I will write a more in-depth follow-up as soon as I can calm down enough to do so, but for now, I'll just reprint what's supposed to be displaying for anyone who visits Publetariat.com right now. It isn't displaying as I write this, because the site is so trashed that nothing works there anymore.
-------------------------
As regular site visitors already know, Publetariat has been repeatedly targeted by hackers over the past few months. The most recent of these attacks occurred on 4/16/13, and has broken the site in numerous ways.
As a totally non-profit, volunteer-staffed site, Publetariat lacks the resources and staffing to keep recovering from these malicious attacks. The site is currently not accessible or properly functional, though its content is still contained in the site's database. But even if I can rebuild the site, it seems likely that another malicious attack will bring it down in a matter of weeks. For that reason, I'm trying to decide if it's even worth the effort to try. I hate to let the hackers win, but I also can't make a career out of fighting them.
It's devastating to see something I've poured my heart and soul into being destroyed like this. Still, I'm glad Publetariat played its part in the indie author revolution, and has helped so many of you.
Anyone who's very knowledgeable in Drupal and can volunteer to work on fixing the site, or migrating it from Drupal to Wordpress: please email me at indieauthor@gmail.com.
Sincerely, And Sadly,
April L. Hamilton
Publetariat Founder / Editor in Chief
Showing posts with label Publetariat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Publetariat. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Why Responsible Aggregation Is Not Only NOT Evil, But A GOOD Thing
There’s a lot of hue and cry against online aggregation circulating around the interwebs these days, and I really don’t get it.
Aggregator sites reprint excerpts from other sites’ articles and blog posts, along with a ‘keep reading’ or ‘read the rest’ link to the source article/blog post. The more responsible aggregators also include the name of the author, and the most considerate ones also include links to the author’s website or blog and a link to the home page of the site where the article or post originally appeared.
If an aggregator site prints an entire article or blog post, or 50% or greater of the article/post without the author’s permission, well that’s just theft. If the ‘read the rest’ link opens the source web page in a window controlled by the aggregator, that’s tantamount to theft since it appears to the viewer as if he or she hasn’t left the aggregator site; worse yet, most such windowing systems don’t make it easy for the viewer to escape from the aggregator’s window. They may click links on the source site, but the linked pages still open up in the aggregator’s window. As a web consumer, I find those aggregator windows incredibly annoying and have come to avoid following links provided by such aggregators.
If an aggregator fails to credit the author when printing an excerpt and ‘read the rest’ link, it’s depriving the author of his or her due and that’s wrong, too. If an aggregator surrounds aggregated material with lots of paid advertising, particularly advertising with which the authors of aggregated material might take issue, that’s also an abuse of the authors’ material. But if the excerpt is brief, the author is credited, a ‘read the rest’ link is provided back to the source article without wrapping it in the aggregator’s window, links are provided to the author’s website (where available) and the home page of the site where the aggregated material originally appeared, and advertising surrounding aggregated material is minimal and non-offensive, with very few exceptions (e.g., aggregation of material the author is offering for sale) I really don’t understand why authors or anyone else should have a problem with it.
Publetariat, a site I founded and for which I’m Editor in Chief, has a mix of both original and aggregated material. The site focuses on content for indie authors and small imprints, and operates on a ‘we scour the web for relevant articles so you don’t have to’ sort of paradigm while also providing a discussion board area and member profiles with blogging capability. Every weekday at about 11am PST, I tweet a link to the site with the titles of articles posted to the site for that day. My tweet is often retweeted by my Twitter followers, but I’ve noticed another phenomenon going on: some people retweet, but only after changing the link to point directly to the source article. They seem to be making a pointed, if somewhat passive, statement against Publetariat’s aggregation, but I don’t know why they feel the need to do so since Publetariat is providing a service to both the author and readers.
Publetariat is a heavily-trafficked and well-respected site in the publishing world, and it gets several thousand unique visitors every week. It also gets thousands of RSS feed hits every month. The site has a traffic rank in the top 2% of all sites worldwide, and a Technorati blog rank in the top .2%. In other words, getting your material on the front page of the Publetariat site gets you a LOT of exposure to a highly targeted audience of authors and publishers. Let’s look at a specific example.
