How many people craft different blog posts tackling the same subject from different angles and designed to appeal to different Temperaments?

How many people publish their nonfiction/business book in mind with a firm understanding of what they want the book to accomplish for them, what a book reasonably can accomplish, and what it takes to make that happen?

The simple truth is that it’s incredibly unlikely for authors to make money on their non-fiction book, but fairly common for authors to make money because of their book – IF they intelligently market their book.

Seth Godin recently wrote about Blogs, books, and the irony of short, saying essentially that business book should contain more than could be conveyed in a few blog posts, while the market essentially demands that authors be able to summarize their book within the space of a blog post.  Seth then ends the post, saying:

“This is irony (we say we want long and deep and rich but we also insist that it be condensed to a sentence) so it’s not clear what you should do about it as a marketer, other than to accept that it’s going on.”

Well, if you’d like a detailed answer to what you should do to market your book and develop a content strategy to leverage your unique views, I can think of no better authority on the subject than my friend and book marketing genius, Michael Drew.  Michael’s currently running 50 for 50 in putting his client’s books onto the New York Times Best Seller list.  And his answers on how to plan the content, writing, and marketing of a book in this brave new-media world are available through his Book Publishing 2.0 class.  The next one will be held in New York City, May 8th-10th.

Mike has given me 5 free tickets to giveaway. If you can be or are going to be in New York City those days, just comment below and we’ll pick 5 people to attend this amazing course for free.

Atwood shows that YouTube’s copyright tips page, although refreshingly plain-spoken, is a bit self-righteous, considering that, as he puts it, 90% of the content on YouTube is ripped-off copyrighted material…

It’s completely glossed over on the YouTube copyright page in favor of 100% original content, but the loophole in copyright is fair use. Under the banner of fair use, you could legally upload a video without the copyright holder’s permission. Anyone who contributes anything to the web should have the four factors of fair use commited [sic] to memory by now:

1. the purpose of the use
2. the nature of the copyrighted work
3. the relative amount of the portion used
4. the market effect of the use on the copyrighted work

Atwood goes on to explain why “The typical YouTube clip does well on the last two factors of the fair use test, but utterly fails the first two.” It’s an eye-opener for anyone who creates original content.

Meanwhile, our attitudes toward the media landscape continues to shift according to generational fault lines. In AdvertisingAge, Mike Vorhaus shares some telling figures:

Americans also believe their use of online video has cannibalized TV. Overall, more than 15% of respondents say they watch TV less as a result of watching online videos. And 25% of 18- to 24-year-olds believe that online video is cannibalizing their TV viewing. In comparison, fewer than 11% of 45- to 54-year-olds report such cannibalization.

Hmm… Does it count as watching TV if you’re watching TV on YouTube?

[His publishers said] “The End of Intuition” is a terrible name. So boring. But Ian Ayres didn’t believe it. That’s what he wanted to call his new book about how much better it is to test ideas through random trials rather than just trusting some marketing guru or focus group — or intuition. His editor thought he was nuts and insisted that “Super Crunchers” was a much zippier name.

So the two of them decided to do some random testing of his book on random testing. They took out a Google ad and half the time someone was doing a search on “data mining” or “number crunching,” a little ad on the right would appear for a new book called “The End of Intuition.” Half the time the same ad appeared for a new book called “Super Crunchers.”

Based only on this information, which title do you think won? Make your best guess, then keep reading.

To me, it’s pretty darn obvious; “Super Crunchers” had to perform much better if they keywords they targeted were “data mining” and “number crunching.”

Sure enough…

“Super Crunchers” got way more traffic — 63% — and thus became the title of his book.

I was actually a little surprised it wasn’t higher than 63%, but I don’t have access to the actual ad.

There are two types of people in customer research. There are Humanistics, who have a great ability to empathize with other people. They truly want to understand why people behave the way they do, what their deeper motivations are, and how to better relate to people. Then there are Methodicals. They’re superior number crunchers. They like statistics and spreadsheets. They base their decisions on facts (even if they’re merely justifying to themselves a decision that’s already been made based on emotion).

