The water that i talk about the 5 million per while it often comes back up and they have to treat it or send it back down they are not using that that is what causes tremors. The danger as i mentioned earlier the chemicals get into the system and the Scientists Say that its unlikely but you never know. There are risks to driving when you go to my unfortunately. They are balancing the risks with the benefits and there are all kinds of benefits from energy. At the bp oils though people are not saying that we should stop using cars as a result. They are saying that was a mistake and they should pay for it an and a half, but we will go back to looking for oil elsewhere and different kinds of places. Because the fracking it touches a nerve because it is in peoples backyards and i understand that. So there is no guarantee here or in life its sort of like surgery or something else, driving a car theres risks involved as a nation are we embracing those risks into dealing witin dealingwith thosee that the risks will be reduced. If instead of condemning these guys we work with them and pressure them. Should i take one more . Does fracking use water as a pressure and also, the chemical if it can be 100 cycled unfortunately not. They are working on it in Big Companies like apache are working on ways to recycle the water and i would argue if it was more expensive for them than they would spend more time working on recycling, but we are not cute at that point we can recycle 100 of the water and reuse it but we will get to that point. I will be here and i can talk to people individually if you have any questions i would be glad to take them. [applause] from the 2013 book festival in maryland a panel on the book industry. This is about 45 minutes. Wel todays panel is calledblisr connecting authors and readers. We will be discussing how publishers, writers, the media. And booksellers help readers discover new books and authors. Panel without further ado i willthe ya introduce the panel and then let them tell you about what they do. My to my right is taryn roeder. She manages the boston team and works in the publicity campaignd for an nonfiction and fiction books. S the bestselling authors includl paul, Temple Brandon and the late anthony. N Peter Schweitzer and justinwasht torres. She was based in washington,on d. C. And she has writing fromatt the university of maryland. Next to her is suzanne coll s committee advanced program at pt director at politics and prose. R shes the author of four novels including acceptance that was made into a television moviee. Starring john cusack. Published in july. Cryingn next to her is katie dvorak with washington independent books all t that publishes reviews every weekday and coversh. She also works as a copy editor for the hell and can be found reading and cheering on various sports teams that might. Last but not east is that dan patrick the book editor at the washingtonian magazine and her book reviews appear in publications such as the Washington Post, people and o magazine. She blogged about books like publishers weekly, aol and barnes and noble. Shes an active Media Presence and you can find her at the book maven on twitter and she has the hash tag. It shes currently working on a novel. Now i will ask the panel to take a minute to briefly explain what it is they do, tell you what their job title is and then explain how they connect with authors and readers quickly answer simply. When i was trying to find my way in publishing, i didnt know what i wanted to do and then i realized there was a role i could work with authors and journalists talking about books all the time and i was like id want to do that i want to send authors around the country and talk about their books and get their books out there to their readers and connect them to the real people buying the books so it was the Perfect Place for me to do all that. I get to work with the authors before the books come out and find out the best way to roll out the book come and talk to the media and of course i love journalists of all colors and stripes. I read a lot these authors around the country to find out how to get their book back the there. I always dreamed of having a job that would have something to do with books. Be careful what you wish for. Now i have a job my desk is be read in advanced copies of books and there is more out there than were able to fit into the bookstore Programs Department which is a Great Program to have. My job is overseeing everything Program Related the story that means classes and trips trying to find ways to use authors we cant fit into the Event Program and to try into even grow the Program Beyond what you see in the store where we have a completely packed calendar with events seven days a week so we are looking for ways to expand that and that is what i do. In the social media director for the independent review. We were founded in 2011 at the site dedicated to book reviews and features and we are all volunteers so im just a volunteer. I have a day job that i do this for fun. Everyone says it is a labor of love that im on twitter and facebook to grow the audience to let people know that we exist and connect through social med media. I am currently the editor of the washingtonian magazine which is a wonderful job i wish it could be a fulltime job but i wish it could take up 20 pages of the magazine when there is so much with advertising and that will happen but in the meantime i do other things and one of those is to maintain an active social Media Presence and through friday connects a lot of different people with books everyone else is reading. Its something im passionate about. Im working on a book proposal right now for a Nonfiction Book about women and reading because i am so passionate about it and i will continue to look for new ways to work in this world. Ive done a little bit of everything and i find we have so much