While Len Gutman’s immense personal wealth (I’m guessing here) will likely be enough to keep Valley PR Blog free for as long as it’s around, that’s only because the contributors here signed on knowing they wouldn’t get paid. We don’t take days to research most stories, nor do readers expect it.

But there are plenty of topics that could use more attention than the mainstream media have been able to give them. From Jason Hope to other stories that we aren’t aware of yet, the time needed just isn’t available, but the demand surely is.

Rebecca Thorman of Kontrary.com in Washington, D.C. had a similar problem. Touting her website as “…Kontrary picks up where the rest of the web left off,” Rebecca charges $5/month for unlimited access on site or via RSS.

I was one of her first subscribers, more so because I was curious if the writing would be worth paying for rather than balking at $5/month. Here’s an excerpt from her latest, an article about the devolution of the Huffington Post:

Inspired by its decentralized technology, the open web was supposed to shift the power from the corporation to the people. Many imagined a sort of utopian society that relied on abundance instead of the current economy’s premise of scarcity. And the web did fulfill the promise of abundance in the form of Free, but utopia would have to wait.

While this excerpt may not tell the whole story, the article goes on for 1400+ words, which as anyone who writes can tell you, isn’t something that can be produced in less than an hour unless you forsake staples like editing, research and grammar.

I do think people will pay for good content, but only if there’s no other way to get it. The good storytellers and writers will charge, the bad ones won’t. We’ll see who’s around next year.

The era of free is over. Get your credit cards ready.

Here are my professional office (as in you’re employed at someone else’s headquarters) and home office rituals – makes me look kind of normal, doesn’t it?

Professional office — cup of coffee and a donut every morning to respond to e-mails. Wrote most of my documents in the afternoon, when I was less likely to be interrupted.

Home office — if I have something really critical to write, I drive to the local AJ’s mid-day and get a cup of coffee or iced tea, depending on the season, and a pistachio or cinnamon muffin.   Something about the 2-mile roundtrip gives me a mental break, and I come back knowing I have a treat to consume while I plunge the depths of my brain for creative and technical ideas.

I never write barefoot, and usually have to write standing up at my computer, as I am now, wearing a headset. I can write in comfortable clothes or suits, and never have to wear a cowboy hat, like one of the folks who commented at www.myragan.com.   Music is OK sometimes, but not always.

Dan Poynter's manual is a best-selling guide on self-publishing

PR Consultant Brian Solis blogged last month that “businesses must become media in order to earn greater relevance and ultimately thought leadership within their respective markets.”  I would argue that individuals, particularly PR professionals, should also consider becoming their own media publishing center.  (Here is his full post on the topic).

As a public relations professional, getting published adds credibility to your business and expertise.   If you’ve always wanted to write a book, why wait any longer?   So few hurdles remain now.  

Local public relations experts are already on their way – here are their insights.

Jason Baer  www.convinceandconvert.com

“I am co-authoring a book with Amber Naslund about social media’s impact on internal organization structure. It’s about how social media turns your company Inside Out, and should be published in early 2011.  Talking about social media’s impact on the brand/customer relationship has been well chronicled. What hasn’t been discussed as much, however, is the equally important (and perhaps more so) change in internal communication and staffing that social media and real-time business necessitate. I’m able to stick to a schedule because having a co-author that you can’t let down helps a lot. To me, it’s a $25 business card. I’m looking to do a lot more speaking in the coming years, and the book boosts credibility with event planners and speakers bureaus. I’m sure that having an agent is important for first-time authors. But it definitely helps to have created a lot of content that publishers can examine. Sure, we wrote a solid book proposal, but the fact that Amber and myself have several hundred blog posts each makes it a lot easier for publishers to take a chance on us. (Wiley, in our case).”