I’d be curious to see this test repeated with different keywords like “customer insight” or “customer research”or “understanding your customers.” These are keywords more likely to be used by Humanistics, who would be more attracted to the title “The End of Insight.”

If the subject matter of the book is truly aimed at more Methodical researchers, “Super Crunchers” is definitely the way to go. I’m not suggesting Ian change the title of the book. But never underestimate the power of words. The keywords you choose will affect your results.

1.) Build a marketing platform.
2.) Write a book people want to read.
3.) Contact Michael Drew.

We’re often asked how Waiting for Your Cat to Bark hit #1 on the Wall Street Journal list, while reaching bestseller status on the New York Times, USA Today, Amazon, and BusinessWeek lists. (AdvertisingAge even called it one of the “10 books you should have read” for 2006.) How is it, they wonder, that Call to Action became a bestseller, despite being sold exclusively online. Well, we had a secret weapon: A marketer who knows book publishing and promotion better than anyone else in the business, and has the track record to prove it. His name, one more, is Mike Drew — and he’s struck again.

On the American Small Business blog, Michele Miller points out that Drew turned three separate books into bestsellers in just this past weekend alone.

A lot of authors make the mistake of thinking that signing with the right publisher will all but guarantee a book’s success. Think again. Unless you’re uncannily blessed by the word-of-mouth gods, even a well-reviewed book can have a hard time making the bestseller lists. Authors need their books to be properly marketed and promoted. That’s where Michael Drew comes in.

If you or someone you know is an author with bestseller ambitions, take a moment to watch this video or subscribe to Drew’s blog, Beneath the Cover.

Will they outsell Apple’s iTunes?

Check it out and compare it to iTunes. Do you think one is better than the other? Will you shop at both or keep your loyalty to one?

(UPDATE: It seems that Virgin Digital, the online Virgin Megastore has closed.)

I didn’t think it was possible until I read “Order on Tax Evasion Site Blocked” in the NY Times:

On Friday, Judge Peter W. Hall temporarily blocked the portion of the order requiring Mr. Schulz to turn over to the government the names and identifying details of people who had obtained information at the Web site on how to stop federal tax from being withheld from their paychecks.

My position is clear, I’m a card carrying member of the ACLU. Do you think the IRS should be able to get that list?

A BUSINESS strategy of The New York Times to get its articles to pop up first in Internet searches is creating a perplexing problem: long-buried information about people that is wrong, outdated or incomplete is getting unwelcome new life.

People are coming forward at the rate of roughly one a day to complain that they are being embarrassed, are worried about losing or not getting jobs, or may be losing customers because of the sudden prominence of old news articles that contain errors or were never followed up.

Archived material is being pushed to the top of the search engine result pages by the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts of the New York Times. That is considered good business, especially for a website that makes money from displaying ads and the reader gets what might be relevant information. However, the practice raises a new crop of questions about journalistic ethics:

• What is their responsibility to archive all of their published works?
• Do they have a responsibility as a news organization to follow up on all published material to verify outcomes and then link it back to the older articles?
• Should they allow people the ability to comment on this dated material?
• Should they allow for the editing of the archives at a later date to change what was originally published as news?
• Should some material just be deleted and forgotten in this digital age?
• Whose responsibility is it to monitor and influence (if possible) what the search engines say about people?

Please let me know what you think about these new ethical challenges for journalists. What are our responsibilities as bloggers? Do the readers even care when things have finally been resolved?

P.S. If you’re in the mood for contemplating ethical challenges, Marshall Sponder raises another large one: What’s an honest SEO person to do when Universal Search clogs up SERPS with results they can’t manipulate?

But it’s much more than a directory. Helium allows articles its community considers more valuable to get better visibility — and a bigger chunk of its ad revenue. They also have an area for debate and have included a marketplace for publishers and authors to connect. Today, they have publishers willing to pay from $16 to $100 per article to some 69,000 writers, who’ve already generated 400,000 articles on 60,000 topics.

