I’ve seen big changes in the way that video gets produced and distributed over the past twenty years. Costs have come down and ease of use have increased dramatically with the advent of digital technology. Can you imagine typing a letter on a manual typewriter now? That was what linear video editing was like until non-linear video editing systems (“word processing” for video) became available. Commercial distribution of your work, if you could get it, was limited to network TV, a few cable channels, and videotape sales.

ComScore’s Video Metrix reported for November 2009: Online video viewing continued to reach record levels in November with nearly 31 billion videos viewed during the month.

31 billion. In one month. And it’s growing.

The creation of content and the distribution of video and television programming have been transformed by the Internet. Distribution channels that were solely owned by networks now face stiff competition by the proliferation of Internet TV and online video channels. The “YouTube-ization” of media culture has created an audience to be served by readily available commercial applications and services used by media producers and marketers of all kinds.

Smaller marketers are seeing obstacles to delivering and monetizing online video dissolving before their eyes and new opportunities arise every day.

Now you can take on the services of an online video platform (OVP) in an integrated package. Online video platform providers like Endavo Media now offer these products and services for entrepreneurs and small business — not just the big boys.

Sure, you can create your own player and post your videos to your Web site but you are not taking advantage of all the value of the videos you have produced and posted.

Whether you are a producer, broadcaster or telco aiming to leverage the convergence of TV, online video and social media to distribute more content to more people, you have an audience out there who want access to your content via PC, mobile and TV. And you want to be able to monetize that content through multiple revenue streams.

We need to be smart about what our consumers are doing when they access our media. OVP providers deliver analytics as part of the basic package. Knowing when consumers rewind, stop viewing, embed videos and share them with others helps you understand which videos are most interesting and helpful.

Video is increasingly being integrated into social media and customers are discovering that they need a distribution strategy that combines video sharing sites and video delivered on their own sites. If your homegrown video player doesn’t enable embedding and linking, you are likely limiting the power of your reach to your audience.

Connected televisions will give you the ability to sit on your couch and access content anywhere in the world. Niche audiences for online video content are multiplying exponentially and the hunger for good quality content will grow to match the demand.

An OVP can also enable easy access to mobile devices. With Google’s Android and associated mobile devices and Apple’s iPhone leading the way, we’ll see an explosion of video delivered to mobile devices in 2010. Mobile marketing is becoming what email marketing was ten years ago — an explosion is happening and early adopters right now will ride the wave.

Get in now and carve out your territory before the space gets crowded. You can literally “earn while you learn”. Then when the space becomes mature and crowded, you will be an expert who will thrive into the future.

it’s easy to say that 2010 will be the year that video breaks through and becomes part of the mainstream advertising buy.

Look for new models of monetization for channel sponsorships and in-stream video advertising as new formats, pricing models and standards come on board and advertisers’ demand increases dramatically for online video content.

Endavo Media offers several models for creating revenue with online video and social media. In the advertising arena, there are pre-roll and post-roll video ads, banner advertising on your video players, an ad platform that allows direct ingestion of video/banner ad content, and coming soon a platform/interface that supports both the creation and campaigning of video/banner advertising to your community and websites.

You can build an affiliate network and offer premium content including the ability to sell “tickets” to premium live events.

With Endavo’s integrated subscription module, you can offer paid subscription for memberships or access to content. Get your web pages and players customized and skinned for title sponsorship by your corporate sponsors.

Create branded channels for sponsors to publish their own branded entertainment or news content or program individual video files into existing community channels. Paid syndication is another revenue model where you can set up video feed channels offered to other account owners who then pay you syndication fees.

Breakaway Media has launched Breakaway Media TV with Endavo Media’s online video platform. Go to the Breakaway Media video player to view content there and experience the Endavo Media online video platform.

I’ve been impressed with Endavo–their service and responsiveness is top-notch. They offer a superior user experience and have all the current monetization models in place so you can make money with your content. Breakaway Media is proud to be an official reseller of Endavo Media products and services. Call 520.237.3798 or email me at glenn@breakawaymedia.com for more information or if you just want to talk about the incredible opportunities out there right now.

The Shop: the Story Behind the Story

Thanks, Karin, for letting me guest today, and to tell you about the marketing strategy for my book, THE SHOP.

