SmartSymbols^tm

A quick video about SmartSymbols for Jothy Rosenberg’s book “Who Says I Can’t”. Enjoy!

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“If you can’t beat them - join them”
- Author Unknown

There seem to be no shortage of bad news and challenges that book publishing industry is facing now. The challenges revolve around the apparent conflict between the traditional print format and the new, electronic media. But if publishing industry embraces the quote at the beginning of this article, it might find itself in a much better position, even better than it was before the conflict has started.

But what are the strategic steps the industry should take in order to become a winner in the new market and technological conditions? Here are some specifics.

Step 1: Lead the Electronic Format
True, some companies have already made an alliance with Apple for the iBook and iPad deals. But what is really needed is for them to embrace the electronic format fully and lead the way. Leading the way is different from the reactive response to new technologies we have seen so far. In Step 1 publishers have a huge advantage over others businesses:
a) they have vast experience in book publishing
b) they have direct connection with authors
c) publishers and authors have an ability to connect directly with their readers

Using these advantages publishers can re-position themselves to become de-facto leaders in any the new format.

Step 2: Add Rich, Multi-dimensional Content
We have written a number of articles on this could be done with SmartSymbols (”Who is the Author“, “Secret of the Compass Icon“, and more), but fundamentally (SmartSymbols or not), new technology allows publishers to aggregate all the marketing and promotional materials and attach it to any book in any format: book trailers and movies based on the book, interviews with authors and book illustration; the list is endless. The key is to figure out what readers really want (here is my tip on that) and make it easy for the readers to access the information.

Step 3: Create Book Eco-sphere
This one is really easy: book fans and book clubs have been around for ages. New technologies, such as SwapTree and GoodReads, makes it even easier for publishers to create very rich book eco-sphere. All publishers really need to do is package Step 1 and Step 2, so we, the readers, can easily access information we are looking for, which is the very foundation of Permission Marketing (probably the most cost-effective marketing approach today).

One Last Point.
Investment in this strategy, or its specific steps, not only addresses immediate survival needs of the publishing industry, but also opens doors to new developments and innovation that will propel books and publishers back to their rightful place as the leaders of one of the most needed and valuable industry in history.

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A way to find out what readers are interested in is to look at the Icon Usage chart in SmartSymbols Analytics. (See picture below).
To get to the chart, simply login and then select the SmartSymbols set you are interested in.

(Click the chart to enlarge the picture)

This simple pie chart shows some pretty valuable information: people who were researching this particular sample book spent most of their time on Author Information (over 12 minutes) and almost equal amount of time on Social Networking buzz (about 9 minutes). The Book Content captured their interest for half the time of either Author Information or Social Networking buzz.

There is another interesting data point in the chart: people spent almost as much time researching the location of the plot of the book (Location/Compass icon - read more on Compass icon usage here) as on the contents of the book. In fact location seem to be of more interest then Reviews and News.

It could be that adding illustrations from the book to your SmartSymbols, as well as pictures of the places where the book is taking place could become a tipping point in the sale process of this particular book.

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Lynn Colwell & Cory Colwell-Lipson’s book Celebrate Green has a unique quality: it’s useful year round. Unlike typical abstract ideas about how to have a more eco-friendly lifestyle in general, the ideas in their book are practical. They are also specific to a particular holiday that’s coming up on the calendar.

Check out their suggestions for the Valentine’s Day for example: “one high quality organic chocolate bar instead of a handful of conventional candy on Valentine’s Day”. It turns out, that organic chocolate bar also tastes a lot better than typical candy, as testified by people who know best - kids.

You can also explore SmartSymbols for Celebrate Green book above. To buy the book simply go here: http://www.celebrategreen.net/buy/

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Here is an example of why SmartSymbols is  a perfect case for book promotion.

1.  Big Dead Place is a book about life in Antarctica from a grunt-contractor point of view.

2.  The book also has an associated website - BigDeadPlace.com, which is a great resource for people who are considering getting to Antarctica as contractors.

3.  Encounters At the End of the World (Discovery Films) is a film by famous director Werner Herzog, about life in the Antarctica from the point of view of people who work there from all walks of life, including scientists, programmers and backhoe operators.

(Image from: http://www.bigdeadplace.com/herzog.html)

4.  BigDeadPlace.com has a review of “Encounters At the End of the World” by Bill Jirsa person who has actually been interviewed by Werner Herzog in the movie.

Now, these four different pieces of information are completely invisible if you just look at the book in an online bookstore (or a physical one for that matter).  Also, as the book publisher, I would probably want people to know, that one of my site contributors have been interviewed by Werner Herzog in a famous movie.  Lastly, if you were to look at those 5 links separately, you cannot see how they can be related to one another.  And the important thing here, is that the book is not at all a stand alone item - the author is truly plugged-in into all things Antarctic and obviously is a true authority on the subject.