As a Publisher, you can list a bounty for any articles you want written. Authors then submit stories following your guidelines and compete for the bounty. Publishers can select any article as the winner, while Helium’s peer review ratings help rank submissions.

Would you use articles written by anonymous freelancers? Have you already? Could you see yourself using Helium to bolster your content offerings and, possibly, your search engine rankings?

We spent most of this particular lunch discussing the challenges faced by today’s publishers. (This Brand Autopsy post should shed some light.) Ray used industry averages to illustrate just how it’s become critical for publishers to be extremely selective with the authors they choose to bring on board.

Here’s how those averages break down on a per-book basis, for those with the gag tolerance to stomach the facts:

Retail price = $20

• Trade discount to bookstores: $ 10
• Co-op displays at bookstores: $ 2
• Distributor cut (15%): $ 3
• Author royalties (15%): $ 3
• Printing costs: $ 2

Left for publisher = $0

Nice margin, isn’t it? I’m not positive, but I think convicts make more in prison.

So how do publishing houses like Bard Press survive? By holding out for authors who have either the money or the over-the-top marketing platform to make a serious run at the bestseller lists.

I can always tell when Ray finds an author with bestselling potential. At the end of those lunches, he’s a lot quicker to reach for the tab.

[Author's Note: Read more about selecting the right authors in my article, “A Few Good Books: Just Say 'No!' to Authors without Healthy Marketing Platforms.”]

First, Publishing 2.0’s Scott Karp opines the New York Times‘ decision to drop TimesSelect and return to publishing the entirety of its content online — for free. Says Karp:

The ability to charge for content in non-digital media like newspapers, magazines, and cable TV was based on a limited supply of content and monopoly control of distribution. The web and digital media have generated an overabundance of content — not just a spike in high-quality content but, more disruptively, and even larger spike in “pretty good” or “good enough” content. The web has of course utterly destroyed destroyed distribution monopolies. Anyone can create and distribute content on a meaningful scale.

[...] The WSJ.com remains the last great bastion of paid content on the web, and with the News Corp acquisition, the pressure to tear down the walls will likely be too great to resits [sic]. Even if it’s true that the WSJ has the highest quality business content bar none, the web is so awash in good, great, and utterly crappy business content, all free, that WSJ is holding onto its paid subscribers through sheer brand strength alone.

Indeed. Of course, there’s already been plenty of Monday morning quarterbacking about what Murdoch should/can/will do with the Wall Street Journal now that he’s majority shareholder of Dow Jones (DJ), but this Silicon Ally Insider has the best one we’ve seen thus far; a 10-point plan on how to fix Dow Jones from mogul Ted Leonsis, whose very first suggestion is to drop WSJ’s subscription model in order to scale.

Karp believes mobile is the next frontier for free content, and that long-form video content (e.g., movies) remains safe for now. Regardless, all of this raises the stickiest point of the old media probate battle: Should content be free?

UPDATE: Over at paidContent.org, another great post about the numbers at stake if WSJ were set free.

That was then. Today, it’s a different story:

Every day, journalists and media executives in newsrooms across the land hope they’ll have something that catches Drudge’s fancy — or, as he has put it, “raises my whiskers.” Most keep their fingers crossed that he’ll discover their articles on his own and link to them. Others are more proactive, sending anonymous e-mails or placing calls to him or his behind-the-scenes assistant.

Drudge’s following is so large and loyal that he routinely can drive hundreds of thousands of readers to a single story, photo or video through a link on his lively compendium of the news. With media organizations competing fiercely for online audiences, the whims of Matt Drudge can make a measurable difference.

Here’s what Matt Drudge can teach us about blogging:

1. Content reigns over design — Focus on giving readers relevant content above all else. Offer a diversity of topics to appeal to different tastes. (I think we can all agree that Drudge has a pretty ugly website, but those links rule.)

2. Have an opinion — If you aim to please everyone, you’ll end up pleasing no one. Have a clear and unique voice. Dare to be different.

