Champlain College Publishing Initiative

By John Wolfe, Staff Writer

Earlier this month, we asked John Wolfe to examine several book websites created by publishing companies or by the authors themselves. Many of you asked us to suggest examples of sites that (unlike most of those we found for books on the New York Times bestseller list) made imaginative use of the web medium. We threw John back into the surf of the Internet, and he came back to dry land with these three in his mouth.

“A Site About Something” by Richard Geller

http://www.asiteaboutsomething.com/

Richard Geller is a musician, novelist, and a poet. His website manages to effectively showcase all of his skills, while deviating from traditional advertising methods.

This individually produced site is incredibly detailed and unique. I’m not even sure where to start in describing it. The site’s main focus is on the gold framed center. It’s almost like a theatre screen. In the bottom right hand portion is a control panel for Richard Geller’s music, which plays in the background throughout the duration of your stay at his site, unless you choose to stop it. The bottom left hand portion exhibits a counter telling you how many places, books, and songs you’ve found.

This counter gets put to use when you decide to take the “Scenic Route” offered on the main screen. If you choose this route, you’re shown a 3D model of the Earth, which upon being clicked, whisks you away to a side-scrolling clickable exploration. You start in India, and you can scroll left and right to find clickable places to visit, songs to listen to, or books to check out.

Geller offers four books, fourteen songs, and ten places to “visit” on his site. Each book may be sampled on the site before purchase, a feature which is invaluable. There are also options for contacting Geller, sharing the website with a friend, or signing up to the website to save your exploration progress, all denoted by playful icons at the top of the framed area. Also, should one be feeling hasty, there is an option to simply unlock everything the site has to offer. I do think that perhaps Geller could benefit from other Web 2.0 services, such as Facebook or Twitter, but I also feel as if his blog may make up for this.

The purchasing options for the novels include material copies, as well as e-book downloads. Whose Pot Is This? includes a free e-book offer as well, to read the entire novel. There are also links to Geller’s Blog, “A Blog About Something.”

There are also smaller amenities and details that really make the site user-friendly and accessible. There’s a help page, a full screen option, helpful hints throughout the “journey,” volume control, and many other little options that exhibit the care and thought put into the website.

Overall, this website has to be one of the most creatively put together sites I’ve seen. You really get a feeling for the author’s personality, and the entire site conveys a feeling of whimsy. Out of any website that serves as an advertisement, this one has to be the most interesting I’ve ever seen. It’s not even just an advertisement. The entire website is an adventure, and involves the potential buyer in an opportunity to get to know the author and his work on a more personal level before even buying it. It’s a well thought out marketing technique, and it is presented more than adequately.

While Geller’s website clearly took time, effort, and skill to put together, I think it’s the sort of thing that every publisher, indie or corporate, should strive for. Maybe you can’t get quite the same cinematic feel that Geller has, but as long as you exhibit your personality and creativity in your site, I think it will have a larger impact than any form of regular straightforward advertising ever could.

“Davidgilman.com” by David Gilman

http://www.davidgilman.com/

David Gilman is a television screenwriter, as well as a children’s novelist. His well organized website gives the viewer a deeper look into his work.

At first glance, Gilman’s website appears very professional. It has a striking, artfully minimalistic layout. The blue header, with a picture of the author, contrasts well with the slate background. It’s also nice to see the author’s picture featured on the website. I personally like to put a face to what I’m reading, so it’s a plus for me.

In the lower right hand corner, Gilman’s website has something I love to see- buttons for Facebook, Twitter, and Blogger. All three of these resources are useful in their own ways, and are huge outlets for potential readers.

The header for Gilman’s site also offers the most important part of his website- the books. Each book is a link to its own page within the website, and offers a synopsis as well as reviews of the novel. Gilman’s website also offers trailers, wallpapers, interviews, and even a reading for the books. I believe that it would be beneficial for Gilman to add a sample or preview of the books, just so the potential readers can test them out beforehand.

There is a “Journal” portion, a sort of blog, where Gilman leaves thoughts for visitors, ranging from a response to a reader’s letter, to comments about daylight savings. This gives the website a personal touch, which is something that book websites need to be sure to focus on more. The visitor wants to know not just about the book, but often times about the person who writes the book. It adds more to the experience of reading the book itself.