My blog post entitled “Self-Publishing: Future Prerequisite” was published on my blog on 9/22/09 and cross-posted to the Publetariat site the same day. To date, the post on my blog has received 221 hits. Not too shabby. But the same post on Publetariat has received 709 hits: over three times as many reads. In the current climate, in which authors are supposed to be doing everything they can to attract readership and attention, why wouldn’t they want three times as many readers for their content? And if you’re an author services provider, such as an editor, book doctor or promotional consultant, why wouldn’t you want three times as many authors to know about you and your site?
To date, there have only been two authors/webmasters who’ve asked to have their aggregated material removed from the Publetariat site, and both times, Publetariat has complied with the request. But I will never understand why those authors/webmasters are turning down an opportunity for such highly-targeted, free exposure from a responsible aggregator.
When Publetariat aggregates, we credit the author, provide a ‘read the rest’ link that isn’t wrapped in a Publetariat window, provide a link to the author’s own website where available, provide a link to the home page of the site on which the aggregated material originally appeared, and sometimes even provide links to buy the author’s books or other merchandise---and these are not affiliate links, Publetariat isn’t making any money on those click-throughs. We do everything we can to ensure both the author and the site where the article originally appeared will benefit from being aggregated on Publetariat.
What about advertising? Isn’t Publetariat profiting from aggregation through its site advertising, and not sharing that profit with the bloggers and authors who’ve made it possible? While Publetariat does carry paid advertising, from the day the site launched to today, despite our impressive traffic stats we’ve received a grand total of about US$65 in ad revenue. All the rest of the advertising on the site consists of public service announcements and traded links. Advertising revenue isn’t even enough to cover our hosting expense.
So, it’s clear that Publetariat is a responsible aggregator. You can also see what Publetariat has to offer an author of aggregated material, and that Publetariat isn’t profiting financially from aggregation. But there’s one more facet to explore here: why it’s better for a reader to discover a given blog post or article aggregated on Publetariat instead of on the source site or blog.
When a reader visits my blog, they’re getting my content only. That’s great for me, but somewhat limiting for them. If they come across my blog posts on Publetariat, they’re also getting exposure to lots of articles and blog posts from my fellow authors, author service providers, publishers and more. Sometimes, they’re seeing material relevant to writers that originated from a site they weren’t at all likely to discover on their own because it’s not a site geared specifically to writers. It’s like going to a great party that’s filled with fascinating people and discussions, any of which you’d love to know more about, and having introductions to those people and discussions made on your behalf by the host of the party.
People who retweet links to Publetariat’s aggregated material only after editing the link to point directly to the source site are leading their Twitter followers away from the party, and depriving them of everything else Publetariat has to offer.
A last objection that’s sometimes raised is the matter of click-throughs. Some will argue that the click-through rate on ‘read the rest’ links is low, that many visitors to the aggregator site will only read the posted excerpt. This is true, but every reader who does click through is a reader you didn’t have before your piece was aggregated.
So if Publetariat or any other site wants to aggregate your material, so long as the aggregator site is higher-profile than your own site/blog and they intend to aggregate responsibly (with proper credit and links, no wrapper window, no offensive advertising), it’s not evil. It’s the easiest free promotion you can get.
And if you’d like your site or blog to be on Publetariat’s list of available sources for aggregated or reprinted material, post your name and a link in the comments section, below, along with your preference for having your material merely excerpted with a ‘read the rest’ link, or reprinted in full on the site.
Aggregator sites reprint excerpts from other sites’ articles and blog posts, along with a ‘keep reading’ or ‘read the rest’ link to the source article/blog post. The more responsible aggregators also include the name of the author, and the most considerate ones also include links to the author’s website or blog and a link to the home page of the site where the article or post originally appeared.
