast audiences that are watching video online. But you need to produce excellent quality content and it does not have to break the budget. .
In the end, it's the quality of your content that will get the result that actually affects your bottom line..
I have a sad news today. I’ve decided to take down one of the most visited pages and high ranked page from my domain. I know many of you’ve been using it and recommending it at various forums around the world, but due to the recent change in Adsense’s policy, I’ve decided to take it down permanently.
The URL is:
http://www.marketingsyndrome.com/adsensetemplates/
I’ve put up some free downloads there for future visitors.
Thanks for your support for sharing the template with your list members and blog readers. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, don’t worry about it :)
Bo
It’s here now, my new blog is ready.
Please update your RSS feed to…
http://feeds.feedburner.com/marketingsyndrome
New blog is located at:
http://www.marketingsyndrome.com/blog/
See you there!
I recently found a great marketing podcast whi is better than some of the paid seminars that I’ve listened to. Make sure to add this podcast to your bookmark! Enjoy!
I’ve decided to start a new blog on niche marketing. It will be hosted on the same domain. I didn’t want to mess-up current search engine rankings and all, but my current blog is out-dated and most of the information shared here are also outdated. I need a platform where I can easily update old content as well. WordPress 2.1 will be my choice (again) and will use better category system so that you find information more easily.
Also, I’m going to be moving the current mailing system to aweber, a long delayed decision on this. So bear with me during the transition time.
Bo
First of all, I’d like to say happy new year to you. I know I haven’t shared anything with you for a while. I hope you are still reading this blog, because I’m going to share even more niche marketing stuff with you in 2007. I was struggling with coming up with the blog content because I noticed that what my readers need is not “techniques” but rather, motivation and inspiration. I’ve tried to do both, and was kinda lost, to be honest. So, in 2007, I will make case studies and share the experience with you. I hope this will motivate you and inspire you to go after the things you desired to achieve.
Anyway, the main reason why I wasn’t able to come near the PC was that I’m in the progress of moving to a new house. To be more exact, we are moving back to one of my investment houses. We are going to sell the house we are currently living and move back to the one which has a big basement.
The reason for this move is to make a physical office for my online business company. Marketing Syndrome Inc. will have its physical office at a basement of my house :) Currently, I’m busy doing the renovation of the house and the office. It’s about 10 minutes from my current house and I’m making a trip daily to do some work. I have to hire contractors for some tasks, but I’m doing the most of the work myself. Ah! I know what you are thinking! Outsource! well, no. I’m doing it because I love doing house renovation with my wife. It’s our only hobby that we both enjoy doing :)
So, here is what I’m up to. If your goal is to earn a full-time income from niche marketing, working from home, make sure to come back to my blog. Because you will learn everything about it from this blog. I have a lot to share with you in this field and I barely scratched the surface. I haven’t share with you anything about my main affiliate campaigns that bring me the major portion of my income. You will read all about it for free in 2007.
I’m also exploring new ways to bring passive income online consistently, so I will be sharing this with you also. The software I’m currently exploring is called “Build A Niche Store“, which is believe to be a very effective tool for niche marketers. I will be testing this software thoroughly in January and February. So expect to hear more about it in the next posts.
David at his blog posted an interesting findings on YPN vs Adsense. He switched to YPN from Adsense for 10 days and shared his results with a screenshot.
Very interesting read, please check it out.
This is one of the most asked questions from niche marketers.
“Should I make a website that I’m passionate about?” or
“Should I go where the money is made?”
Personally, I’d go where the money is. If you can find a topic that you are passionate about and also where great money is being exchanged in that market, that would be wonderful. But it is not common to find one like that.
I’ve been marketing in the niche markets where I have absolutely no idea nor interest in. But I successfully pulled it and made great passive income from them. Because I was willing to sacrifice my comfort zone, I’m now able to go after what I’m passionate about. I no longer have to worry about if my new sites will be making money or not. I have sites that makes me absolutely no money. I made them just because I wanted to share my knowledge and interest with others.
So my answer to this commonly asked question is to go after the money, then you will be able to do what you are passionate about eventually.
Any other opinions welcomed. Please use the comment section.
It’s about time I give you an update about my new blog. The basic design has been done, but I’m still working on the content. I want to fill it up with great content before I show it to you.
The main difference will be that you will find step-by-step to building a money making site. You will be given the exact steps which I follow to make a profitable website, plus website templates that I use. You will find them under tutorial series. I’m sharing the stuff that you don’t find in paid stuff.
I know the screenshot is blur and too small, but I can’t disclose it yet :) Talk to you soon.