Gilman also has a “Contact” area, where you can share your thoughts with him, which is always nice. It’s good to include the readers in what you are doing as an author. As an avid reader, I enjoy it when an author acknowledges his or her readers, and maybe even incorporates their suggestions and comments into their work.

Finally, Gilman has a “Bookshop” section, for purchasing the novels. The links provided go directly to Amazon for various countries, and offer a link to read more about the novel elsewhere on the site. It’s easy to use, and simple. Gilman’s website was also developed by a third party web designer, which I figure is to be expected for the high level of quality it provides. Overall, it’s a well tailored, professional website, boasting easy navigation, attractive layout, and plenty of information. It’s fairly personal, and my only really big complaint is the lack of a preview for the novels.

“Paintings-Prose-Palmbeach” by Marie Pinschmidt

http://www.paintings-prose-palmbeach.com/

Marie Pinschmidt is a skilled painter, as well as a novelist, and she effectively interweaves both of these skills in a well thought out website.

Marie Pinschmidt’s site is very different from Geller’s, in that it doesn’t have the same playful, cinematic quality. However, the techniques used on Geller’s site require plenty of knowledge in web design, and I’m sure a certain degree of skill. However, Marie’s site does exhibit as much personality as Geller’s.

The website is simple, and easy to navigate. There’s a toolbar at the top portion with buttons for each section, which breaks the website down for the visitor. That’s a pretty big deal, because getting lost on a web page is never fun. Marie also has plenty of contact information listed at the bottom of the page, as well as a link to her blog, which helps us get a better feel for what kind of person she really is. Getting to know the author on a more personal level is important when it comes to websites. You have to be able to draw the potential reader in with personality, because otherwise it’s all just plain information.

Marie’s website has a strong focus on her art as well as her novels, which adds another level of personality. I’m not saying that every author should have some sort of second artistic skill exhibited on their website, as Geller and Pinschmidt do, but rather that these skills tell the visitor more about the author. Anything on a website that makes it more personal is good. The visitor wants to know that a human being put effort into this website.

Furthermore, the “Books” portion of Pinschmidt’s website offers a synopsis of each book. While this is nice, I would suggest offering some sort of reading sample from within the novel. It’s nice to know a little bit more about what you’re going to read is like before you buy it.

At the bottom of her website, you can see the Pinschmidt had help in putting her website together. Getting professional assistance from a web designer is obviously not a bad idea, if you have the means. However, I would just suggest that Pinschmidt perhaps play a little bit more with the textual layout on the homepage. It’s nice and straightforward, but a little bit blocky. Maybe some creative reformatting or different fonts might give the page a more aesthetically appealing look.

Pinschmidt’s website is a good example of what an indie publisher should be aiming for. It’s organized, has all the information I could need in an easily accessible layout, and provides some amount of personal perspective. The only big problem is the matter of layout creativity. It’s possible to show a little bit more of one’s personal side through imaginative layouts, and still maintain that paramount simplicity. A little bit more personality could go into the website, and it would be safely accessible, but all the more engaging for it. Also, utilizing Web 2.0 options is once again, very important. While a blog is helpful and personal, it is always nice to have as many modern outlets as possible for getting your name out.

We welcome your comments, and also nominations of other people’s outstanding book web sites. Please don’t recommend your own.