I did everything I was supposed to do. I wrote the book of my life. I got a terrific, rocket-fueled agent. As with previous books, I trusted that would be enough, but realized early on that the publishing industry has changed, and not for the better. If I didn’t do something to add value to my book, it might never be published.

So my hubby and I came up with a plan. At the beginning of my thriller, THE SHOP, six people are killed in a house in Aspen, Colorado, including rising country and pop star Brienne Cross. The book itself does not explore the lives of Brienne Cross and the people with her—-not as much as I’d like. So I built a website around Brienne Cross and the final four contestants on her reality show, and captured their lives through features (Someday We Will Know the Truth), articles (Inside the “Soul Mate” Reality Show), blogs, and even blog comments.

An only child, I used to role-play with myself. One minute I was the swash-buckling sailor, the next, the beautiful maiden. It went like this: “Dost thou know how much I love thee?” “I do, sir.” Now, all these years later I am role-playing again, commenting on my own blog to build the aura of reality around Brienne Cross’s life and death. I’ve argued with myself, insulted myself, and agreed with myself. Some friends have pitched in, and we’ve had a whale of a good time.

I got help along the way. A friend told me about a “Demand It” button that musicians use to find out if people want them to come to their town. The movie “Paranormal Activity,” made for $11,884 dollars, was marketed this way. If enough people Demanded the film, it would show in their town. The “Demand It” button does ask you for a minimal amount of information, but they do not sell the info, and it’s just so The Demanders will be kept informed about the band or movie—or in this case, book.

So I put a “Demand It” button on my website. I’m hoping you will push it.

If I get a ton of demands, it translates into a readymade readership. Publishers love a sure thing.

Okay, end of sales pitch.

As happy as I am with the site “Who Killed Brienne Cross?” I believe I need to go one louder. This is a big project—-the first of its kind that I know of—-so it morphs as it goes along. I want it to be interactive. And I could use some help brainstorming.

One idea is to have a poll every week. Who Killed Brienne Cross? Or, did Brienne have plastic surgery? (Before and After photos.)

I’d like to sprinkle clues across the four sites (yes, there are four sites: www.briennecross.net, www.briennecross.com, www.celebritymurders.net, and the Mother Ship, www.whokilledbriennecross.com.) I don’t want to get too complicated. But I would like it to be fun, and there would be prizes. I’d like to make it part mystery and part scavenger hunt, with tiny icons marking the clues.

As you can see, this aspect of the project is still in its infancy.

I’d love it if you’d go to www.whokilledbriennecross.com, look around, maybe argue with me, and then Demand It.

And any ideas are greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

M.J. (Maggy)

1. You gotta be great, not just good, but great.
This means you leave no loose ends, your craft, your networking, your brand, EVERYTHING has to be perfected to within an inch of its life. The first thing that decision makers in Hollywood look for when they consider product (a crass way to look at artistic work, but there you are) is a reason to say no–ANYTHING that falls beneath their self-set standards of excellence/perfection, no matter how small or insignificant.

It’s their way of separating the wheat from the chaff. Get your format wrong on the cover of your screenplay, and FZZZAAAAAAHHTT! Like a bug hitting a electric zapper light on a hot summer day, you’re toast. Does this arbitrarily eliminate product that could make them a lot of money? Of course it does, but that doesn’t factor into the equation. It’s the self-justifying paradigm that is important.

So by exercising your due diligence and going the extra 500 hundred miles to be absolutely the best you can be, craft your product to the industry and the market, and produce transformative work, you give yourself at least a fighting chance. Be careful–one of the most common comments editors are giving manuscripts these days is “I’ve read this before”. They are looking at fresh takes on established themes. Don’t default, go on to the second choice or third choice or beyond in how you treat your materials.

2. Hone your brand.
If you don’t create and define your own brand experience for other people, other people will either wonder what the heck you’re all about or decide for themselves something about you that could completely miss the mark and spoil your chances.

This starts with who you are, your work, and positioning it so that it creates an experience for others that YOU want them to have. An experience that creates affinity, loyalty, and yes, love. If you don’t understand branding, better study up.

3. Begin with the end in mind. (with apologies to Stephen R. Covey)
Total follow through. Visualize the book as published, as the publisher supported it from acquisition through preproduction, marketing and PR, through the sales chain until it arrived on the shelves, well-positioned and with a high level of awareness among the buying public and achieving break out sales. Then back it out to the agent, who that person is, how they really “get” the book, how it needs to get sold, to what publisher, and how it needs to get marketed successfully.