Just read from Teli’s WordPress Niche Blog that WordPress 2.1 is out for download. One of the important changes is in this version is that now it requires MySQL 4. Which means I have to upgrade my servers in order to test drive it.
What You Can Do With Amazon RSS Now?
If I keep this up, I might actually get the reputation of picking on Amazon.com as a hobby [just take a look at Is Amazon Missing the RSS Advertising Opportunity?, Why is Everyone Missing the RSS Transactional Messaging Opportunity? and Get the Most from RSS Marketing ... Take Your DM Hat Off!].
It's just one of those things. You see a company that could really go above and beyond with RSS and really use it to drive revenues, but they just don't do it.
But at least they're showing some activitiy lately ...
[in addition to removing their list of relatively useless category feeds, which used to be available here]
a) Gold Box
Gold Box is a service that provides you with personalized deals every day. It finally has an RSS feed with your daily deals.
But, unfortunatelly, the RSS feed only provides brief information about the product, instead of also giving you a direct purchase link, some of the latest product reviews and other information that could facilitate the sale. Also, there's no personalization, or so it seems. Why not give me an RSS feed with just the special deals for me, based on my previous purchases?
b) Plog
This is one of the genius Amazon ideas. Each Plog is personalized to the individual user, giving him the latest blog posts from Amazon's authors (just from the authors' whos books you've purchased), and it also comes with a targeted RSS feed, matching the Plog content you see when you're logged-in. You can also subscribe to additional blog content manually.
Also, Amazon is promising that we'll be soon able to track latest releases, changes to our orders and "much more" through our plogs, which will presumably also come be published in our targeted RSS feeds.
Amazon, please keep this up. Make us happy:)
c) The Amazon API
But let's be fair to Amazon. Even though their end-user RSS feed offering is poor, they do provide developers with the ability to create their own RSS feeds from Amazon, by integrating with their API.
Here are some examples:
RSStalker.com - provides a variety of Amazon product tracking options via RSS, such as a 10% price drop feed that lets you know when a product that RSStalker is tracking via Amazon drops 10% in price; RSS feeds from your wishlists; last 25 price changes in a selected Amazon category, and more.
Baebo - provides a persistant search RSS feed for Amazon products, based on your keywords.
More great examples floating around ...
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
Mobil Avenue accuses me of 20th century marketing thinking. I'm not quite sure what he has in mind, but it seems that my Second Life posts ticked off some people.
Now, don't get me wrong, I see alot of development potential in virtual worlds, but Second Life as it is simply does not cut it.
I won't go into the details again, but the sheer lack of economy of scales shows that something is wrong when you compare the investments in Second Life and the actual virtual world penetration. Not to mention the difficult user interface.
Second Life is a good beginning, but virtual worlds have a far way to go before they deserve to be treated as seriously as some are treating them today. Yes, Second Life should certainly be treated as a marketing/communications playground, but not as a high importance marketing channel.
If you want to call this 20th century thinking, go ahead. It is. As are economies of scale, profitability, sales conversion, cost per order and other business "relics".
And as you'll notice, 20th century thinking still works, even in 2007. We've all heard stories of the demise of advertising, the death of PR, the death of e-mail, the death of postal direct mail and so on ... but they're all alive, well and kicking still today, and will remain so.
Actually, intrusive direct response TV advertising is still one of the most effective tools to generate sales. And it gives you more bang for the buck than almost any other marketing channel, including online.
Do I like this? No. I'd love to believe that the internet is the alpha and omega of marketing. But it's not. It's the key connector, but not the key driver. That's the way things are, and as markters we need to employ 20th century thinking and use what works best ... and the numbers tell us that.
But this doesn't mean we shouldn't play and test. Quite on the contrary.
OK, this conversation is getting somewhat beyond the original topic, and it's quite possible I'm not even getting what Mobil Avenue is trying to say:)
And please don't get me started on 3D virtual webstores ...
Of course, I might be wrong. And if I am, I'll be the first to change my stripes the next day. It's what marketers do. If a new thing comes up and works better than what you're doing, change. But every change first demand proof. Unless you're just testing ... because when you're testing, the rules of the game change.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
What works best in RSS marketing? How are RSS subscribers different than e-mail subscribers? RSS publishing best practices if you want to sell?
These and other practical questions are all revealed in the 2nd part of the RSS interview with Bryan Eisenberg. Without doubt, this is one of the best and most practical RSS marketing interviews we've done so far.