to discuss im not sure how we will get through it but im happy to see you all and thank you for coming out. As you see from the brief descriptions we have a good variety of people that cover Different Things in the industry and one of the pieces we havent talked about is the advertising world but there is advertising in Book Publishing i want to tell a quick anecdote. My first job in Book Publishing i thought i dont really know what im doing. I thought you just have a good tagline and you can sell a book like that so i said what is simple, straightforward and to the point and i came up with buying this book and wont kill you. I announced it at a meeting and it was rejected without discussion and that ended by advertising career that i use that as an illustration is not a very good way to sell books. Maybe we can start with beth. What are the more effective ways you found to find readers to pick up a book lacks it is true word of mouth is still the most effective way to get books out and so what i would say in my experience anything that helps replicate or expand on that word of mouth thats why i think social media has been so fantastic. The social media experience feels like youre talking to someone in a meaningful way and we can dissect whether or not things are meaningful or not. But that is what happens and so i really feel social media has made it much easier to. I dont doubt o know out on thef that translates into sales. It translates into people milling about the book and a lot of them may still borrow it from a library or get it from a friend. I would agree with that. Social media has been great because it is free so you can reach a huge audience and pay nothing for it. If you want to you can do the ads on facebook we have been doing recently and it will target people and the expense for doing that is cheap. We have to use every resource we can on the internet to get the word out and social media is the perfect way to do that. You come from the bookseller perspective and also an author thierry at what even anecdotally have you heard from friends and readers the people that have picked up your book and humidity book signing kind of stuff things that have been effective. Besides it is a fabulous story and they love books. Books. Driving to the store i think social media definitely does drive people to the events program. And its a little bit cyclical because when people are scheduled for an event if they are coming through town, they often wind up on some other capacity often that will drive the Washington Post to profile the author so it does sometimes generate actual publicity that turns people into the store so the social media does work in that respect. Thats why im always telling my authors dont be shy. You have to make a list of anybody that you would invite to your wedding and then tell them all about your book. Tell them whatever you want to tell them if you want to send an email or twitter or facebook. They talk about the books that they love and i think the people that follow me know that im collective and im not talking about every single thing and i hope that word of mouth is spreading the news. Traditional media is very important way to get people into the store. Reviews in the New York Times book review and interviews on the National Public radio are key. That is a sort of book buying audience that cares about it and i have seen that move the needle in terms of the books. The washingtonian makes a huge difference. There should be plenty of pages. Its true what you say that does put a lot of pressure on the author especially who doesnt like to go around bragging. I was thinking id just written a book and i hope that no one notices. So ive learned that isnt really the right strategy. [laughter] i get authors coming to me saying what should i do come and i dont actually be read there is necessarily anything to do, but if you had to pick just one thing what is the best way to sell a book, what would you all say . The number one thing you should do is be nice to your publicist . Pick a medium. Argue still the driving force behind the books . Told that its npr and that the radio is the Gold Standard about my publicist do you think that is because they are harder to come by . There is less review space and people will listen to npr more than they will sit down and read a book review however i would say the one thing i dont know if this is what you are thinking of but the one thing an author can do is to have a really good and robust email list that they can use to send out news. Im appearing here. Im going to be on npr. There is a sale on my book. A good list like that. Its people that can Pay Attention and been told to their friends and so on and so forth. I couldnt agree more. If you can pick a thing to get you have now stepped across the aisle and you are on the traditional oldschool mainstream whatever you want to call it you are now thats person reviewing books. How important is the book review . It really depends on where it is. It does matter i think in the magazines that like the washingtonian that care about books because you know that what we have chosen is something that weve chosen for our audience. We are not just throwing anything against the wall to see what sticks not saying that there arent publications like that. [laughter] you just know that we are carefully bringing you the best of whats out there. Thats what people need today. We dont have time for any of us to read about every single book. We have to have things. We have to have things curated for us. I think radio is important, but its all about making sure that whatever you are consuming is the best. There is no right or wrong. One thing i tell my clients often is to me you want to get print coverage of your book because the people that are reading the press coverage art technically they are readers. Cspan as i do sometimes i feel that radio is a