3. Be consistent — You can generally find something fresh whenever you go to DrudgeReport.com. How often are you updating your blog?

4. Be persistent -- This level of success didn’t happen overnight. You have to continue publishing and sharing your opinions every day. Listen to the critics, but if you know you’re right, keep your self on track.

5. Tools du jour not required – People will spread word of mouth whether or not you providing them with any Web 2.0 tools to share your stories. If your content is worth sharing, people will find a way.

It’s a simple question with infinite answers: Why sell “space” on a “page” when both are illusions, and the “worldwide” Web is really a universe?

Scarcity creates value, and that won’t change anytime soon. Karp’s advice to advertisers? Refine and focus on geographic locations rather than virtual ones. It’s a great point, and it compliments Bryan’s account of what advertisers should measure.

Shocking, isn’t it, that online advertising might somehow be different than TV or print? The old media crowd seems surprised.

Meanwhile, unlike major publishers, the big ad networks are stronger than ever. Still, that doesn’t say much for what happens after a person clicks-through. Time to start planning conversion paths…

TV is one channel. Print is another. But the Web consists of infinite channels. And so long as this multi-channel universe expands, banner ads and landing pages with no gravitational core will be floating in space, not occupying it.

“Austen Scam Exposes Publishers’ Pride and Prejudice”

LONDON (AFP) – A string of publishers failed to spot blatant plagiarism of one of English literature’s most famous authors, in a cheeky test to see if she would have secured a book deal today, a report said Thursday.

David Lassman, head of the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, sent manuscripts to 18 editors seeking a publishing contract, using only slightly disguised versions of chapters from the iconic novelist’s most famous works.

But only one publisher spotted the fakes, which included perhaps the most famous line in all English literature, the opening sentence of her 1813 work “Pride and Prejudice”.

“I was staggered. Here is one of the greatest writers that has lived, with her oeuvre securely fixed in the canon and yet only one recipient recognised them as Austen’s work,” Lassman told The Guardian newspaper.

Making only minor changes, he sent off sample chapters from three of her best known books: “Northanger Abbey”; “Persuasion”, and finally “Pride and Prejudice” which he renamed “First Impressions”.

For the latter, he made no changes to the opening line: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

But all he got was a series of rejection slips, including from major publishing houses.

“Thank you for your recent letter and chapters from your book ‘First Impressions’. It seems like a really original and interesting read,” wrote Penguin. Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling’s agents Christopher Little said they were “not confident” of being able to place the work.

The only editor to spot the ruse was apparently Alex Bowler of Jonathan Cape.

“Thank-you for sending us the first two chapters of ‘First Impressions’; my first impression on reading these were ones of disbelief and mild annoyance, along, of course, with a moment’s laughter,” he wrote back.

“I suggest you reach for your copy of ‘Pride and Prejudice’, which I’d guess lives in close proximity to your typewriter, and make sure that your opening pages don’t too closely mimic that book’s opening.”

The publishing houses scrambled to explain their failure to spot what are some of the well-known passages in the English literary canon.

“Our letter was a polite note declining representation and provided a standard response,” said a spokesman for Christopher Little cited by The Guardian.

“Our internal notes did recognise similarities with existing published works and indeed there were even discussions about possible plagiarism.”

A spokeswoman for Penguin noted that its rejection letter had said only that it “seemed” original and interesting. “It would not have been read,” she insisted.

Forbes‘ Brian Caulfield details how the recent tech boom has created a media bust.

Silicon Valley is booming again. But if you work in tech media, there’s blood on the floor. Take Red Herring. It hung onto its offices after getting the eviction notice earlier this month. But gossip site Valleywag is breaking story after story not just on its beat–but about its woes. Meanwhile, bigger publications are hurting too: Time Warner’s (nyse: TWX – news – people ) Business 2.0 saw ad pages drop 21.8% through March from the same period a year ago; PC Magazine’s editor in chief walked out the door after ad pages fell 38.8% over the same period; and one-time online powerhouse CNET is reporting growing losses even as the companies it covers flourish. It may be happening in tech first, but there’s no reason the same thing won’t happen, eventually, in every media niche.