In part 1 of the Bryan Eisenberg RSS interview we focused on how the GrokDotCom.com is going beyond traditional RSS Radars by employing intelligent content aggregation tools, instead of relying just on contextual filtering, and what kind of results they are achieving.
In part 2 of the interview we move beyond RSS Radars to their overall RSS marketing strategy.
In this interview find out about ...
1. How RSS subscribers are different from e-mail subscribers and why?
2. How to sell products through content-rich RSS feeds?
3. Do RSS subscribers mind seeing product promotions in your feeds?
4. When to publish your latest RSS content to get the most links from other websites and most readership?
5. What's the right RSS publishing frequency for promotional content?
6. Why branding your RSS feed is important and how to do it?
Click here to listen to the MP3 file [8:33 minutes; 2 MB]
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
Only a few more weeks until the ACCM (Annual Catalog and Multi-Channel Merchant Conference) event in Boston, one of the best DM conferences of the year.
If you're in Boston or are coming to the conference, drop me a note.
I'll be speaking on RSS and other new internet marketing media, together with Scott Voight of Silverpop.
If you're at the conference, definetly reserve the Monday 3 PM slot to come hear us. The last presentation we did together with Scott in London was a huge hit, and we promise not to dissapoint:)
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
While the original plan for the RSS Diary blog was leaving on hiatus until the 2007 edition of the RSS Marketing e-book is done, the FeedBurner acquisition by Google is a story just to important to pass up ... especially all the implications it might bring into the world of RSS Advertising, and RSS Marketing as a whole as well.
So, yes. FeedBurner, a leading RSS metrics and RSS advertising company was just acquired by Google. Finally confirmed after weeks of speculation. I won't go into the details of the acquisition, as you can read more about it at the FeedBurner blog and just by following the news at Google News.
Here, we'll take a look at the implications this brings to the world of RSS Marketing. Just my predictions of course:)
In my book, all marketing/communications channels should be judged using the same metrics, such as conversions, cost-per-order, cost-per-subscriber, sales etc.
Although you could already do all of this with RSS, it required some tinkering.
But, as FeedBurner gets assimilated into Google Analytics, tracking the key marketing metrics should become a breeze, giving everyone access to crucial internet optimization data.
With RSS Metrics being integrated directly into Google Analytics (which I'm sure will happen very soon), marketers might finally start actually measuring their RSS feeds.
Means better RSS Marketing, finally.
Although FeedBurner is cautions to provide any details about how their CPM pricing model might change with the integration of their ad services into Google, I'm quite certain that RSS advertising will move the way of cost-per-click.
Means less revenues for RSS feed publishers, but better ROI for you, the advertiser.
RSS Advertising will finally reach the mainstream, utilizing Google's massive advertiser database.
Prices will go up, and RSS content monetization will again start becoming the talk at industry events.
On the plus side, it also means Google will be able to attract more RSS feed publishers, meaning more RSS ad inventory for you. Your RSS advertising reach potential is about to explode, finally enabling you to reach the masses using RSS Advertising.
I love Pheedo, another leading RSS Metrics and RSS Advertising company, but the FeedBurner acquisition makes me wonder what's in store for them as Google starts pushing RSS advertising to their massive database of advertisers, especially as part of an integrated online advertising service.
It's certainly not the end of other RSS Advertising companies, but they might all soon see themselves transforming from RSS ad networks to RSS media planning & buying consultants.
Which would be a shame, especially considering the advancements in RSS Advertising developed by Pheedo.
Advertiser demand seems to be growing quicker than the inventory offered by Google.
The obvious choice for Google (in addition of course to increasing ad inventory through additional reach, media expansion through the content network, and expansion to new ad channels, like RSS and banner inventories) is to offer better targeting, for a premium price.
As a marketer, I clearly want to place my ads in front of the most relevant prospects. Keyword targeting is OK, but adding behavioral on top of that introduces another filtering element to my media planning, enabling me to really pin-point the users I want to see my ads.
This may either be science fiction or Google's actual long-term masterplan. As more advertising budgets rush to the internet, available quality ad inventory will continue shrinking.
By introducing such targeting, integrating the metric and capabilities of all of their properties, Google could come as close as possible to total ad targeting, the holy grail of marketing we are all striving towards.
Things will get much more interesting ... and soon.
If I were an ad agency, I'd start developing a targeting department, focusing on targeted media buying.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
Just got word from my Japaneese publisher that Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS is scheduled to be released in Japan in print end of July.
It's great to finally go international:)
Japan is getting the short 2007 edition of the book ... and yes, the longer US 2007 edition is still being written, unfortunatelly.