better vehicle. We know how many eyes are what genuine. Everyone wants to be on tv because it tv. Its fancy. But the best thing about tv for me is that a lot of people see it, other needy a see it. So again i am just curious about that. To move onto a different piece there is no question to me that the reading world has become more segmented. We are living in a sort of right now moment twitter is beyond exploded. Its here and its not going anywhere. Its the antithesis of a book. Is it hard to sell a longform product . Talking about the tv sound bites and as opposed to im not sure how you find that and i dont mean this like an oldschool long format world in the short Attention Span. They would be telling me that the 20 minute interview they had on the today show and i would have to say that isnt going to happen. But i thin think thats what basically theres just so much more media. Media. Theres more books and theres more media. And i think one of the ways to sort of combat this short Attention Span is that we have to be thinking about the books quality of the media and the quantity which is why another thing i would say is yes, say yes to the interviews even if it isnt national because we need to have you everywhere supported by other stuff so that everywhere people look they are seeing you. How do you work being in the publication that is strictly online but also you are in the new world of dealing with the old world one of the things you have to do is book reviews which by nature are fairly long but what other stuff do you do, how do you cater to the social media bringing someone through small means to the bigger things . I think that while book reviews are important and we often branch out as well and a lot of times what we will do is have a review so you can read the interview and on twitter and facebook yes you are limited to the amount of characters but you are also reaching the community that they want to read. They are not the people that are good to pass over it so if you like with social media you can reach those people that love to read and want to have longer pieces and i think that is the great thing about the social media and the digital age that you can reach a specific audience very easily. That is a good point you want to reach the avid readers. You have to be an avid reader, the someone that is out there buying books and going to events and paying attention and reading reviews as well because if you are someone that is only reading one or two books a year and then you write a book, you dont know that much about what everyone else is reading and how they are consuming and they will learn a lot if you become a really good reader. I do think that literary citizenship is worth thinking about and talking about with regardless to what you think of as what it should be. But i do think that the authors, when you want them out there, they need to know what its like. That is a good point. I have a young daughter in kindergarten and every day they are like read. I think that is really importa important. I sort of noticed the trend seems to be online. I was able to cater more to the fastpaced soundbites of the world. You look at book coverage like the daily beast or huffingtonpost e. And even on the washington review. You see more slide shows that tell us what your novel is a. Is there a way that we can sort of used a smal years the sf twitter to get people into the buck can you get them to expand their horizons . That is a way to reach the younger generation. I know a lot of my friends and the people i talk to online like to get that kind of information through twitter. Maybe this will help you pick up the strike because i know what that is like. Its not being a millennial. I happen to go to my local coffee shop and someone was left united rhapsody magazine and there was a piece by the marketing expert and he is a really interesting and about the storytelling you cant tell the story anymore in the advertising terms they talk about how dont tell us how the green giant grew but you have to let them tell about your experiences with green bean casserole but in the course he says something really important to publishing. Melanie also are accustomed to a different kind of storytelling. Its not beginning on the middle and end anymore. People got into the worlds online and they want to live in those worlds and experience them and its like i remember this a long time ago thinking i dont want to win i just wan when i jg out in this world for a while. And its the same thing with all of these Online Gaming experiences and worlds and places you cant go into. I think the idea of what a story is is actually cracking and changing and that can be good or bad but it has a lot of effect on the Attention Span and what we decide to read and consume and how we find out about the stories. It was something to Pay Attention to. Find something that you are most comfortable with. What are you feeling like these days . Thats not one of my strengths. I am trying to be a little more aggressive about it. I think two books ago the publicist said that for me a Facebook Page and a twitter account and im only now just trying to learn the account and the Facebook Page. Im going to do image better job in this book but if i can go back to what we were talking about with short Attention Spans and the declining readership, i know about sand prose is in a really privileged position right now and results probably being in washington, d. C. In a very literate book buying communities that there are still people out there we have an amazing turnout for events for the most boring books i sometimes cant believe we have booked an event for. 100 people will turn out, so there are still readers out there. Its not all doom and gloom. What is the feeling about this . I know a number of publishers both existing publishers and new publishers are trying to cage that in this sort of