If an aggregator site prints an entire article or blog post, or 50% or greater of the article/post without the author’s permission, well that’s just theft. If the ‘read the rest’ link opens the source web page in a window controlled by the aggregator, that’s tantamount to theft since it appears to the viewer as if he or she hasn’t left the aggregator site; worse yet, most such windowing systems don’t make it easy for the viewer to escape from the aggregator’s window. They may click links on the source site, but the linked pages still open up in the aggregator’s window. As a web consumer, I find those aggregator windows incredibly annoying and have come to avoid following links provided by such aggregators.
If an aggregator fails to credit the author when printing an excerpt and ‘read the rest’ link, it’s depriving the author of his or her due and that’s wrong, too. If an aggregator surrounds aggregated material with lots of paid advertising, particularly advertising with which the authors of aggregated material might take issue, that’s also an abuse of the authors’ material. But if the excerpt is brief, the author is credited, a ‘read the rest’ link is provided back to the source article without wrapping it in the aggregator’s window, links are provided to the author’s website (where available) and the home page of the site where the aggregated material originally appeared, and advertising surrounding aggregated material is minimal and non-offensive, with very few exceptions (e.g., aggregation of material the author is offering for sale) I really don’t understand why authors or anyone else should have a problem with it.
Publetariat, a site I founded and for which I’m Editor in Chief, has a mix of both original and aggregated material. The site focuses on content for indie authors and small imprints, and operates on a ‘we scour the web for relevant articles so you don’t have to’ sort of paradigm while also providing a discussion board area and member profiles with blogging capability. Every weekday at about 11am PST, I tweet a link to the site with the titles of articles posted to the site for that day. My tweet is often retweeted by my Twitter followers, but I’ve noticed another phenomenon going on: some people retweet, but only after changing the link to point directly to the source article. They seem to be making a pointed, if somewhat passive, statement against Publetariat’s aggregation, but I don’t know why they feel the need to do so since Publetariat is providing a service to both the author and readers.
Publetariat is a heavily-trafficked and well-respected site in the publishing world, and it gets several thousand unique visitors every week. It also gets thousands of RSS feed hits every month. The site has a traffic rank in the top 2% of all sites worldwide, and a Technorati blog rank in the top .2%. In other words, getting your material on the front page of the Publetariat site gets you a LOT of exposure to a highly targeted audience of authors and publishers. Let’s look at a specific example.
My blog post entitled “Self-Publishing: Future Prerequisite” was published on my blog on 9/22/09 and cross-posted to the Publetariat site the same day. To date, the post on my blog has received 221 hits. Not too shabby. But the same post on Publetariat has received 709 hits: over three times as many reads. In the current climate, in which authors are supposed to be doing everything they can to attract readership and attention, why wouldn’t they want three times as many readers for their content? And if you’re an author services provider, such as an editor, book doctor or promotional consultant, why wouldn’t you want three times as many authors to know about you and your site?
To date, there have only been two authors/webmasters who’ve asked to have their aggregated material removed from the Publetariat site, and both times, Publetariat has complied with the request. But I will never understand why those authors/webmasters are turning down an opportunity for such highly-targeted, free exposure from a responsible aggregator.
When Publetariat aggregates, we credit the author, provide a ‘read the rest’ link that isn’t wrapped in a Publetariat window, provide a link to the author’s own website where available, provide a link to the home page of the site on which the aggregated material originally appeared, and sometimes even provide links to buy the author’s books or other merchandise---and these are not affiliate links, Publetariat isn’t making any money on those click-throughs. We do everything we can to ensure both the author and the site where the article originally appeared will benefit from being aggregated on Publetariat.
What about advertising? Isn’t Publetariat profiting from aggregation through its site advertising, and not sharing that profit with the bloggers and authors who’ve made it possible? While Publetariat does carry paid advertising, from the day the site launched to today, despite our impressive traffic stats we’ve received a grand total of about US$65 in ad revenue. All the rest of the advertising on the site consists of public service announcements and traded links. Advertising revenue isn’t even enough to cover our hosting expense.
So, it’s clear that Publetariat is a responsible aggregator. You can also see what Publetariat has to offer an author of aggregated material, and that Publetariat isn’t profiting financially from aggregation. But there’s one more facet to explore here: why it’s better for a reader to discover a given blog post or article aggregated on Publetariat instead of on the source site or blog.