[...Matt] Marshall says he now makes more than he did as a reporter. Meanwhile, the Mercury News laid off 31 of his former colleagues this month. “Where they can actually succeed is by taking a particular vertical and absolutely nailing it,” eMarketer’s Ramsey says of bloggers like Marshall.

Now consider this BusinessWeek story on LOLcat blog ICanHasCheezberger “brings in the big bucks”:

[...] He saw traffic on the blog, I Can Has Cheezburger, which he runs with his partner, “Tofuburger” (she refuses to disclose her real name) double each month: 375,000 hits in March, 750,000 in April, 1.5 million in May. Cheezburger now gets 500,000 page views a day from between 100,000 and 200,000 unique visitors, according to Nakagawa. The cheapest ad costs $500 for a week. The most expensive goes for nearly $4,000. Nakagawa, an accidental entrepreneur who saw his successful business materialize out of the ether, quit his programming job at the end of May: “It made more sense to do this and see how big it could get.”

Still, Mashable’s Pete Cashmore, who links to the LOLcat piece, warns us not to get carried away, thinking anyone can be a six-figure blogger overnight. Cashmore should know; his blog has grown exponentially over the past year.

What these stories miss is that, hour by hour and minus expenses, blogging is a fairly low paid job considering the high caliber of the people involved; the really smart kids are building the startups, not writing about them. And yet some blogs are now funded, which surely implies an exit/acquisition of some kind.

Alright, Pete. I hear ya. But what about top consultancies that blog about business? Are we waiting for for our LOLcat to bark?

The deal must still get approval from the Bancroft family, which controls 64% of Dow Jones’s voting power. The Bancroft family remains sharply divided on a sale to News Corp. While some members are open to a deal, others have been looking hard for an alternative. The Bancrofts want to pick the buyer which they perceive is most likely to offer editorial independence — and the highest price. They’re concerned with Rupert Murdoch’s track record of editorial intervention.

We know Christopher Bancroft has been working hard to break apart the deal.

Do you think the deal will be approved? If so, what do you think Mr. Murdoch will do with the Journal and Dow Jones’ other publications?

Update 7/18/07: The sale is one step closer to being finalized. Dow Jones released a statement late last night saying that its board had determined that it would be prepared to approve “and recommend to the Dow Jones stockholders, including the Bancroft family stockholders,” an agreement to sell all outstanding shares of Dow Jones for $60 per share in cash. The final decision will be made by the Bancrofts, the family which owns the controlling interest in Dow Jones and could still block the sale. Two of the four Bancroft family members on the board did not take part in the vote.

A renowned online thought leadership and viral marketing strategist, David’s blog WebInkNow.com is invaluable for anyone who struggles with multi-channel communications (read: pretty much everyone in business). The New Rules… grew out of his popular e-book by the same name, which has been downloaded by some 250,000+ fans.

In Part 1 of the interview, David & Robert discuss:

• How the advent of electronic content has changed publishing world for good.
• Why “we are what we publish” on the Web.
• How, after taking his own advice, his e-book turned into book deal in 20 minutes.
• Why organizations’ fears of letting employees express themselves online (like blogging) are unfounded, and usually only considered dangerous by executives who don’t read blogs (for instance).
• How he was able to blog his own book before publishing it–and how doing so made the book better.
• The blogging tap-on-the-shoulder technique David used that led Robert to discover that GrokDotCom was included in the book.
• How this strategy took on a viral life of it’s own, creating a lot of new fans in the process–and for free!

Click here to listen to Part 1 of David Meerman Scott and Robert Gorell

To download this podcast for your next flight, car or train ride, right-click here. And don’t forget to listen to Part 2 of the interview, where David discusses how to transform PR from just “media relations” to living, breathing thought leadership.