war that is going on . I havent been hearing about that. We are committed to the books editors want to bu bite and a ne selection of fiction and nonfiction. People have to love it, but i think that we are still publishing the stuff that we want to publish. What are you telling them as far as the social media and stuff . Are you encouraging them to do as much as possible, or you sort of are you feeling personally at you like a vehicle such as twitter. They set up these things and i dont think that anybody is doing that anymore because it has to be author driven and genuine and thats why they want to read tumbler and facebook and they want to know why they are changing. They want to know whats going on with the family. They want to know whats behind the scenes. It has to be dynamic in that way. And i wouldnt i certainly encourage an author to be doing as much as they want to or are giving but im not going to say you have a book now and youd only have 40 facebook friends so you have to ramp up and do everything because they are not going to. Im not suggesting they try one and focus on that if it is not going to be then they shouldnt do it because it will disappoint people that there is only one post up there. But it is a disservice to themselves and their book to not be connecting in the way so many other authors are going to be doing. To make the twitter account or the facebook account under their own name not under the name of the book because it really does have to beat you. Be you. It has to be the author talking. Its not in sort of, you know, an artificial baits endquotes in the book. Someone that treats Dorothy Parker quotes into that sort of thing but for the most part it really has to be genuine and from the author. If you coun found the book down peoples throats they say here is this person shoving their book again. Its part of the conversation. I think thats kind of hard though because not every author is a great personality. Some are just vibrant and funny and others are not. They put everything into their book or maybe their book is about something totally different. So as she was saying, you cant force it. You cant force any offer to do the social media stuff. So they have to be open to something because we need all the help that we can get. I agree with the vast. You have to know the twitter trend is younger and facebook is older. Right now it is still up in the air to teenagers and people in college that one would follow because they are not on twitter as much and they are not as interested in facebook. So if your audience is on a certain platform it might be better to pay more attention to that platform. Its cuttin cuttingedge justd h. Are of what it is. She has done a good job of different places and good reads does. If you found that they really work and it opens up in the panel are some of the things to avoid . The it is very hit and miss. We have a small audience and we are trying to grow it. They dont really search for things on facebook. They find it through friend sharing. I think the ads work while. We can sign up for the newsletter as well as follow us on social media. That really works. We went on to bigger an the trie contacted him and he actually had a beth he has millions of followers and its crazy how many he has. They are giving away a copy of the book and just seeing him so involved was really great. Who has a good story about something that was an effective . Well, one of the things that is an effective is that when you do something and people dont understand what its all about and what the purpose is to disable the Marketing Business and people didnt understand and they thought that they were being advanced. This was being sent to publishers. And i got bad press from that. Now they do that automatically. They collect every one and it doesnt matter if youve told them anything or not they are in Silicon Valley and they do it better than i did. So its really interesting, the shift and people thinking i dont want to do this and have someone use it to everyone going online and thinking someone is using it to make money so that is another that has gone on in the past two or three years i think. People now just assume that when they go online that their data is being to the audience questions i am just curious we are talking about connecting authors and readers. We will find out here in a minute i just wonder if you have any tips how they could and cover themselves. Not fancy or tricky but if it is the next book or offer that they want to read, love and enjoy. I could give you the oldschool answer. They trust the opinions of the booksellers that they ask for them by name and we will just stack up whatever books they recommend. So i think there still is power in the oldfashioned way of selling books. That is a brilliant point since we dont call it handson but i think everyone on the panel does. Selling a book to a producer or the today show or every individual person on the twitter feed. Its one of the Key Takeaways you have to get out there and people have to know about the book and publish the book cellar, the social media. It really does begin with the publicist because the way that the books get into the store and the Event Program is when we meet with the publicists and they are selling the books to us and we get excited about them and thats really where it all begins i think. Definitely find something that gives you the experience susan talked about. If youre not near an independent bookstore you can get to kno know one online and t to know the store that knows your takes. That means following a particular publication or book blog who really appreciates the kind of books that you love and reach out. Thats the beauty of social media and everything online is you want, you know, you love the cozy mysteries. Follow the blogger that knows very well about them and you can email them and say i need more recommendations, since