When a reader visits my blog, they’re getting my content only. That’s great for me, but somewhat limiting for them. If they come across my blog posts on Publetariat, they’re also getting exposure to lots of articles and blog posts from my fellow authors, author service providers, publishers and more. Sometimes, they’re seeing material relevant to writers that originated from a site they weren’t at all likely to discover on their own because it’s not a site geared specifically to writers. It’s like going to a great party that’s filled with fascinating people and discussions, any of which you’d love to know more about, and having introductions to those people and discussions made on your behalf by the host of the party.
People who retweet links to Publetariat’s aggregated material only after editing the link to point directly to the source site are leading their Twitter followers away from the party, and depriving them of everything else Publetariat has to offer.
A last objection that’s sometimes raised is the matter of click-throughs. Some will argue that the click-through rate on ‘read the rest’ links is low, that many visitors to the aggregator site will only read the posted excerpt. This is true, but every reader who does click through is a reader you didn’t have before your piece was aggregated.
So if Publetariat or any other site wants to aggregate your material, so long as the aggregator site is higher-profile than your own site/blog and they intend to aggregate responsibly (with proper credit and links, no wrapper window, no offensive advertising), it’s not evil. It’s the easiest free promotion you can get.
And if you’d like your site or blog to be on Publetariat’s list of available sources for aggregated or reprinted material, post your name and a link in the comments section, below, along with your preference for having your material merely excerpted with a ‘read the rest’ link, or reprinted in full on the site.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
The Myth Of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
A funny thing happened to me this month. Not funny ha-ha, but funny WTF?!
As you probably already know, the launch of Publetariat, a new online news hub and community for indie authors and small imprints I've founded, was announced on 2/11 at the O'Reilly Tools of Change (#TOC) conference. Okay, I say "announced", but this wasn't any kind of onstage, glitzy, fire-the-confetti-cannons-and-t-shirt-bazookas announcement. It was more like the site URL appearing under my name on a conference session slide, and me talking up the site and handing out cards with the site URL to everyone I met. I also announced the launch on Twitter that day.
I'd poured considerable effort into making Publetariat as appealing as possible to indie authors and small imprints, recruiting subject-area experts to write articles for the site, and spreading the word on writer sites and discussion boards where indies seemed to congregate. However, I hadn't poured any effort whatsoever into Search Engine Optimization (SEO)---gasp! SEO is the process of optimizing your website's text, titles, tags and metadata to make your site pages appear with a higher frequency and rank in search results.
Any internet marketing wonk will tell you SEO is important to any website's success, and absolutely critical at launch. In fact, given that I'm a virtual nobody with no access to mainstream publicity and had a marketing budget in the tens of dollars, I'm sure any internet marketing wonk worth his salt would've said SEO was practically the only means at my disposal to drive significant traffic to my site. But he'd be wrong.
One week later, on 2/17/09, out of idle curiosity I ran Publetariat's URL through websitegrader.com. The report showed Publetariat had achieved a 3-month average Alexa traffic rank in the top 6.92% of all websites—but Publetariat had only had its beta launch the first week of February and its public Go-Live on 2/11. When I scaled the average down to a one-month average instead of three, I found Publetariat's Alexa rank was actually in the top 2% of all websites for the month. I knew the site had been doing well in its first week, but this didn’t seem possible.
I checked traffic stats on the site’s web server and found that on 2/17 alone, the overall site had indeed received 9,046 hits, and the site’s RSS feed had received over 1,200 hits. I'm just not accustomed to traffic success on that scale and still wasn't buying it, so to verify the results further, I went to the Alexa site and punched Publetariat into their traffic ranking search box myself. What I got was an unequivocal confirmation of what websitegrader had told me. Hence, ha-ha WTF?!
I knew the site's community-friendly design and features, my grassroots promotional campaign and my staged rollout strategy (pre-launch, beta launch, go-live) would pay off, but I had no idea how well until I was looking at those first week traffic stats with my own eyes. SEO, Smesh-E-O, I thought. As it turns out, the search engine traffic you're hoping to get with SEO can be matched and even exceeded by reaching out directly to your intended audience. The direct approach gives a site its best shot at going viral, because it taps into the social network of users on a more personal level than a set of search engine results can.