I can't believe how many times I've postoped it already. Actually, I'm quite ashamed of it.
But, I do believe it will be worth the wait.
I also wanted to thank Geoff Livingston for putting Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS on his list of 25+ Great New Media Books.
Geoff, thanks for the extra motivation to help me finish the 2007 edition:)
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
WebProNews has a short summary from Amanda Watlington's tips for SEO optimization of your RSS feeds:
1. Subscribe to your own feed and claim it on blog engine Technorati2. Focus your feed with a keyword theme
3. Use keywords in the title tag; keep it under 100 characters
4. Most feed readers display feeds alphabetically, title accordingly
5. Write description tags as if for a directory; keep them under 500 characters
6. Use full paths on links and unique URLs for each item
7. Provide email updates for the non-techies
8. Offer an HTML version of your feed
9. For branding, add logo and images to your feed
Now, let's add some tips from Stephan Spencer and continue with the numbering:
10. Full text, not summaries11. 20 or MORE items (not just 10)
12. Multiple feeds (by category, latest comments, comments by post)
13. Keyword-rich item [title]
14. Your brand name in the item [title]
15. Your most important keyword in the site [title] container
16. Compelling site [description]
17. Don't put tracking codes into the URLs (e.g. &source=rss)
18. An RSS feed that contains enclosures (i.e. podcasts) can get into additional RSS directories & engines
And to round this off, a summary of my own tips [part 2 here] for using RSS to drive traffic to your site:
19. Get your RSS content (proactively) syndicated on other relevant websites [just the headlines and summaries of course]20. Submit your RSS feeds to all the RSS search engines and directories
21. Use RSS to add relevant third-party content [again, just headlines and summaries] to your website to gain additional SE weight for your keywords
22. Use RSS to deliver all of your frequently updated content, not just for your latest blog posts
23. Whenever the content in your feed changes, ping the most important search engines and directories [yes, you don't need a blog for this]
Do you have more tips?
(a) Post them in the comments form below.
(b) E-mail me at info@marketingstudies.net and let's set-up an interview
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
Part of the upcoming 2007 edition of the RSS Marketing e-book are also the interviews we are doing with various internet marketing experts and RSS practitioners. In the following days and hopefully not too many weeks, we'll be posting those interviews here.
I'm sure most of you have heard of Bryan Eisenberg before. Bryan is the leading worldwide authority on internet marketing optimization and website persuasion architecture. He was also one of the few marketers that got on the RSS Marketing bandwagon early on.
Recently, Bryan started exploring RSS Radars as a tool to increase the traffic to their optimization portal GrokDotCom.com, increase visitor loyalty, position the website as the key news source for internet optimization ... and naturally facilitate online sales of their books and consulting services. Take a look here.
But while most RSS Radars are based on contextually filtering content from selected third-party RSS feeds, the GrokDotCom.com RSS Radars go far beyond anything else we have seen on the market so far.
Instead of relying only on contextual content filtering to select the most relevant third-party content, they are employing a number of additional filters, such as the amount of linkage the story is receiving, source relevance and credibility, and so on ... and they're calling it a discovery engine.
All of these answers, and more, available in the audio interview.
Click here to listen to the MP3 file [14 minutes; 3 MB]
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
Written by Mangesh
There are several reasons I loved working on the Saints and Sinners Issue. It’s the only magazine I’ve ever seen with Madonna and Gandhi elbowing for cover space, it’s the first issue we ever got the fantastic authors John Green and Michael Stusser to write for, and it had this piece by Chris Smith. It’s just 23 quick notes on 23 important album covers, but it’s one of my favorites. Enjoy!
Long before MTV, performers expressed the visual dimension of their art through their album covers. Every music fan has his/her favorites, but several covers stand out for their brilliance, their impact and their ability to make as much of a statement as the music they represent. Every art form has its giants, and album cover art is no exception. The work of the designers featured here spans over 40 years of music.
THE SIXTIES: Before the 1960s, most albums featured portraits of musicians, instruments or musicians playing instruments. But the 1960’s spirit of exploration and experimentation found its way into music and, consequently, onto album covers.
1967 The Beatles, Sgt.Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
The Beatles’ album covers act as a kind of scrapbook for their mythmaking career: a serious With the Beatles, a hippie-esque Rubber Soul, a stripped down The White Album, and a funeral procession on Abbey Road. Each is a testament to the band’s creativity and insight into their culture. Yet no single album cover defines its era and its artists more than 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
As with any good cult artifact, stories built around the album: Was Paul McCartney dead? (No.) Are the figures cardboard cutouts? (Yes.) Are those pot plants? (No.) The album was also legendarily difficult to execute-securing the faces of the band’s heroes and influences, from Alistair Crowley to guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi-was a logistical nightmare. Finding photographs of everyone, blowing them up to specifications and tinting them with color all turned out to be well worth the effort, however. The album became the single most recognizable (and, according to many, the greatest) album cover of all time.