Ann Videan  www.videanunlimited.com

“I am putting the finishing touches on my novel, Rhythms and Muse, which juxtaposes award-winning vocalist Alexander Lauren’s 1970s high school experiences with her current day Hollywood lifestyle. She discovers her life’s purpose truly is to enhance the world through music.  I hope to self-publish this summer, once I obtain permissions and licensing contracts from the music publishers who own lyrics I mention throughout the book. I also need to make final edits, and duplicate a CD of five original songs complement in the story. The idea for the plot of this book came to me in 1987 based on a number of personal experiences. I didn’t have an ending till it showed up in a dream one night back in the mid-1990s. I expect to only write this one book in the women’s fiction genre, as what I truly want to write is young adult adventure/fantasy. To stick to a schedule, I found a critique partner who was also writing a novel. We meet twice a week over lunch or tea to discuss our books. I finished the last quarter of my novel quickly, once I decided to treat it like a client and set aside two hours every day just to write. After tinkering away at the story for decades, I was able to finish it up in about six months by creating a dedicated writing schedule. My story revolves around a 40-something woman who realizes all her dreams figuratively and literally. To gain visibility and credibility, I plan to sell my books at nationwide “Dream Realization” workshops. I’m hoping this new audience of dreammakers will not only purchase my novel, but also feed my marketing consulting work. These women’s workshops serve as an add-on to the business tribe and word-of-mouth marketing strategy sessions I currently facilitate for my clients. There is so much to know about the publishing industry, and it is changing so rapidly now with new technology, that I’d simply recommend hiring a publishing coach. By the time I came to this realization and called the publishing coach myself, I had already created a document that took me years of research to compile, including research online, library and bookstore visits, and interviews with writers, editors publishers and other book industry experts.”

_____________

Some resources to get you started – here are some books on publishing and self-publishing you might consider reading before you plunge ahead:

Publishing Basics – by Robert Bowie Johnson

The Economical Guide to Self-Publishing – by Linda F. Radke

Self-Publishing Manual – by Dan Poynter

Writing the Non-Fiction Book – by Eva Shaw

1001 Ways to Market Your Books – by John Kremer

Also, check out the website www.booksjustbooks.com for tips on obtaining an ISBN number, information on copyrights, finding printers, etc.  For local assistance on the book publishing process, join the Arizona Book Publishing Association, which meets monthly and features different speakers on a wide range of topics in the book industry.  Their June 30th meeting will feature a roundtable format with experts available on writing & editing, book design, and printing.

And once your book is finished, consider creating a book video trailer to help promote it.

Explain to me some of the reasons you believe that is is necessary for those who post responses to blogs or add their opinion to comment threads should to be anonymous. Or, rather, why you choose to do so, since it isn’t mandatory.

Writing under the cover of the nom de plume, UnclePat commented that the main bad reason for someone to remain anonymous online was it gave the person the freedom to be a ‘mindless jerk.’

I can’t argue with that when I read some of the comments online at AZCentral.com

Except for the fact that there are some others who have no problem with calling out something or someone and putting their name to it. Just look at yesterday’s Arizona Republic, where Steve Kirk of Phoenix calls Rush Limbaugh a rude bore. Montini concludes in his column the same day that fear is the main reason for this trend to hide behind fake names.

But there are other types of fear, and not just fear of wackos and lawsuits. I recently conducted a remote workshop for media professionals in Sri Lanka, on  looking ‘beyond the blog’ –at new modes of communications and interaction with audiences. There was a mixed group representing traditional and new media. Apparently some bloggers who wished to be not identified, were in the audience as well.

Toward the end of the session, one question came up that seemed more important than the rest. How to remain anonymous, and if it was a sensible thing. I wrestled with the question for several reasons. One was that we take our freedom of speech for granted, UnclePat’s point, notwithstanding. I know it’s different in countries where the government can beat you up or throw you into prison for random reasons. The other, of course, was credibility. I maintain that unless you have a compelling point of view or reason to stay behind the curtain, no one will take you seriously since the blogosphere is quite capable doing its own fact-checking. Just ask Dan Rather.

I am sure you face similar questions, especially related ones about whether you recommend moderating –and deleting– comments by blog readers who don’t validate who they are.

Digging deeper into this I noticed  plenty of advice on how to go about it, and many reasons why this is so . Take a look, and let me know your thoughts about this touchy topic.

• How to blog safely — Electronic Frontier Foundation
• PR Director found blogging anonymously
• The law against anonymous blogging in the US
• Yahoo and MSN sign deal with China to prevent anonymous bloggers
• Bloggers beware: what you write can get you sued

I now see that others have thought he bombed, too.

Let’s put politics aside and see what went wrong. I like to hear your thoughts. If you’re a speechwriter, I like to hear what were the weak areas that could have been rescured, and what should have been off limits.