(Granted, my strategy is probably best suited to a brand new site launch. Once a site has been out there for a while, search engine hits may well be the best way to drive new traffic because it's too late to employ teasers and whisper campaigns to build anticipation for the site.)
It hadn't escaped my notice that while the buzzword of the #TOC conference had been 'community building', attendees had come away with very little in the way of concrete advice and steps to follow in launching their own community-building initiatives. Since I'd just accomplished the very thing they would all be shortly setting out to do, I decided to write a book about it.
From Concept To Community: How I Built An Online Community And Took It Viral In 25 Days With Little Money And No SEO is a small book, just 80pp, but that's enough to explain exactly what I did and how I did it. It will be out in various electronic formats on Smashwords and in Amazon's Kindle store by the end of this week, and will be released in trade paperback early next month.
I've set its retail price at $29.99, higher than any book I've published previously, but there's a method to my madness there. First of all, this is a book aimed at businesses that can write off the expense---all those publishers that were in attendance at #TOC, for example. Secondly, compared to all the classes, consultants, SEO services and other books they were going to pay for in their quest to build successful online communities, $30 is a pittance. Thirdly, Amazon typically discounts any Kindle title that's priced over $9.99---and even though my book isn't actually available in the Kindle store yet, I see they've already discounted its selling price by 45%, down to $16.49. Fourthly (is that even a word?), this book may be my best shot at actually earning enough money with my writing to match an actual, respectable salary. Finally, I can honestly say the book is worth $30, if not more, given all the great information and concrete advice it contains. Time will tell if would-be community-builders agree with me on that point.
As you probably already know, the launch of Publetariat, a new online news hub and community for indie authors and small imprints I've founded, was announced on 2/11 at the O'Reilly Tools of Change (#TOC) conference. Okay, I say "announced", but this wasn't any kind of onstage, glitzy, fire-the-confetti-cannons-and-t-shirt-bazookas announcement. It was more like the site URL appearing under my name on a conference session slide, and me talking up the site and handing out cards with the site URL to everyone I met. I also announced the launch on Twitter that day.
I'd poured considerable effort into making Publetariat as appealing as possible to indie authors and small imprints, recruiting subject-area experts to write articles for the site, and spreading the word on writer sites and discussion boards where indies seemed to congregate. However, I hadn't poured any effort whatsoever into Search Engine Optimization (SEO)---gasp! SEO is the process of optimizing your website's text, titles, tags and metadata to make your site pages appear with a higher frequency and rank in search results.
Any internet marketing wonk will tell you SEO is important to any website's success, and absolutely critical at launch. In fact, given that I'm a virtual nobody with no access to mainstream publicity and had a marketing budget in the tens of dollars, I'm sure any internet marketing wonk worth his salt would've said SEO was practically the only means at my disposal to drive significant traffic to my site. But he'd be wrong.
One week later, on 2/17/09, out of idle curiosity I ran Publetariat's URL through websitegrader.com. The report showed Publetariat had achieved a 3-month average Alexa traffic rank in the top 6.92% of all websites—but Publetariat had only had its beta launch the first week of February and its public Go-Live on 2/11. When I scaled the average down to a one-month average instead of three, I found Publetariat's Alexa rank was actually in the top 2% of all websites for the month. I knew the site had been doing well in its first week, but this didn’t seem possible.
I checked traffic stats on the site’s web server and found that on 2/17 alone, the overall site had indeed received 9,046 hits, and the site’s RSS feed had received over 1,200 hits. I'm just not accustomed to traffic success on that scale and still wasn't buying it, so to verify the results further, I went to the Alexa site and punched Publetariat into their traffic ranking search box myself. What I got was an unequivocal confirmation of what websitegrader had told me. Hence, ha-ha WTF?!