1965 Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, Whipped Cream & Other Delights
This concept album pushed the 1960s envelope all the way to the fridge. Every song on the album is named for some kind of food, something the cover model seems to be enjoying in a more than metaphorical way. This was Herb Albert’s most successful album, but whether the songs or cover sold the album has yet to be determined.
1969 Grateful Dead, Aoxomoxoa
It’s an iconic example of psychedelic art by one of the giants of the genre, graphic artist and California surfer, Rick Griffin. The band met Griffin backstage after a concert and fell in love with his style. In fact, they were so sure of his talent that they gave him total artistic freedom for the cover. Griffin also designed the first masthead for Rolling Stone.
1967 The Doors, Strange Days
With this album, The Doors touched on the decade’s surrealism with a Fellini-esque circus, but still escaped the psychedelia that typified its generation. The cover’s zoo of characters were a mix of professionals, amateurs and friends. The juggler is the photographer’s assistant. The trumpet player in the background was a cab driver who agreed to pose for $5 right before the image was shot.
1969 Blind Faith, Blind Faith
By the end of the decade, idealism had given way to cynicism, yet this album offered a strange vision of hope. A maiden in the nude, holding a silver spaceship matted onto a pastoral setting, forms a metaphorical union of innocence and achievement, life and knowledge, uncharacteristic of the decade that spawned it.
THE SEVENTIES: The stylistic fragmentation of the 1960s continued in the 1970s. Bands like Pink Floyd, Yes and Led Zeppelin claimed music-and their respective album covers-were definitely a trip.
1971 The Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers
Rock n’ roll is sometimes used as a euphemism for sex, so it’s no wonder that the crotch has been the centerpiece of countless album covers. Yet, The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers is the most famous and innovative example.
Sticky Fingers stands out as the best album cover of the decade. The cover features an Andy Warhol photograph of a well-endowed young man (contrary to legend, it was not Mick Jagger). A working zipper on the man’s pants could be opened to reveal another shot of the model, this time in his skivvies. The zipper left its mark on the album cover genre. Unfortunately, it also left its mark on the record itself (right in the middle of “Sister Morphine”).
1973 Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
The classic simplicity of the prism on Dark Side is partly derived from a textbook illustration designed to show how light passes through a prism to form a spectrum. In a science book, however, a prism spectrum has seven colors. The album cover only has six; they got rid of indigo simply because it looked too much like purple.
1977 Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols
Nothing sums up the punk ethos better than this album. Like the record itself, the cover resembles a ransom note (actually designed with cut-up newspaper bits), boldly proclaiming the Pistols had stolen the music industry’s thunder … and didn’t plan on giving it back. The album was first refused in record shops because of the word “bollocks,” and the issue was later taken up in court.
1979 Supertramp, Breakfast in America
This album reflects the English band’s move to the United States and the cynicism that went along with it. A view of the Manhattan skyline, uncannily recreated with salt shakers, creamers, coffee mugs, egg cartons, napkin dispensers and silverware, stands behind a friendly waitress named Libby who offers you a tall glass of OJ-all through your airplane window. Good morning, indeed.
1979 The Clash, London Calling
Punk thrust a rusted safety pin into the nostril of the bloated music industry with this one. London Calling juxtaposed the concept of a 1956 Elvis album with a blurry image of Paul Simonon smashing his bass. Incidentally, during the shoot, he smashed his watch in the process. That’s the price you pay for ripping on Elvis.
THE EIGHTIES: The 1980s offered an interesting contrast: Musically, the decade was both an extension of the excesses of the 1970s and a reaction to it. So what was the product of this conflict? The ability to stir up some controversy.
1988 Jane’s Addiction, Nothing’s Shocking
This album was shocking in every way. A pair of Siamese twins joined at the hip and shoulder (actually plaster sculptures built by lead singer Perry Ferrell himself) sit naked on a love seat, their heads on fire.
According to Ferrell, it’s harder to get big flames burning on plaster twins than one might think. Nine national record chains refused to stock the album.
1980 Gamma, Gamma 2
This cover perfectly illustrates the fear that 1980’s punk rock brought into the otherwise serene suburbs of America. Originally, the pair of feet in the bottom right corner of the cover were only those of a woman, but Electra Records felt the image might seem inflammatory to certain female customers. At the last minute, a pair of male feet were added to the cover.