• Be prepared to invest 2-3 years before seeing any serious returns. (Don’t forget to read the ROI of Free.)
• A bad post is worse than no post. (Ask yourself :”What is the value that this post provides my readers?”)
• It won’t work if you try to satisfy everyone. (You’re not a $100 bill; not everyone needs to like your topic or posts, nor will they, so stop trying.)
• Piss a few people off. (If you haven’t, you didn’t move anyone emotionally in a positive way either.)
• If linking doesn’t provide value to your readers it’s a bad idea. (Think before doing a “Group Link.”)
• Respond to your commenters, especially the ones who disagree. (It’s easy to comment with people who share your point of view. Responding to the challenging comments improves your writing and thinking.)
• Display your best posts on every page in a prominent location. (People landing on your blog for the first time are like people jumping into the middle of the conversation. Give them a way to catch up quickly.)

Check out his full 27 lessons learned about blogging.

Google has argued that the use of news snippets on Google News constituted fair use because they didn’t run any advertising on the site. This isn’t the first time Google has paid for news content. The last time, Google claimed it was for “…new uses of Associated Press content.” The AP claimed there was already a dispute in play. That was back in August of 2006. Have you seen those new uses? I haven’t.
Google’s YouTube has also had its share of lawsuits from other copyright holders, but there have been plans to monetize YouTube and, of course, place YouTube content inside search results to distinguish their search engine results from competitors’.

What will this mean for publishers? Does it need to come to this point? Will Google be altruistic in its pursuit of content, or is the Fair Use model of displaying snippets of other provider’s content in question?

People Don’t Read Online? Bull-crap!

If only I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that statement, I’d make Bill Gates look like a pauper. Think about it. What’s the first thing most people do when they get online… read their email. What’s better yet, new research from the Poynter Institute’s Eyetrack study released at the American Society of Newspaper Editors (courtesy Editor and Publisher) shows that:

When readers chose to read an online story, they usually read an average of 77% of the story, compared to 62% in broadsheets and 57% in tabloids…

In addition, nearly two-thirds of online readers read all of the text of a particular story once they began to read it, the survey revealed. In print, 68% of tabloid readers continued reading a specific story through the jump to another page, while 59% did so in broadsheet reading.

The research also found that 75% of print readers are methodical in their reading, which means they start reading a page at a particular story and work their way through each story. Just 25% of print readers are scanners, who scan the entire page first, then choose a story to read.

Online, however, about half of readers are methodical, while the other half scan, the report found. The survey also revealed that large headlines and fewer, large photos attracted more eyes than smaller images in print. But online, readers were drawn more to navigation bars and teasers.

We knew it all along. We’ve been saying it for years since our clients’ web analytics proved it to us. Now you have the proof we can share. Give your readers something relevant to read and they will. Or are you still buying into that old wives tale that people don’t read online?

But whose obituary should we read first? Newspapers, Magazines, Music, or Video… Hmm… How about all four, thanks to Chief Blogging Optimist, Don Dodge, whose Next Big Thing blog gives us some in-depth research with a light garnish of buzz.

Linking around the blogosphere, Dodge shows us that:

Robert Scoble declares newspapers are dead. PaidContent says InfoWorld Magazine is dead. TechMeme has collected lots of blogger stories on the subject. Disrupted maybe…but not dead. Napster disrupted the music business and YouTube is disrupting video. Anything that can be digitized is being disrupted by the Internet.

I wrote about this a year ago in Are newspapers and magazines dying? Here is the killer quote from that blog post;

At its peak in 2000, The Mercury News had a Sunday circulation of 326,839 subscribers, according to the newspaper. Last September, the company counted 278,470 Sunday subscribers, a drop of about 15 percent. Revenue from the company’s help-wanted ads fell to $18 million a year from more than $118 million, according to the paper. The newsroom was whittled to 280 people from 404, a 30 percent decline.

Dodge goes on to announce that the “music business is dying,” and that sales are off 20% from last year continuing its 7 year decline. “Did Napster kill the music business or is ‘rap’ todays ‘disco’?” wonders Dodge.