Your choice of agent may be the most important decision you make–everything flows from there. Then back it out to the hiring process—hiring the agent and researching the pool out there so that you understand the relative merits of each agent, their strengths and weaknesses and how that relates to you and your work and your ultimate goal, networking with friends and other authors to get more information and referrals that give you more ammunition and strengthen the power of your choices.

Back it out to the query letter where you position yourself and your work to give yourself the best chance to engage your chosen agent prospects in an interview process. Then …..

4. Start from the beginning.
It starts with Word One. Every page, every sentence, every word must have integrity. Integrity with your self as an artist, integrity with the marketplace.

Airport fiction.

A book that the weary traveler can pick up from the airport gift shop rack and settle back for four hours (or until it’s time to deplane) for a totally engrossing read that causes that reader to pine for that very next opportunity to sit down and continue reading.

And when the reader finishes the book, the reader feels longing for the story to go on, but it cannot, because it’s over! (“when’s your next book coming out???”).

This may not be enough, believe it or not. As the publishing industry abdicates its traditional marketing role, the base of marketing research that informs acquiring editors of what will sell becomes more porous by the day — you’ll likely need to demonstrate that there is an audience for your book, but that is fodder for another article to come.

5. Do your Research and Self-examination.
Yes, you have to figure out what you can write that will resonate with a diverse, large audience out there (who actually still reads). Know yourself, know the market, and learn from the very best in any way you can. And then transform yourself. And again. And again. Go the extra five hundred miles.

Deciding where to focus your attention on developing sponsorable properties within the campus community is critical to the success of a marketing-driven corporate partners program. Once you identify a sponsorable property, the level of acceptance or resistance within a unit to bringing this type of program on board determines the type of approach to developing that relationship.

Jacobson has encountered internal resistance from some units to leveraging their marketable assets with corporate partners. Even within an individual campus unit that may encompass multiple smaller units with their own distinct organizational cultures, there may be varying levels of acceptance or resistance that must be addressed.

“The easiest to pitch is the Arts,” he said. “These public units provide the metrics that traditional advertisers look for.”

Recently, Jacobson provided assistance in the development of a major corporate sponsorship for the Fowler Museum at UCLA and their current exhibition “Steeped In History, The Art of Tea”. Within six months of joining UCLA in his new position as director of corporate partnerships, Jacobson secured a presenting sponsorship worth $30,000 in cash, $10,000 in in-kind support and additional support through in-store promotions delivered by the sponsor, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf.

Despite the promise of cash, in-kind, and support for the Museum’s development efforts, some within that unit resisted the exploitation of the exhibition’s marketable assets by a corporate entity. “Some resisted the corporate message,” said Jacobson.

IEG defines strategic philanthropy as the extension of a philanthropic relationship between a commercial entity and a nonprofit to include a sales, marketing and/or promotional relationship. For example, a company might leverage a corporate gift to a nonprofit by promoting the association in its advertising and promotions.

A corporate sponsor may be looking to more directly exploit the marketable assets of the sponsorable property. In some cases, the corporation’s foundation and the marketing team will work together to not only pursue its philanthropic goals but also to gain as much exposure for the brand as possible.

Jacobson cited his experiences at UCLA with ad agencies representing corporations interested in reaching their sales and marketing goals through sponsorship of UCLA properties. “They are tasked with delivering measureable impressions”, he said. “I have put these benefits into place and on the table for them.”

While the opportunities in the Arts are diverse and numerous, choosing where to invest limited time and other resources in helping these units is critical to the overall success of his unit’s operation. “I was warned at the beginning when I started in this position that I would be barraged by small groups with sponsorable assets that could be sponsored at the $500 or $1000 levels. These don’t rise to the $25,000+ level packages upon which we are now concentrating the majority of our efforts.”

He will offer direct assistance or consulting to the smaller groups, however, so that they can internally maximize the return on their investment in corporate sponsorship marketing of their programs and events.

Some properties don’t lend themselves well to the traditional corporate sponsorship model—another consideration when deciding where to focus attention. Conferences hosted by UCLA units seeking sponsorships from their industrial affiliates need specialized packaging of benefits that are largely unique to the needs of those affiliates which can include access to research programs and recruitment of graduating students.