1988 Prince, Lovesexy
While heavy metal and punk were making waves in music during the 1980s, Prince pushed the envelope in a different direction. Celebrating both sexual freedom and ambiguity, Prince combined a feminine pose with overt phallic imagery. Believe it or not, the shot was spontaneous: the photographer Jean-Baptiste Mondino suggested Prince go nude just before the session.
1983 Def Leppard, Pyromania
This album made Tipper Gore’s “filthy fifteen” list when she crusaded against “porn-rock” in the mid-1980s. By organizing the Parents’ Music Resource Center, she encouraged the Recording Industry Association of America to adopt an explicit content labeling policy to protect minors.
THE NINETIES AND BEYOND: By the 1990s the CD had replaced the old vinyls of yesterday. While the classic square shape was back, the smaller size meant designers didn’t have as much space with which to work. Time will tell what images from the 1990s will stake their claim as classics. Some are immediate standouts.
1991 Metallica, Metallica
The rock band reflects their stripped-down sound with this none-more-black cover, known to fans simply as “the black album.” The album marked the band’s transition from heavy metal to mainstream.
1990 Pixies, Bossanova
The Pixies took their listeners to another world with Bossanova, mixing the old with the new and the new with the kitsch and retro. Pixies’ vocalist Frank Black claims he saw a UFO as a child and was always infatuated with outer space. In fact, the band’s founding members decided to form the band while on a trip to New Zealand to see Halley’s Comet.
1996 Beck, Odelay
One of the decade’s strangest covers comes, fittingly, from one of its strangest artists. Beck’s album shows a Komondor, (a Hungarian sheepdog with a dreadlock-like coat), leaping over a hurdle. It’s almost impossible to tell it’s a dog, but it’s even harder to forget.
1997 Prodigy, Fat of the Land
The rise of electronica brought acts like Prodigy to the fore, which featured a crab with brandished claws, symbolic of their aggressive beats and attitudes. The image was chosen at the last minute as an illustration of the album title: a crab coming out of the sea to enjoy the bounty of the land.
AND SOME COVER ARTISTS YOU SHOULD MEET:
Andy Warhol: 1967 The Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground and Nico
Despite what it insinuates on the cover, the album’s title is not Andy Warhol. Rather, the then-unknown The Velvet Underground used their well-known album artist’of Warhol’s name created a persistent myth about The Velvets. Everybody thought Andy Warhol was the lead guitarist.”
Reid Miles: 1962 Freddie Hubbard, Hub-Tones
Reid Miles produced almost 500 graphically striking covers for Blue Note Records jazz acts like Freddie Hubbard. Apparently, Blue Note often didn’t have the budget to print full-color album covers, so Miles was confined to using two colors. With his creativity and resourcefulness though, you’d never know.
Neon Park XIII: 1970 The Mothers of Invention, Weasels Ripped My Flesh
A painter, whose name is as colorful as his work, Park produced quirky paintings for Little Feat and the Beach Boys, and the infamous Weasels Ripped My Flesh for Frank Zappa’s band, The Mothers of Invention. This one was based on an ad for an electric shaver from a 1950s Life magazine.
Roger Dean: 1973 Yes, Tales From Topographic Oceans
Influenced by John Michell’s The View Over Atlantis-which argues the entire earth is connected via a single prehistoric ancient culture-and by P. Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, Dean imagined otherworldly dreamscapes for prog-rock groups like Yes and Asia. In 1970, Dean also designed the first logo for a new record label, Virgin.
Hipgnosis (A British design pair led by Storm Thorgerson): 1975 Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here
Hipgnosis produced widespread cover art, including Led Zepellin’s Houses of the Holy and over 20 Pink Floyd covers. In Wish You Were Here, the burning man shaking hands actually is on fire. At the photo shoot, the stunt man wore an asbestos suit and a wig, then doused himself with gasoline and lit a match.
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From “Nevemind” to “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” to “On the Corner”, we definitely left a lot off the list. Be sure to tell us which ones we should have included in the comments below.
Labels: book marketing, book promotion, publishing, self-publishing, selling books, selling your book
An Online Editing Job in Canada
Just picked this up in my morning email:
Editor / Curator
Closing Date: August 10, 2007
Contract: Two to three days per week
Location: Canada (virtual office)
rabble.ca, Canada's leading alternative online news and analysis Web site, seeks a dynamic editorial curator to direct day-to-day operations, edit the site's features section and integrate multi-media and social media functions into the website on a daily basis.