I knew the site's community-friendly design and features, my grassroots promotional campaign and my staged rollout strategy (pre-launch, beta launch, go-live) would pay off, but I had no idea how well until I was looking at those first week traffic stats with my own eyes. SEO, Smesh-E-O, I thought. As it turns out, the search engine traffic you're hoping to get with SEO can be matched and even exceeded by reaching out directly to your intended audience. The direct approach gives a site its best shot at going viral, because it taps into the social network of users on a more personal level than a set of search engine results can.
(Granted, my strategy is probably best suited to a brand new site launch. Once a site has been out there for a while, search engine hits may well be the best way to drive new traffic because it's too late to employ teasers and whisper campaigns to build anticipation for the site.)
It hadn't escaped my notice that while the buzzword of the #TOC conference had been 'community building', attendees had come away with very little in the way of concrete advice and steps to follow in launching their own community-building initiatives. Since I'd just accomplished the very thing they would all be shortly setting out to do, I decided to write a book about it.
From Concept To Community: How I Built An Online Community And Took It Viral In 25 Days With Little Money And No SEO is a small book, just 80pp, but that's enough to explain exactly what I did and how I did it. It will be out in various electronic formats on Smashwords and in Amazon's Kindle store by the end of this week, and will be released in trade paperback early next month.
I've set its retail price at $29.99, higher than any book I've published previously, but there's a method to my madness there. First of all, this is a book aimed at businesses that can write off the expense---all those publishers that were in attendance at #TOC, for example. Secondly, compared to all the classes, consultants, SEO services and other books they were going to pay for in their quest to build successful online communities, $30 is a pittance. Thirdly, Amazon typically discounts any Kindle title that's priced over $9.99---and even though my book isn't actually available in the Kindle store yet, I see they've already discounted its selling price by 45%, down to $16.49. Fourthly (is that even a word?), this book may be my best shot at actually earning enough money with my writing to match an actual, respectable salary. Finally, I can honestly say the book is worth $30, if not more, given all the great information and concrete advice it contains. Time will tell if would-be community-builders agree with me on that point.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
#TOC Trip Report, Part I
The panel discussion in which I was a member, The Rise of Ebooks, played to a packed auditorium here at the O'Reilly Tools of Change conference on technology and the future of publishing yesterday. Luckily for me, the lights shining on us were so blinding that it was difficult to see---and therefore, to be unnerved by---the large audience. The other panel members were Smashwords founder Mark Coker, Joe Wikert of O'Reilly, David Rothman of Teleread.org, and Russell Wilcox of e-ink.
In every keynote speech and session I've attended, the news is all good for indie authors and small imprints. Read why in part one of my trip report for Publetariat, here.
In every keynote speech and session I've attended, the news is all good for indie authors and small imprints. Read why in part one of my trip report for Publetariat, here.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Pssst! Over here, behind the dumpster...
Isn't it about time we indie authors and small imprints had an online home to call our own? And wouldn't it be great if that online home had news about publishing and authorship, articles on topics of interest to us, a moderated discussion board, member profile pages where you could promote your work and keep a blog, reviews of reference books, products, sites and services used by indies, and a general, all-around indie-friendly philosophy? Finally, there is just such a place, and it's called Publetariat.
Publetariat isn't open to the public yet, but all my blog readers get the super-secret link and invitation to join. People who go to Publetariat.com will only find a 'coming soon' page, and the beta launch won't be officially announced until next week at the O'Reilly Tools of Change conference, but since you're here you get to access the beta site a few days early. If you like what you see, you can join now! You may want to start with the 'About' page, to get a handle on Publetariat's mission.
Here's the link:http://www.publetariat.com/index.php
Feel free to share the news with your fellow indie authors and small imprint owners.
Publetariat isn't open to the public yet, but all my blog readers get the super-secret link and invitation to join. People who go to Publetariat.com will only find a 'coming soon' page, and the beta launch won't be officially announced until next week at the O'Reilly Tools of Change conference, but since you're here you get to access the beta site a few days early. If you like what you see, you can join now! You may want to start with the 'About' page, to get a handle on Publetariat's mission.
Here's the link:http://www.publetariat.com/index.php
Feel free to share the news with your fellow indie authors and small imprint owners.
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