“It’s about making choices based on the fundamentals of relationship building,” Jacobson said. “We must establish trust and be honest with them if it doesn’t fall into a traditional sponsorship model and they need to take another approach. We will suggest how they could move forward in other ways.”

Jacobson brought our conversation back around to the importance of developing cooperation and new internal relationships.

“I looked across campus for potential value to corporate partners,” he said. As a private sector sponsorship marketer would build in sponsor benefits provided by a media sponsor, Jacobson looked to UCLA print publications, The Daily Bruin and the UCLA alumni magazine. “The alumni magazine has a 300,000 readership and I wanted to include these in the offering. I worked with the sales staff of these two publications, looked at the open rate and negotiated a rate 50% below the open card rate.”

This arrangement provides a longer term advertising component to the sponsor’s benefits that wraps around the sponsored event. An example would be an event that takes place in March where the sponsorship includes a four month ad campaign: one to two ads run in January, one in March close to the event, and one in April as a thank you ad.

The university publications benefit from this arrangement. “The alumni magazine has mostly local ads from businesses and alumni—only four to five ads per issue and they should be running 35% of their space at a minimum,” Jacobson said. “It builds credibility and stature in relation to prospective advertisers when you have a Toyota and other nationally recognized brands advertising in your publication.”

The publisher of the magazine has provided his unit with a discounted per page ad rate that he can include in a sponsorship package. Jacobson has negotiated an internal page rate with the magazine that provided his sponsorships with a 50% discount off the open rate.

Some sponsors don’t do print advertising if it doesn’t fit with their business model and in those cases, Jacobson finds other assets that do fit with their model. “Knowing the capacity of each unit’s reach to consumers is important”, he said. “Some units have had their corporate partners programs in place for a long time. Many are well, but there is always room for growth. We bring new thoughts of how to leverage those assets in new ways.”

Jacobson formed a group of important allies on the UCLA campus who understand the value of making their sponsorable assets more marketable and available to corporate sponsors. This group serves as a brain trust and advocacy group. In his article “Innovations in Service May Require Disruption”, thought leader, author and columnist Dale Dauten described a similar group at Cardinal Health as one “to weather the storm of the status quo that will give an Old Testament testing of any good idea.”

Jacobson and his team are winning over the UCLA campus community and bringing in much needed sponsorship revenues with this marketing-centered approach to a campus-wide corporate sponsorship program.

In his recent syndicated column titled, “Innovations in Service May Require Disruption”, Dale talks about the need to build “a culture of innovation” or “a culture of disruption”. He cites the example of Kim Gravell, vice president of innovation for Cardinal Health who calls it, “breaking the china”. Dale stresses that while ideas are essential to innovation, they must also be “pounded, dragged, charmed or sneaked into existence” and recounts how Gravell built a team of people who could talk numbers and processes to get buy-in within her organization.
Corporate sponsorships of programs and events and corporate partners programs in higher education institutions and in municipal governments are slowly getting acceptance.

There are some examples of successful programs, but there is within any organization a hesitance to “break the china” and a tendency to hold on to the status quo. How to implement an innovative idea like corporate sponsorship of non-athletics programs and events across a higher education institution?

I spoke with Eron Jacobson, Director of Corporate Partnerships at the University of California, Los Angeles. I wrote about the work Eron and his team is doing in my article “Corporate Sponsorships in Higher Education Institutions”

He said that UCLA adopted a new tone in regards to corporate relations. “Our vice chancellor told us that we have to be thinking creatively and differently. What has worked the past 100 years does not necessarily work now. What’s worked in the past may not be what is needed now.”

The UCLA administration realized that the Athletics model of a corporate sponsors program could be adapted and applied across much of the institution. UCLA Athletics had enjoyed success in this area for decades and the administration acknowledged that the wealth of this vehicle had not been used for non-athletics campus programs and events. At the time, developing support from corporations outside of Athletics was only being done from a philanthropic perspective and not a marketing perspective.

The administration understood they needed to leverage those marketable assets in different ways: online, putting sponsors’ products and services into the hands of consumers, and delivering to the UCLA community the brand experience of UCLA’s corporate partners. “Corporate America wants to put their stamp on it (the University community) and they are willing to invest in it,” he said.

How did the institution respond to this new initiative? Jacobson said that he has encountered some uncertainty from UCLA units to this program and faced the challenge of getting them to understand the benefits of incorporating a corporate message or brand directly into an academic or administrative program or event.