As an erstwhile music journalist, I couldn’t help but comment. Sure, online media have been more powerful than expected. But isn’t it true that, until lately, the entire online space has been at once over-hyped and under-valued? Bloggers need news organizations in order to ensure that they’re not drowning in their own hype. News organizations need bloggers to help ensure their content is topical, fresh, and edgy.

Is the music industry dead, or are physical albums dying because the distribution model has shifted? Are newspapers dead, or is selling news on recycled newsprint dying?

Over at ye olde struggling newspaper, The New York Times, Jeff Leeds ads some depth to this story in a piece entitled “The Album, a Comodity in Disfavor.”

As Leeds tells it:

Last year, digital singles outsold plastic CD’s for the first time. So far this year, sales of digital songs have risen 54 percent, to roughly 189 million units, according to data from Nielsen SoundScan. Digital album sales are rising at a slightly faster pace, but buyers of digital music are purchasing singles over albums by a margin of 19 to 1.

Because of this shift in listener preferences — a trend reflected everywhere from blogs posting select MP3s to reviews of singles in Rolling Stone — record labels are coming to grips with the loss of the album as their main product and chief moneymaker.

In response, labels are re-examining everything from their marketing practices to their contracts. One result is that offers are cropping up for artists like Candy Hill to record only ring tones or a clutch of singles, according to talent managers and lawyers.

At the same time, the industry is straining to shore up the album as long as possible, in part by prodding listeners who buy one song to purchase the rest of a collection. Apple, in consultation with several labels, has been planning to offer iTunes users credit for songs they have already purchased if they then choose to buy the associated album in a certain period of time, according to people involved in the negotiations. (Under Apple’s current practice, customers who buy a song and then the related album effectively pay for the song twice).

But some analysts say they doubt that such promotions can reverse the trend.

“I think the album is going to die,” said Aram Sinnreich, managing partner at Radar Research, a media consulting firm based in Los Angeles. “Consumers are listening to play lists,” or mixes of single songs from an assortment of different artists. “Consumers who have had iPods since they were in the single digits are going to increasingly gravitate toward artists who embrace that.”

All this comes as the industry’s long sales slide has been accelerating. Sales of albums, in either disc or digital form, have dropped more than 16 percent so far this year, a slide that executives attribute to an unusually weak release schedule and shrinking retail floor space for music. Even though sales of individual songs — sold principally through iTunes — are rising, it has not been nearly enough to compensate.

Speaking of the media landscape’s whiplash-inducing evolution, Time, Inc. just announced that it will be pulling Life magazine from the shelves in order to maintain the American staple an online publication.

According to Yahoo! News, which posted the story compliments of Reuters:

Time Inc. said… it would stop publishing Life, the iconic photography magazine that has been a weekly newspaper insert since 2004. Although April 20 will be Life’s last print issue, the brand name will survive on the Internet.

It is the latest magazine to shut down as more readers desert print publications for online news and photos.

“Growth requires taking risks, and the potential upside was huge, but unfortunately the timing worked against us,” Time Inc. Chief Executive Ann Moore said. “The market has moved dramatically since October 2004, and it is no longer appropriate to continue publication of Life as a newspaper supplement.”

Time is laying off 15 editorial workers and 27 in its business department in connection with the shutdown, said spokeswoman Dawn Bridges.

And now for the obvious rhetorical question du jour: If Life itself is dying offline, doesn’t that mean everyone who wants to be spared should be online?

(For more daily analysis on stories like this, be sure to listen to Blog Buzz on WebmasterRadio.fm.)

My favorite line in his post is where he introduces me to the phrase “feature Factories” in one of his conclusions:

Eventually some of the big media companies, online incumbents and traditional publishers are likely to. But much of the money in the near term may be from “liquidity events,” as many of the startups (”feature factories”) are acquired by the incumbents’ and traditional media players’ M&A groups.

So, when we find The Washington Post–where Buffett’s majority shareholder–covering his very public proclamation that newspapers are a bad investment, one has to wonder: are traditional publishers reaching a breaking point or a tipping point?