This is a perfect case where SmartSymbols could shine and bring forward all the wonderful things that the book and aggregate all separate pieces of information into a coherent and powerful marketing message.

Can you think of another book that fits this profile?

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“Sweet Poison: Why Sugar Makes Us Fat” is a book by Australian author David Gillespie.  The book is an interesting research into how sugar contributes to the wight problem, as well as to the overall health problem.  David has done a lot of research and has been interviewed by many news organization on the subject.  He has Facebook fan pages, Twitter followers and up-to-date blog.

We are fortunate that David chose to use SmartSymbols for book promotion on his blog: http://www.raisin-hell.com/, he uses the vertical version of SmartSymbols because it fits neatly into the sidebar of his blog platform.

Hover over the icons to see more information. This is from the reviews section: “What’s impressive about Sweet Poison is that Gillespie turns complex research on what happens to food inside our body and its relation to weight gain into a good read.” — Sydney Morning Herald —

An interesting side-story has emerged while we were working with David’s book information. It turns out that it is not easy to buy his book in the US, but at least we can benefit from some of his research if we listen to his interviews and read people’s comments on various social networks - SmartSymbols presents this information in one place in an easy-to-find way. “Sweet Poison” also a has personal side to it, but I don’t want to spoil it here. Check out David’s blog and his book site, and of course - explore SmartSymbols to learn more about “Sweet Poison”.

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We have officially released a symbol set for books: “SmartSymbols Offers Advanced Marketing Solution for Book Publishers and Authors“. It looks like this:






Here is the excerpt from the press release:

“This new industry-focused symbol set organizes real time social network and social media content, book reviews, interactive maps of the story’s geographic locations, calendar of events, video based author bios and both written and audio book excerpts for display across any number of Web-based environments including: ecommerce sites, publisher and author Web sites, blogs and mobile devices.


SmartSymbols™ social media marketing support includes real time feed capabilities from Twitter, Facebook and blog/RSS. SmartSymbols™ is the only author and book publishing marketing tool to combine traditional internal marketing material with external social media marketing strategies, bringing the total book community experience to all points of distribution.”

You can see a full demo here: http://www.smartsymbols.com/demo.html

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“What this means is that we shouldn’t abbreviate the truth but rather get a new method of presentation. ” - Edward Tufte

In addition to the Compass icon , that we discussed in the Secret of the Compass Icon article, SmartSymbols for Books has a number of other interesting icons. In this article we will discuss the Author icon .

Author Icon
Author icon provides basic summary about the author, such as his or her bio, books they have written and additional books related to the one you are viewing. An example would be an audio version of a book and other books in the series. You can see Author icon in action below, just put your mouse over to activate.

The neat thing about the Author icon is that you can put up-to-date interactive information right there. Example: a map of book signings for this week, something that is very easy to do with SmartSymbols - all we need is dates/times and locations; the map will show up automatically. Because all updates are instant anywhere SmartSymbols are displayed - you can update the info as often as you wish.

Other Uses
If you would like to collect feedback from readers and route it to the author, you can put a message textbox right into the icon pop-up to simplify the process.
In addition, you can pipe-in a feed directly from the author’s website.

There are many possibilities for the Author icon, the key is to figure out which information is the most interesting and relevant for your readers and site or blog visitors.

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SmartSymbols offers a Compass icon, it looks like this: (here is the link to a larger subset ).

There are many good ways you can use it - show where your dealers are located, or where your book’s plot is taking place via Google Maps.

But there is another way you can use Compass icon - highlight the neat places where your product is being used. It could be particularly powerful if the location is distant and interesting - it allows your visitor’s mind explore and wander, it adds a completely different aura to your product.


Here is What I Mean
Find out (or if you know this - that’s even better!) if there is an expedition in some exotic location, and one of the explorers is using your product, be it a camera, a jacket or a book. For example: if you make cameras - maybe Discovery’s Blue Planet has been using it in some of their most interesting diving locations?

If you build cars - are they delivering humanitarian supplies somewhere to someone in need? And of course, if you write travel books - what is so great about the places you are writing about, show us some pictures, highlights, historical facts - something - but only when we ask. (That is one of the wonderful things about interactive icons approach )


Interactive Maps
Of course you can embed interactive maps into the Compass icon, Google Maps for example. The neat thing about Google Maps is that you can overlay destination information, such as photographs. Here is an example of a photo set from Carcassonne.



The beauty of this approach is that all this information is hidden behind the Compass icon, and it is only displayed to the website visitor when s/he is looking for it, which is the very foundation of permission marketing.

Takeaway
Compass icon can be a strong customer engagement tool if you use it creatively. Yes, you can display dealer locations and retailer outlets where your product is sold. But don’t stop there - use this powerful technology to extract your visitors from mundane minutia of the day and carry them to exotic places, connect them to interesting people and build product associations that last.

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