Mind and Body, Information and Action

By Tim Brookes

Here’s an issue that I’ve been trying to sort out for several months now–the question of the difference between information and action, especially in the context of social networking and online communications.
This is crucial to publishing, in several respects. First, every publisher is now busy trying to incorporate social networking strategies in order to reach more people. Second, publishers are shifting from print to electronic publishing for a whole raft of reasons. But what if people—we, that is—react in profoundly different ways to what we see and ingest online?
One way of looking at this is by examining the difference between what happens when we use digital communications to let people know something and what happens when we use digital communications to try to get people to do something.
We think of communication as a prelude to action, and as such we tend to assume that if we send out bags of emails, tweets, Facebook messages and so on, we’re helping to make things happen.
In fact, what becomes clear quite soon, though we tend to try not to acknowledge it, is that people tend to draw a fairly clear distinction between information and action. In other words, just because we know about something doesn’t mean we do anything about it. And that may not change with the amount that we know. Busting out an all-points bulletin about one’s latest book, then, may not make the slightest difference in how people react to the information that reaches them.
The most vivid and insistent illustration of this is the perennial issue of how to commodify or monetize web activity and web product.
Getting people to come to my web site and read what I write turns out to be not that hard. Getting them to respond is also not that hard–in fact, I get far more response to my online postings than I did for the vast majority of my essays on NPR. My guess is that this a great example, in fact, of the web making it far easier to jump from the stimulus to the response. When you hear something on the radio, responding to the author takes a whole staircase of steps involving multiple media and some information-finding.
So far, so good.
But getting people then to order a copy of my new book Thirty Percent Chance of Enlightenment turns out to be much, much harder, even though the web once again makes the sideways step about as easy as possible. Information is one thing, action is something entirely different–especially where money is concerned. Even the people who write and tell me they love my writing don’t necessarily (or often) make the extra three clicks that would buy them a copy of the book.
This actually is something of a relief, when you think about it (though not to my bank balance). If we were less suspicious of a product or service readily available online, we’d all go on buying sprees, we’d all go broke, and we’d all be conned time and again by shysters and charlatans. It’s probably a valuable and necessary quality to be wary of committing time and/or money simply on the basis of an anonymous flow of electrons.
Here’s another way of looking at it. I recently did a reading in Middlebury and, as an experiment, used all kinds of social networking tactics to get the word out. Well, I certainly got the word out, but the difference between information and action was crisply clear: everyone who came to the reading either already knew me or knew my work or knew something who had personally recommended me. Not a single person came on the basis of all my social networking. Information did not precipitate action.
Since then, I’ve been looking hard at this clear, if subliminal, distinction between people’s web behaviors: people use the web to drink up information with a thirst never known on this planet; but people only use the web to dictate physical actions (especially the spending of money) if the web activity is a close facsimile of circumstances under which they would have acted or spent anyway.
For example, buying a book online is not that different from buying a book in a store, in the sense that the need and the outcome are the same. It’s only the process that changes. Going out to do something in town is very, very different from staying at home reading about what’s going on in town. Need and outcome–utterly different.
Tom Kitchen, at Montclair State University, recently drew a teacherly distinction (on timbrookesinc.com) between the value of the email question-and-answer and the personal meeting. They fulfill very different needs and purposes, he said, and some students seem to sense this, because they email him asking for a personal meeting.
I found myself thinking of another element that neatly splits (or perhaps combines) the difference between the two: Skyping. This semester I’ve Skyped three times with students abroad, and it’s fascinating how different an experience that was from exchanging emails. All those human qualities–seeing how they looked, picking up inferences from background and body language, hearing the tone of their voices–filled out all kinds of unnumbered dimensions that are missing from email, twitter, blog postings, and so on. It was information, yes, but somehow it incorporated some of the qualities of action. My wife, a therapist, even holds sessions by Skype when no other means is available, and her clients report well of the process.
All this also has something to do with Descartes, with the difference between mind and body. We feel that distinction in all kinds of ways, and once we start getting a handle on how people feel about, understand and respond to each dimension of these new media, I think our current use of electronic communication is going to seem like the digital equivalent of the Stone Age.

By John Wolfe, Staff Writer

At the risk of stating the obvious: the Web presents all kinds of new opportunities for networking and publicity. Musicians have known this for years now–just look at MySpace. If musicians can do it, why not authors and publishers?

To be frank, the book trade is at least a decade behind the music trade. Some traditional publishers and indie publishers are already looking for innovative ways to make use of the web for publicity and business purposes (our own blog is, we hope, an example of this) but many major publishers don’t seem to understand how useful the Internet can be.

To check out how effectively authors and publishers are using the full potential of the Internet, I decided to review the websites of the top six paperback trade fiction books on the current New York Times bestseller list:

1)    “The Last Song” by Nicholas Sparks

2)    “A Reliable Wife” by Robert Goodrich

3)    “Little Bee” by Chris Cleave

4)    “Dear John” by Nicholas Sparks

5)    “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” by Stieg Larsson

6)    “Shanghai Girls” by Lisa See

The Last Song

Design

This is quite honestly one of the most unappealing websites I have ever seen. The colors work together nicely and all, but honestly, they’re just boring. Pastel blues and greens definitely don’t stir excitement in my chest. Aside from what looks like the basic website template, there is nothing additional to this layout. I love simplicity. It’s a big deal for me if a website is too complicated or awkward to navigate effectively. But there is a big difference between simplicity and lifelessness.