Responsibilities include assigning, editing and posting stories, working with other editorial staff, planning
editorial calendar, image research, supervising editorial interns and volunteers, and some writing.
Candidates should have strong organizational skills, extensive editing experience, a demonstrated ability to
meet deadlines, a collaborative approach to teamwork, familiarity with Web editing, a creative approach to
working with limited financial resources, a knowledge of progressive politics and world affairs, combined with experience in progressive activism and a keen interest in the potential of Web 2.0 tools. At least three years experience in journalism or publishing, mainstream or alternative is required.
The editor works in a virtual office environment and can be based anywhere in Canada.
Please send cover letter, resume, references and a short writing sample outlining your vision for rabble.ca (one page max) by August 10th to rabble publisher Kim Elliott, jobs@rabble.ca. In the spirit of the virtual office, only electronic applications will be accepted. The subject line should read: rabble editor application.
Closing date for application: August 10, 2007
Start Date: early September 2007
Competitive remuneration rates
Please note: only candidates selected for an interview will be contacted.
rabble.ca is an employment equity employer.
Kim Elliott, Publisher
jobs@rabble.ca
Jade Walker recently posted some interesting thoughts in the Online Writing List, and she's kindly allowed me to quote them here:
I recently attended a conference for copy editors in Miami and whenever conversation turned to the Web, the editors in attendance often fell into two categories:1) They hate the Web because they believe its mere existence is going to result in profit/job losses.
2) They fear the Web because they don't understand where copy editors fit in.I have no doubt there are other editorial folks at newspapers and magazines across the country that feel the same way. This is so easy to fix! All it takes is a little time and training. Those of us who've been working in new media for many years need to show the print folks what the Web has to offer, particularly the advantages of publishing news in different formats, reading/writing blogs, using RSS feeds, etc.
I also believe newspapers and magazines should make a concerted effort to update their online portals. So many sites are clunky, hard to navigate or simply replicate the print product via online templates. What can these companies do to fix this problem?
• Look at the competition and see what works and what doesn't.
• Experiment with design but avoid repeating others' mistakes.
• Hire copy editors, or assign current editors, to give blog entries and articles a once-over before posting on the Web.
• Allow comments, albeit moderated ones, on stories.
• Create a forum just to find sources for stories.
• Include e-mail addresses for reporters on each entry/article, or a link to a profile page.
• Provide "e-mail this entry" links as well as permanent links for readers/bloggers who wish to discuss stories and share them with friends/family.
• Offer one-click options to the recommendation sites (digg, technorati, netscape, etc.), or follow USA Today's lead and allow readers to rate the stories themselves based on usefulness or entertainment value.
Jade ended her post with "Any thoughts?" And I echo her question.
I'll add one thought from my own online-writing experience: The editor of The Tyee finds comments a chronic headache. Too many are illiterate, incoherent, abusive, and plain libellous. He requires registration before people can post comments, and this has helped a lot. I find the comments on my own Tyee articles generally pretty civil. But some topics can bring out the barking loonies.
The first I heard about The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein's new book, was in this morning's Globe and Mail, which gives her the front and back pages of the Focus section: a fetching photo on the whole front page, and a very positive profile by John Allemang on the back.
The irony isn't lost on anyone. The foremost young critic of "disaster capitalism" is a superb marketer. Her new website is a knockout too. It even offers the promise of a video by Alfonso (Children of Men) Cuarón, promoting the book, starting September 9.
My main objection to the site is in the text, which runs in overlong paragraphs. Even Klein's most loyal followers may find it hard going.
Here's an excerpt from the home page, but re-paragraphed to make the text more accessible:
In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically.
Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.
At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts.... New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened….
These events are examples of “the shock doctrine”: using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters -- to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy.
Sometimes, when the first two shocks don’t succeed in wiping out resistance, a third shock is employed: the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets.
I would also consider turning the third paragraph into a bulleted list, for the same reason I've broken up the paragraphs: To increase the number of shocks or jolts the reader experiences.
The beginnings and ends of sentences and paragraphs are the hot spots where readers pay most attention and respond most strongly. In online text, end-of-sentence jolts lose impact in the middle of a paragraph. So short sentences, short paragraphs, boldface subheads, and bulleted lists work most effectively for most online readers.
Yes, some of us are more comfortable reading long, complex texts on paper. For those readers, the website should offer downloadable or printer-friendly versions.
I'll follow the development of this site with great interest.
Michael Weiss at Slate has an entertaining item: Don't drink the balloon juice: Good, bad, and ugly things to name your blog.