He cited his greatest success so far as the development of a group of important allies on the UCLA campus who understand the value of making UCLA’s sponsorable assets more marketable and available to corporate sponsors. With this group of allies, Jacobson has been able to do something along the lines of what Dale Dauten talks about in his column and what Kim Gravell of Cardinal Health is accomplishing across her large and diverse organization. With his group of allies, Jacobson is getting this new corporate partners program positioned with UCLA units as something that will bring value to them.

One benefit of this approach is the packaging of larger sponsorable properties that combine assets across multiple units on campus. “We find things with a common thread across units,” he said. “All Things Green—sustainability, is one theme. We can then embed a corporate partner for that”. Jacobson said that by identifying the market value for each unit’s assets that are contributed to the package and gauging the overall value of the sum of its parts, he is able to equitably divide up the sponsor’s cash and in-kind investment among the contributing units.

The UCLA Office of Corporate, Foundation and Research Relations takes only the standard 6% administrative fee that the office charges to process the revenues through their system. All revenues are funneled through the Foundation and the packages are tailored so that all fall under the IRS guidelines for qualified sponsorships and avoid Unrelated Business Income Tax.

In part 2 of this article, I’ll report more on how Eron Jacobson and UCLA are innovatively drawing upon the assets of multiple units to create value in higher education corporate sponsorship packages.

I thought it would be interesting to go to the root of the meaning.

From the freedictionary.com: Meta — A prefix meaning one level of description higher. From answers.com: Tag — A sequence of characters in a markup language used to provide information, such as formatting specifications, about a document.

So, meta in terms of markup language, means html code that is “one level higher”. And yes, with meta tags in WordPress, you will find them “near the top” and in fact, in the header.php of your WordPress site. Go to the theme editor from your WordPress theme dashboard and select header.php to begin work on your meta tags.

Codex.wordpress.org describes meta tags: “The word meta means information about. Meta Tags were created early on to provide concise information about a website. Meta tags list information about the web page, such as the author, keywords, description, type of document, copyright, and other core information.

In the interest of good search engine optimization practices, we need to pay some special attention to meta tags, but how much and how?

Meta tags no longer hold the level of importance with search engines that they used to hold, and quality content is more so than ever the biggest contributor to your search engine rankings. Do you want to rise higher in the search rankings? Improve the quality and relevance of your content.

Keywords still matter in your meta tags, though. Despite the fact that Google and other search engines discount sites engaged in “keyword stuffing”, and no longer look to keyword meta tags with the same level of regard when indexing your site, there is at least some value as long as your keywords match your content. At this time, your title and description tags will hold more weight than your keyword meta tags with the search engines, particularly Google, so careful research and selection of your keywords for those tags will make a larger difference.

The site at codex.wordpress.org gives a succinct description on where to place your WordPress site meta tags:

“To add meta tags to your site, simply add them to the header.php template file in your WordPress Theme, specifically in the head section near the link for the style sheet. At the top you will see the DOCTYPE tag and below that you will see a couple more tags and then the title tag…

Below this line you can add your meta tags. You can add meta tag information such as the content, language, author, contact, and copyright, since these are basically the same on every page of your site.”

Keep in mind that the dynamic types of information–and we are talking about description and keywords–is unique to every web page on your site. If you put them in the header.php, the information will not change throughout your site. This will compromise your site’s optimization for the search engines.

To optimize your site for the search engines, you need to dynamically add keywords and descriptions on every post. You can choose from ways to do this: you can add them as generic references or you can use plugins. In this way, your site will have added a description, keywords, and other meta tags that are unique to each generated post or page.

You can find additional information about meta tags, meta tag plug-ins and other resources at the codex.wordpress.org site . These plug-ins allow you to customize your meta tags and choose them for each post.

So, yes, Virginia, not only are there meta tags for WordPress, they are still a part of an effective search engine optimization strategy.

Installation and Activation–WordPress, Themes and Plug-ins
Being open source, WordPress is free. One advantage of using the Web hosting services of a company like Media Temple is that you can install WordPress and other applications with one click. Updating with later versions is equally simple. To transfer files between your computer hard drive (local) and your host server (remote) files locations, and to work directly with your files on the host server, you’ll need an FTP client. I use FileZilla, it’s free open source software and has a nifty interface. There are many FTP clients for which you can purchase licensing rights. Go to http://filezilla-project.org/ to download the program. They also offer a FileZilla Server version (Windows only).