Information

The main focus of the page is the synopsis. That’s nice, because why else would I want to go to a book website? Obviously I want to know what the book is about. Below the synopsis the website provides some awkwardly worded insignificant “Did You Know” facts about the book/movie production. Honestly, I’m not really interested in that. I’d rather read more about the book itself, or at least reviews.

The website does provide a review section, but it is stranded down in the left hand corner, and you have to change pages to read the entirety of the single review provided.

There are sections dedicated to Sparks’s comments about writing the book, his inspiration, FAQs, etc. However, these are once again displayed in boring, plain text format, with the same default layout.

Networking

The website does provide networking and Web 2.0 opportunities, which is almost a requirement if you’re looking for publicity on the Internet. It provides links for easy following via Facebook, Twitter, or Flickr, and provides a link to follow Sparks’s newsletter.

Conclusion

This website is more or less streamlined for information. However, the information presented on the main screen has been prioritized awkwardly. While too much razzle and dazzle can be a major turn off, too much plain text at one time is just as bad.

A Reliable Wife

Design

The website has an interesting, thin red frame, which gives it an almost dignified feel. The background image of a wintry forest is visually pleasing to me personally, since I’m so accustomed to it, but it also conveys the isolated and chilling feeling the book is supposed to provide.

There are several links at the top providing different informational pages, with the same layout. It’s convenient, easy to access, and understandable.

Information

This website provides, through the links at the top, more or less everything you’d want to know about the book. Right away on the home page it provides a synopsis and a video interview with the author, Robert Goodrich. This was well thought out. I don’t just want to read about what the author has to say about his book. I get a much more personal feel from hearing and seeing him talk about his book. To be honest, his commentary made the book a lot more appealing to me. I’m mildly interested already, just because of this interview.

What’s more, I’m provided an excerpt from the first chapter, as well as a page of reviews, book club style questions, and a text interview. Each bit of information is prioritized on its own page, and laid out nicely.

Networking

There is no “follow me” kind of option on the website. However, the main page lists websites and stores where the book can be purchased. However, networking is paramount when it comes to the web, and not having a “follow” option is really not utilizing the web to its full potential.

Conclusion

The website is informational, yet attractive at the same time. It’s not trying too hard to grab your attention. It’s constructed well, and isn’t at all confusing to navigate. It could be a little more colorful, and provide some more networking opportunities, but I feel as if the somewhat simplistic look of the page makes sense with the feel of the book, as according to what the author states. Overall, the website is well thought out, and provides an equal amount of interest and information.

The Little Bee

Design

The layout of this website is relatively simplistic–but compared to the website for “The Last Song,” it is infinitely more attractive. The template seems to be a traditional layout, maybe even a default web template. However, the colors are bright orange, and black. The contrast this creates is much more exciting than pastels. However, there is nothing particularly striking or exciting about the website. It’s constructed almost completely out of squares, which actually bores me, because once I notice it, I can’t stop. All I see are squares everywhere, and god knows I see enough squares throughout the day.

There are informational tabs at the top, with drop down menus, which seems to be pretty standard. The drop downs are nice, and give it a pretty modern feel.

Information

The book cover is displayed on the main page. However, there is no textual synopsis on the home page, which is a pretty big deal. There is a video interview with the author, Chris Cleaves, in which he provides the synopsis, and additional information about what inspired him. This was interesting. However, I still feel as if a textual synopsis is a selling point.

There are reader reviews at the bottom of the page, and a link to more reviews on the main page. There are several other links on the main page, along with the reviews link, which are not provided in the tabs at the top. There is one offering the first chapter, which is nice. It’s good to go for a test drive first. There are others pointing to the author’s inspiration, and suggestions on how to get involved with the issue the book presents.

However, these links floating about on the main page, unrelated to the tabs at the top, give the page unnecessary clutter. The viewer is being bombarded with orange links in all capital letters. It would be much better if they had reduced the lengths of the hyperlinks, or better yet, incorporated them into the tabs.