He discusses mostly American political blogs, but it's actually a pretty serious question: What's the best thing to name your site? As a compulsive multiple blogger, I have to answer the question more often than I care to admit.
Most of my sites have fairly flat-footed self-descriptive titles, like this one and Writing Fiction. When I started blogging avian flu, H5N1 was also pretty self-descriptive, but set slightly apart from other blogs that played variations on "bird flu," "avian influenza," and so on.
Without realizing what I was doing, I picked names that people tend to Google. Type "writing fiction" into Google Advanced search and my site comes up first out of a million hits. "Writing for the Web" is #7 out of 634,000. And "h5n1" is #5 out of 7,870,000 hits.
In a course blog, where only my students are likely to visit, I may use a flat-footed name or a cute one—in a course on storytelling for media, the blog is Raconteur. But I'm just as comfortable with a course blog named for the room the class meets in, like Cedar 224.
For a blog that I co-author with a teacher in China, the name is English Corner, a reference most Chinese students will understand because every campus and town has an "English corner" where students gather to practice their English on one another—and any native English speakers who wander by.
Now I'm getting interested in climate change, and recently started Homage to Arrhenius, an allusion to the Swedish scientist who first developed the theory about CO² as a greenhouse gas, back in the 1890s. This may be a little too cute.
And for another blog, created as a journal for the second edition of one of my books, I've chosen the flat-footed name Pioneers...since the book is titled Go Do Some Great Thing: The Black Pioneers of British Columbia.
I'd be curious to know how bloggers visiting here chose the names for their sites. And can you point to any blogs that are either very well named, or horribly misnamed?
I've been happily writing for The Tyee for several years. It's a lively online magazine with a focus on British Columbia but with plenty of attention to the rest of the world. The Tyee is now trying a little viral marketing to attract more readers: Tyee: Join Us! I'd be interested to hear your reactions to this approach.
The Tyee has also published a survey of Independent Media: Vibrant and Growing.
By the way, I've just published a piece on avian flu in The Tyee.
I'd love to hear about other good online magazines, especially in Europe, Asia, and Latin America—in any language.
Mobile Edge Comes Through
I got an extra Christmas present in December from the makers of my laptop bag: Mobile Edge. Lewis Lustman, director of marketing for Mobile Edge, left a comment on an earlier post of mine and then followed up with an email to me.
I picked the Mobile Edge Chocolate Suede Tote because I wanted a laptop bag that looked like it belonged to a woman, and that didn’t involve black canvas or vinyl. It was a tough search, especially since my laptop—at 17”—was too large for many of the more fashionable bags. When I found a Mobile Edge bag at Fry’s, though, I discovered that I could fit my laptop into the bag, as long as I didn’t put it into the actual slot created for it. Since the bag was quite padded anyway, I’ve been merrily using it and putting file folders in the laptop slot since.
Recently, though, Lewis told me, Mobile Edge had started making an insert just for laptops like mine (huge) and he wanted to send me one. Naturally, I accepted.
Now, one of the things I really liked about the Mobile Edge tote I chose was that the interior piece that holds the laptop is just an insert; it can actually be removed completely from the bag (and get this, when you remove it, you don’t loose any interior pockets or features!). This means you could buy a couple of inserts and say, use the same bag for more than one laptop.
When my new insert arrived, I pulled out the old 15” insert, popped in the 17” and the laptop fits perfectly. I have had a chance to use the bag since putting in the new insert, and things do fit a bit better when you can put the laptop into the right place, so it actually feels like I have more space, not less.
I’m still a huge fan of this bag, which is well-made and durable, and I can now recommend it unreservedly for carriers of 17” laptops as well.
My one remaining complaint is that bag + laptop + peripherals + book + ... well, it’s all a little heavy. That’s more of a physics problem, though. I’ll let you know if Mobile Edge cracks the code on breaking that whole two bodies of mass attracting each other thing.
Thanks, Lewis!
Blogging is still hot, and I’m still hot on blogging, but I’m pretty much tapped out when it comes to blogging about blogging. From this point on, I may update this blog periodically, but—officially—I’m retiring it.
Don’t get me wrong! My book, Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies, is still a great resource for blogging! I put a lot of time, energy and experience into that book, and I’m so pleased by how well it has remained current and useful. (I shouldn’t have done such a good job, since Wiley might have asked me to write a new edition if it hadn’t held up so well!) It’s not retiring! This is merely a reflection of my desire to make more blogs, and talk about them a little less.
Thanks for being such great readers. For now, hasta la vista, baby!