When Charlie [Munger, Berkshire Hathaway's vice chairman] and I were young, the newspaper business was as easy a way to make huge returns as existed in America,” Buffett wrote in the letter, which was released Thursday.

…In today’s economy, Buffett wrote: “Simply put, if cable and satellite broadcasting, as well as the Internet, had come along first, newspapers as we know them probably would never have existed.”

Not exactly what you’d call “irrational exuberance,” is it? What now of the Post’s “follow the money” credo? Forget following the money; the Post will be lucky if Buffett bothers to help them find it–and he always does.

How fitting, then, that the other big newspapers news this week came from USA Today, whose social media-driven redesign launch broke the first rule of journalism: it became the news. Or has journalism–that quaint pursuit of factual, topical, news-related storytelling–been so worn down by new media that “become the news” has itself become the first rule of Whateverism 2.0? (And, please, folks, don’t use that one until, at the very least, it’s properly anointed by Stephen Colbert. See also: “Truthiness“)

Lately, we’ve written about how new media is changing the rules of book publishing and online publishing. But will USA Today create a community worth having you as a member? And if they’ll have you, is it worth joining such a club, anyway? (If you think so, you might want to first check out their privacy policy. “How is this information used?” may be of interest.)

Long before YouTube and Paris Hilton, Andy Warhol predicted that, one day, everyone would enjoy 15 minutes of fame. Maybe it’s time we all fully grokked this statement for what it’s become: our era’s most profound inside joke.

Laugh it up, Andy… Laugh it up.

A Day in the Life of a Persuasion Architect

In it, ‘Mike’ argues that:

“Book publishers have been pretty vocal in their dislike for Google’s plan to scan books and make them searchable via a great big electronic card catalog — claiming that this somehow is a misuse of their content.”

“The question, really, is why bother? All these publishers are creating limited, expensive, fragmented searches for books, when Google (and others such as Yahoo and Amazon) are more than willing to do the work for them, while bringing all the offerings together.”

I couldn’t agree more. Then ‘Mike’ really hits the nail on the head when he states, “There are very, very few people in this world who think about books in terms of who published them.”

The problem with the publishing industry today—especially most large New York publishers—is that their mindset is the same as it was 10 years ago; which is to say their posturing suggests they still “make” authors, as though a book’s reader ever gave a damn about its publisher in the first place. This highly seductive form of self-delusion, a seemingly benign relic of a forgone era, is the publisher’s biggest challenge in today’s marketplace–and hitting the proverbial ’snooze button’ on the internet for the past 10 years hasn’t helped.

The very few exceptions to this phenomenon include niche categories in which there are very few publishers to begin with. For instance, TOR (fantasy books), ELSEVIER (medical books), Lawgic Publishing Company (forms, document-generating systems, and reference books for lawyers), or IEEE Publishing and Information Services (technology books). Otherwise, book buyers tend to notice the publisher once they’ve already bought it, if at all.

Publishers need to understand that book consumers buy what THEY want to read. Sometimes they buy because an author commands their respect. Sometimes they buy books because of referrals from friends, family, colleagues, co-workers, or trustworthy and/or engaging critics. Sometimes they buy a book simply because it directly fills their immediate whim or need. But none of theses reasons have anything to do with the publisher.

Instead of worrying about brand affinity–which, ironically, only impresses aspiring authors–or whether they’re losing potential buyers because of Google’s plan to scan books and make them searchable, publishers need to catch up with the times and start treating books for what they are: content. Lest they should perish, publishers should ask bigger questions, like, “What other ways are there to develop content?” or “How else can I sell content in today’s market?” Or better yet, they should find answers to these questions–and quickly.

Note to publishers: So, you publish books. Fantastic. Want to buy a PDF? If you don’t wish to become obsolete within the decade, stop focusing on what others are doing and start focusing on how you can actually “make” authors through content diversification.

Note to authors: If you think publishers know how to market, I’ve got some land near Atlantis I can sell you at a low, fixed rate.