Networking

Way down at the bottom of the page, where no one ever looks, is a tiny little RSS feed button. Just in case you wanted to keep track of the book page. Well that’s helpful. I’d prefer not to have to hire a private detective to find the follow button for me. The reader reviews suggest some sort of community on the web page, but it’s not elaborated upon. There are tour dates provided on the tabs at the top of the page. Essentially, this page has a lot of work to do in the networking department.

Overall

The website looks all right, but after a while, the orange and the squares get to you. No one likes to be pounded in the face with all caps either, and it doesn’t help that they’re clutter. The page could use some reorganizing. Also, the Follow option really needs to be big, bold, and obvious. It’s one of the biggest publicity opportunities any author has on the web, and it absolutely needs to be used.

Dear John

Dear John should come next in this review, according to the top five list. However, the website is exactly the same as the website for “The Last Song.” There is absolutely nothing new here.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Design

The website is artfully simple, with a black on gray template, and a home page displaying the cover of the novel. There are tabs at the bottom for various other pages, such “praise”, “about Stieg Larsson,” and the like. The bar at the top is a constantly changing header that displays numerous positive reviews. The webpage gives the novel a somewhat mysterious feeling, due to its coloration and patterning. Everything on the website is easily accessible, simple, and well thought out.

Information

The website provides a synopsis, as well as reviews, and even a trailer for the upcoming movie. It also provides the first chapter for reading, which is definitely important. The tabs at the bottom for accessing the different information are simple and useful. Again, the website’s simplistic look is surprisingly helpful. All of the information I could want about the book is provided.

Networking

As far as I can tell, this book is already very well known. However, networking is still important. On the main display box of the website, in the lower right corner, are two banners. One reads “Tweet This Page.” That’s good use of networking in Web 2.0, however it’s a little hard to spot. Literally right on top of that banner is another one reading, “Friend Lisbeth on Facebook.” I thought that was a fascinating idea. Lisbeth is the protagonist of the book, and she has a Facebook. That’s not only good for networking, but just an interestingly new idea in general.

Overall

I actually enjoyed this website pretty well. It appeals to the simplicity that I love, without losing any aesthetic appeal. It also doesn’t lack any information, and it provides a fresh idea in networking. This website harnesses the publicity power of the web well, and I think it’s the best-designed site on the list.

Shanghai Girls

Design

The design of this website is actually fairly awkward. At first glance it looks like a big confusing jumble.  It doesn’t have any outstanding or creative design, or any eye catching color patterns. It can’t quite be called simple either, because there is too much happening on just a single page. The design is lackluster, and generally uninteresting, if not even hectic.

Information

There is too much here. There are too many links on the side, and too many reviews scrolling vertically down the page.

On the side of the page are a plethora of links, starting off with a Beef Lo Mein recipe.  I’m sure this has something to do with the book, so it’s probably a well thought out touch. There are two interview links below that, followed by a link to buy the book, and book club questions. A sample chapter is provided as well. There isn’t much that’s really new or interesting here. However, the website manages to provide more information than the website for “The Last Song”–as if that’s difficult.

Networking

There is little to now networking on this page. There is an option to e-mail Lisa See, or to join her mailing list. I found no twitter, Facebook, or RSS feed option on the actual novel page. If you navigate to the home page for Lisa See, there are Facebook and twitter options. However, it would probably be wise to place these on as many pages as possible.

Overall

This website could use a lot of work on its design. That is its major flaw: it is simply uninteresting. The information provided isn’t bad, or boring. Rather, it’s how the information is presented. To harness the power of web publicity, this website needs a pretty big aesthetic overhaul.

One Final Thought

I suppose I expected that the book sites that had been designed by authors rather than publishing houses—the book equivalent of indie music sites—would be more creative, given that the author has more freedom than the publisher.

As it turned out, though, the book website I enjoyed the most, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, was on a publishing-house site. I suppose it’s a sign that those with more corporate resources or backing can produce a flashier website, but even so, it’s disappointing to see the lack of imagination shown by authors creating their own sites.

Either way, it’s clear that web publicity for authors is still in its early growth, and we still have a fairly vast future of progress to look forward to before we can really see how publishers are going to make best use of the Web.