Fifteen terms were selected from reader submissions, like this one from Ed Hardiman of Bristow, Va.:

“If I see one more corporation declare itself ‘green,’ I’m going to start burning tires in my backyard.”

Classic. I hope none of the 15 terms found their way into your press releases in 2008!

I fear that while the Internet has opened up the world, the massive amount of unscrutinized information in poorly written form is dumbing us down. I’m a lifelong journalist from reporter to city editor, from freelancer to college instructor. I know the damage caused by inadequate communication.

AP Style never crossed my mind, nor did it really come up in conversations with others in the industry until about a year ago. I had worked on a client’s event with their national distributor’s PR person and she told me about an AP Style class she taught PR students. I was intrigued and then worried that maybe I was sending out releases that were making journalists cringe and laugh in horror.  Was it really a big deal to send out pitches or releases that weren’t written in AP Style?  

A few weeks ago at our PR Indies lunch, we went around the table offering a tip to the others about working in PR. My ears perked up when one woman said we should not just write our releases AP Style, but also our pitches. When it came to my turn to give a tip, I said “Read the Valley PR Blog” and also said I was very interested in blogging about AP Style and had just earlier asked a few editors in town their thoughts on AP Style and they all had a general consensus that if the story is good, they don’t care if it came to them AP Style or not. This sparked some conversation around the table and that solidified my thoughts that this would be a great thing to blog about.

So, what do some local journalists have to say about AP Style and PR? Do they really care if we present them with an AP perfect pitch and release? Do we have a better chance of getting our information from a press release printed if its written in AP Style?  Well, I sent some survey questions to some local media and many of them were happy to offer their opinions.

Out of the twelve who responded, eight said they write AP Style. No one said they cared if a pitch was AP Style. Only one out of twelve said they cared if a release was written in AP Style. When I asked what they would do if they got a release that wasn’t written in AP Style, no one said they’d delete it or be upset about it, they just cared if it was a good story or not.

The main consensus from their comments was that it really boils down to giving them clear, full, to the point information. Most have to fact check and rewrite the story anyway, so as long as there are not glaring errors, missing information or typos, they will accept the story idea or release.

I think that the survey really boils down to this. You’ll get respect from providing the media what they need, and writing in AP Style is just icing on the cake. Should I brush up on my AP skills? Yes. But I think the main point of my job is to offer that reporter something that they will find of interest and relevance that is geared toward their audience.

For complete results and commentary, click here.

Melanie McCuin is planning to start a women’s writing group in Tempe. All genres are welcome. Email melanie.mccuin@gmail.com

It all starts with nailing your brand’s voice. Below is an order confirmation from CD Baby, an online independent music retailer. In a world where they compete with Apple/iTunes, Wal*Mart and Amazon — i.e. big box online retailers — they are definitely at the far end of the “long tail.”

How do they stand out? They know their audience — thoughtful shoppers seeking out cool, new, independent music — and they delight them with a voice that’s not only fits the intellect but is delightfully unexpected.

—–Original Message—–
From: CD Baby loves XXXX <orders@cdbaby.com>
To: emailaddress
Sent: Tue, 17 Jun 2008 10:01:30 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: XXXX – Your CD Baby Order! (#4077506)

XXXX -

Thanks for your order with CD Baby!

#### ORDER # 40XXXX6 ######

WHERE YOU HEARD OF:
band’s web site

Physical Items in this order:

=== Shipped Items ===
** Shipped on 2008-06-17: **
1 of XXXXXX: XXXXX ($9.99 each)
***************

=========================

SHIPPING: $2.25
GRAND TOTAL : $12.24 – US Dollars

SHIPPING ADDRESS:

XXXX
XXXX
Phoenix AZ 850XX
UNITED STATES

BILLING ADDRESS:

XXXX
XXXX
Phoenix AZ 85020
UNITED STATES

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized
contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it
was in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the
crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can
buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party
marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of
Portland waved “Bon Voyage!” to your package, on its way to you, in our
private CD Baby jet on this day, Tuesday, June 17th.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did.
Your picture is on our wall as “Customer of the Year.” We’re all
exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Sigh…

–
Derek Sivers, president, CD Baby
the little store with the best new independent music <a
href=”http://cdbaby.com“>http://cdbaby.com</a> cdbaby@cdbaby.com
(503)595-3000