Once you have WordPress installed and activated, you’ll likely want to replace the default theme with the theme of your choice. There are literally thousands of themes available for download on the Web. Some are free but you may find that the premium themes available for a fee will suit you better. You often get more robust support from the theme developers that can include support forums and better, more timely responses to your inquiries and requests. Here are some links to compilations and reviews of free and fee-based themes and plug-ins:

• Best Free Magazine WordPress Themes-wphacks”
• 16 Free Premium Wordpress Themes That Don’t Suck”
• Best Video and Multimedia WordPress Themes | Premium WordPress Themes – PremiumWP
• DailyWP – Free Wordpress Themes, Premium Wordpress Themes, JobPress, Classipress
• www.press75.com/ – Top 10 Similar Sites and Reviews
• 20+ Great WordPress 2.7 Compatible Plugins
• Themes and Plugins For Extreme WordPress Functionality | W3Avenue

I chose the Solostream WP-Chatter Premium theme for the Breakaway Media Web site. Solostream also offers a choice of other themes including magazine-style, portfolio, and two newer themes–Sublime and Genius. Again, full disclosure: I’m an affiliate of Solostream. In a later article, I’ll talk about affiliate programs and how you can develop revenue streams by selling other companies’ products and services through your microsites and landing pages.

Premium themes will generally cost anywhere from $49 on up for a single site license and $79 on up for a multi-site or developer’s license. Get the multi-site license unless you are buying the theme specifically for one site. With your new theme activated, download the recommended plug-ins and get them installed and activated. These plug-ins and their associated widgets expand your functionality and greatly increase your choices, allowing you to customize the look and capabilities of your site or landing page. I’ll get into WordPress plug-ins and widgets in more detail in WordPress for Microsites and Landing Pages – part 3.

With your tools at the ready, now you can begin to add the content and sales vehicles which you have developed and tailored to your target/niche audience. Read more about the importance of content in my article on this site, Microsites and Landing Pages.

Go for it!
So get started — sometimes the hardest part is beginning to move forward. Once you do, you can always change or reverse course or take a “side street” and try something different. Keep trying different things until you get a winning system. A bit of advice–don’t let the drive for perfection or having the “perfect” combination of elements and tools keep you from starting. It’s a learning process, but with WordPress you’ll find the rewards of running your e-commerce business with microsites and landing pages will come in time.

In WordPress for Microsites and Landing Pages – part 3, I’ll get into specifics on how you can use microsites and landing pages to increase your revenues, build new revenue streams and support for your organization and otherwise meet your sales and marketing goals.

Getting it Going
Getting your microsite or landing page set up with WordPress is a several-step process. It may seem somewhat complicated at first, but with some dedication to learning the basics and a dose of persistence, virtually anyone can do it.

We assume that you have first done your search engine marketing homework and judiciously selected your domain name(s) based on targeted, relevant keywords. Go to a domain registrar like GoDaddy.com and register your domain. I have several domains registered with GoDaddy–the fees are reasonable and their services are good quality. A dot-com domain will set you back all of several dollars and you can buy multiple domains at a discount. You can get dot-biz or dot-info domains for even less.

You don’t have to register your domain with your host server company, in fact, I recommend you don’t–I think it’s better to keep the two separate and you’ll probably save money in the deal. All you need to do is use the domain name system settings of your host server company wherever your domain is registered. Once you’ve reset the DNS, propagation of the domain at your host server will take anywhere from an hour to a day or so, and you’ll be ready to move forward and install WordPress.

You’ll need a host server account with a company like Media Temple, BlueHost or HostGator. Full disclosure here (if you haven’t heard, there are new FTC rules governing endorsements and testimonials) — I use Media Temple and you may have noticed the mt-media temple banner ad on this site. I get a referral credit sent to my account when people sign up for their service through the link. I’ve used Media Temple since 2005 and their (gs) Grid Service is superb.

(gs) is a cluster-based service powered by hundreds of servers working in tandem to ensure power, burstability and reliability. I’ve also used BlueHost at the University of Arizona and their service also performed admirably. Hosting service fees will vary from about $75 to $250 a year or more, depending on how robust a service you need for your business, whether you pay upfront annually, and other factors.