they might either give you a list or send you one to another competitor, et cetera. I am putting stuff up on the washingtonian site all the time and when i put out my top ten books each month i would say email us or put a comment and if there is something that you dont see or that you would like to see or add so there are lots of ways to make your voice heard as a reader. I would agree with not being afraid to use the social media for that kind of thing. You can follow certain authors and they will know when they have their next book coming out. There are a lot of publications that we could write about that mr. Reed or romance novel. You can read the independent online. So thats always a good way. Im a newspaper person so i always say selfreport. They read their book sections and book news. Im going to put you on the spot. I love the book industry that one of the things i dont like is that we do very Little Market research. So im going to do research by the show of hands how many people out in the audience by ten bucks or more a year . [cheering] easily i say 60, 75 of the people. How many by more than five clicks if you bought more than ten so we also have a very literate crowd out here. If you pick one of the four choices what is the main reason that you buy a book is it because what about such personal recommendations is one oldschool reviews and interviews and the online social media or the fourth choice is other so by a show of hands and you can only pick one are you most likely to buy a book because of word of mouth . Interesting a small number of people . Used in interviews . Really [laughter] online social media . We still have jobs. Online social media. Something else i havent mentioned . [inaudible] the the library. Its nice for us to know because you sit there in your home and office or cubicle or wherever you are and you think whats going on out there so its nice to know people are buying books and how you are learning with the books. If anybody in the audience has a question and for the folks please come up to the microphone if you are going to ask a question. Can we talk about amazon reviews for a moment . I pay a lot of attention to them and ive written a couple hundred of myself great if they can be very positive, very negative, very useful, there can be some brilliant and some idiotic. I get a lot of value out of them. What one of you are all of you like to comment about how they play into your scheme on whether you love them or hate them . I will even expand. Youre asking about amazon reviews and how they affect peoples buying habits. Every product now is being reviewed online. How is it affecting your lives and what you think about them as a consumer . I think if they are honest and they are bubbling up organically, then its useful for the reader because if you get the accumulative math and theres certain opinions expressed and its useful but i think a lot of times the downside is that you get a lot of crazy people out there that go on amazon and gave no stars because the book took too long to arrive. Its not very well felt hurt. And then at the other end if you have people that are very good at sport of promoting their own books, they can also gather enough force. So i dont they are useful but also you need to know what youre looking at when youre using that as the gauge of whether or not this is the book that you would be interested in. The problem with this for books and my husband is a big Online Review fan. This is important for books. A proper review will tell you about something fully. It isnt necessarily saying just i loved it or i hated it. Its actually telling you something about the book thats meaningful, and theres a takeaway in it. But amazon, it calls them all reviews. I wish they would call them amazon recommendations. That would be so much more accurate because thats really there are not, im sure, sir, that your, you know, are really well written, and there are people who write, who take the time to write reviews on amazon, but those are few and far between. Yeah. I agree with everything you just said. [laughter] so i guess the general feeling is, chime in, take it with a grain of salt. Like everything. Yeah. You know, i sort of feel the if you want to buy a book, you dont necessarily not buy it because you read a bad review. I wouldnt buy everything you see or not buy it because you got bad reviews. Its one piece i sort of describe as, its one quiver one arrow in your quiver of reasons to and not to buy a book. Right. Well, and clearly, it has a lot of power. I mean, when i go on yelp and see, you know, a lot of or stars, i filter that differently because thats not the business im in. With the increasing importance of thats okay, sweetie, of rider selfpromotion how is important is it to align yourself with a large wellknown Publishing House or a specialty, you know, if you are riding held to buy childrens books or a dry childrens books should you be looking to do that. I am wondering importance of that. Well, i mean, the thing that large publisher can do for you is get your book into bookstores and get out of the media and distributed everywhere that you wanted to be distributed. That does not necessarily mean that it will all smedley be more successful than the self published or Small Press Book that an author knows how to do, if the author can do the same thing for him or herself, but, you know, you are starting, you have a running start. Again, social media, the stigma no longer tests to sell publishing the way it had been back in the days of when it was called vanity press now its more just entrepreneurial publishing, certainly i have seen cases of self published authors to have done very well. There are a lot of reasons to just be wanting to have the freedom to do what you want to do and not be relied on the system. I actually think that a lot of authors to decide that they want to go