In WordPress for Microsites and Landing Pages – part 2, we’ll talk about selection and installation of your WordPress themes and plug-ins and customizing your microsites and landing pages.

In our interconnected, interlinked, and networked society, more and more we will need to position the book as the center of a network rather than at the end of a delivery chain. We know the effect that rapidly evolving social media is having on the way we consume content of all kinds. Content is becoming more sliced up, reconnected, blended, “mashed up” and reused–and that includes books. This may apply mainly to non-fiction books right now, but look out for the new modes of delivery and the ways that fiction books are also created and presented. Check out the Vook for an example of a new trend of presenting book content through a variety of interconnected media.

New modes of reading published work are proliferating like mad, with reading platforms such as the Amazon Kindle, Sony’s e-reader and now the iPhone taking on whole traditionally-published books, e-books, periodicals, and even pdf versions of documents of all kinds. We’re getting new choices on what we read, how we read it, and when we read, and oh by the way, with whom we share it.

Not all books need to be networked books. Just like radio never went away with the advent of television, printed books will continue to satisfy the need for the physical touch, the total immersion experience of reading print on the page. And the traditional book publishers still exercise creative judgment over what they will produce and distribute and readers will continue to spend their money on product that passes through the gates of these gatekeepers. There is value in that for many readers and that will continue. But when an author can publish cheaply a novel electronically to Amazon and use search engine marketing to drive a substantial number of niche-market readers to ordering the book for reading on their e-readers, Kindles and the like, then the number of viable and sustainable business models begin to increase.

For now, “Old Publishing” will not go away. Authors will continue to get their best deals there, the money and status needed to earn a living and survive. Authors will take their novels created for large audiences to the major publishers which still wield tremendous influence and control over what the retail distribution chain offers to the buying public (although that is diminished from year’s past and even their marketing role has decreased substantially).

Going for the apex of the publishing pyramid currently inhabited by the best selling authors holds tremendous appeal for any author who wants to get their physical books into the hands of large numbers of readers. These books are carefully selected, edited, packaged by the publishers and then presented for retail sale by the drug stores, the major book chains, and Costco and Target stores.

But the value in the delivery chain is shifting from a model where the content is wrapped up with the distribution to a model that simply values the content. Publishing is evolving and so quickly that we may not even recognize it when the evolution reaches its natural state.

Traditional publishing is concerned with quality control and has inherent big-time costs associated with the business model. The New Mode of publishing is cheap for production and distribution and is an open content market unconstrained by the type of organizational taste exercised by the major book publishers.

Watch out for the new and expanding trend of Web-only fiction and alternate publishing modes. Like electric vehicle charging stations, fast print-on-demand machines are going into bookstores like the University of Arizona’s Main Bookstore on campus. Electronic editions of many kinds and destined for more and more new devices coming online every day will be offered with varying levels of editorial selectiveness. It may be something of a crapshoot on quality, but with social networking and word of mouth, readers will find their own base of “experts” and other readers whose recommendations hold weight.

In the New World of marketing and PR, where the crowd holds sway, niche markets reached through search engine marketing strategies offer ways to reach buyers where breaking into a sale to a traditional book publisher isn’t possible or maybe even desirable.

Tastes are changing and becoming more variegated. Web-only fiction is becoming popular and often doled out in episodes similar to the TV model and the serial novels of the 19th century. And some novels aren’t languishing in a market backwater. Some have built large audiences of tens of thousands of fans. Major publishers, noticing that there is a built-in fan base/market for these novels, have picked them up and given large advances to the authors, and published them well. This is an interesting track that is really different from the standard route of hiring an agent, having the book submitted to publishers and their acquiring editors, and completing a sale into the production and distribution chain.

I’ve just finished formatting two novels for Amazon Kindle, written by one of my clients. These two books were published as mass market paperbacks by Signet, an imprint of New American Library (part of Penguin USA). The books went out of print and now Amazon and other digital outlets offer a new lease on life for these out of print books that went away. Once I upload them to Amazon and begin their search engine marketing campaign, they will find new audiences.

Major new publishing roads are under construction and content creators, including new and established authors, are already traveling down those roads to reach new audiences in innovative ways. How the major publishers will evolve in line with these changes remain to be seen.

In the meantime, Internet marketing and digital distribution offer authors and Internet publishing companies rich opportunities for success.

New Roads for Publishing