BrandingFire Blog

Eric Wittenberg is an accomplished Civil War author, cavalry authority and fellow blogger, in addition to his day job as a lawyer. Eric has more than a dozen published books to his credit, including his newest One Continuous Fight:
The Retreat from Gettysburg and the Pursuit of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, July 4-14, 1863, and more than two dozen published articles. Eric is often called on as a speaker on the subject of cavalry and as a guide for tours.

A couple of months ago, Eric published a really good series on his blog titled “Things I Wish I Knew Then But Know Now.” The series discussed the lessons Eric has learned over his years as a published book author. The series inspired me to do an interview with Eric about marketing history books from the author’s point of view. (BrandingFire Note: I’ve never been a published author, but I have several years of experience on the distribution and publisher’s side of things.)

BrandingFire (BF): My friend, author Dan Miller, has told me several times that authors need to be prepared to do their own book marketing. He says that unless your name is John Grisham or Stephen King, publishers just aren’t going to invest the time and money needed to market a book properly. Do you find this to be true?

Eric Wittenberg(EW): Sadly, it’s absolutely true. The truth is that most Civil War books don’t sell sufficient copies to give publishers much of an incentive to invest a lot of money into major marketing campaigns. There are, of course, exceptions, as occasionally a Civil War book will hit the bestseller lists - Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals comes to mind immediately - and then the publishers will spend the necessary money.

BF: I know you’ve gone to the trouble of putting up your own websites to promote your books. Is this something you’ve always done?

EW: No, it’s something we started in 2006 with the release of Plenty of Blame to Go Around: Jeb Stuart’s Controversial Ride to Gettysburg.

BF: Do you build your own sites or do you hire out the job?

EW: I have no competence for that sort of thing, so it’s much better for me to hire a professional to do that work for me.

BF: When you put up a site to support a title, what is your goal for the site?

EW: Sell books and spread the word.

BF: How long do you leave a site up?

EW: Good question. I actually haven’t had to address that issue yet. Plenty of Blame continues to sell well two years later, and as long as it does, we intend to leave the site up.

BF: Have you tried any book marketing tactics that didn’t work? If so, will you share any?

EW: I have found that taking books to Civil War Roundtable meetings generally doesn’t work well. There are only a few I’ve encountered where people are hardcore book buyers, while most just don’t care.

BF: What other marketing tactics do you find to be successful?

EW: Honestly, there is no substitute for word of mouth marketing. Having someone say “this is a great book and you need to read it” is without question the best marketing tool that there is. I try to encourage that sort of thing as often as I can.

BF: How important do you think author signings are for promoting a book?

EW: I think that they’re critical. People like to collect signed first editions of books, and in-person signings are the best way to meet the public and sign for them. The location of the signing and the promotion work done by the sponsor is, of course, critical. If nobody knows about, it’s a waste of time, but if the promoter does a good job of getting the word out, a good book signing can be one of the very best ways to sell books that I know.

BF: You and I first became acquainted through your blog. How important are blogs in book promotion? Any advice to authors considering or involved in blogging?

EW: I have found that blogging is a great way to make and maintain contact with the readers of my books, and I have also found that it’s a great way to remind people of one’s work. If authors feel that they have something to say that’s not just shilling their books, then I would definitely encourage them to try blogging. In September, I will have been blogging for three full years, and I have a large contingent of regular readers. It never ceases to amaze me how many people invest their valuable time into reading what I have to say each day.

BF: How much do you consider the marketability of a subject before you write a book on it?

EW: Some of my projects are carefully calculated to try to select topics that I know will sell, but others are strictly pursuing things that interest me, nothing more, nothing less. As an example, this week, I decided to tackle a tactical treatment of the June 10, 1864 Battle of Brice’s Crossroads, and in part, I selected that topic because I know that books on Nathan Bedford Forrest sell well, and I’d like to make some money on the one of these projects.

BF: Do you have a set marketing budget before you start promoting a book?

EW: No. It all depends on the book and how well I think it might sell.

BF: My personal experience with publishing is that going through traditional mass market distribution channels is very difficult. The discounts distributors like Ingram, Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble, etc. are steep and leave little room for profit. Has this been your experience?

EW: Not at all. To date, all of my work has been published by conventional, commercial publishing houses, and I wouldn’t even consider a publisher that didn’t use the traditional mass-market publishing channels as the primary means of getting books out there.

BF: What methods of distribution have you found more effective than the “mainstream” ones listed above?

EW: To be honest, none. Short of selling books on the Internet, I can’t think of another means of selling books that is more effective.

I’d like to thank Eric again for kindly contributing his time and experience. If you haven’t read his blog, The Rantings of a Civil War Historian, you should. You can also find Eric’s books at major bookstores, including Amazon.com. I should also mention that Eric and author J. D. Petruzzi are leading a tour at Ted Alexander’s Mother of All Gettysburg Seminars on July 23-27. If you want the chance to have Eric and J.D. give you a personal tour of some of JEB Stuart’s cavalry ride during the Gettysburg campaign, you should sign up ASAP. It’s filling up fast.

National Trust for Historic Preservation

I found another interesting blog from the folks at the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It’s called Show Me the Money and it’s all about federal grant opportunities that may help out organizations active in historic preservation. It’s a worthy read for any group needing money.

As a side note, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has really embraced blogging as a way to communicate important information to history sites and garner feedback from readers. Their willingness to open up to this process (as opposed to shutting it down and trying to control the conversation) is astounding, inspiring and should be applauded. They are really living their mission to the fullest online and I personally thank them for their leadership in the wired world!

If you are into history and marketing historic sites, you really should check out Heidi Glatfelter’s blog Marketing Early America. Heidi has more than a decade of marketing experience working with non-profits and she’s really connecting that experience with her passion for history and pumping out some good information for anyone involved with history-related organizations.

I didn’t know Heidi until I ran across her blog a short while ago, but I’m happy to find someone out there who shares my passions for history and marketing and is trying to be a beacon to help guide these worthy groups.

Now, GO, READ, COMMENT!! Be heard!

I’ve mentioned before that I think a great way to connect people with your brand, no matter if that brand is Coca Cola or Daughters of the American Revolution, is with stories that are meaningful to them. New online technologies are making it easier and easier to tell those stories, be it through websites, blogs, video, podcasts, Twitter, Jaiku or any number of other technologies emerging daily.

Someone Who Gets It
I’ve found one guy who “gets it”. And he’s in a place you might not first think to look for him. He’s 8th Grade teacher Eric Langhorst. He’s so passionate about using technology to teach history that he maintains a blog about it and does speaking engagements on the subject. And his passion for history and teaching the subject are so contagious that others are noticing. Mr. Langhorst was just named the 2007-2008 Missouri Teacher of the Year. (Perfectly fitting that he podcasted about it.) In addition, he was awarded the 2007 Governor’s Humanities Education Award. (Congrats to him!)

Check out his blog here. I’ve subscribed. He may be officially teaching 13-year-olds, but I know I can learn a lot from this guy!

Who inspires you? Where do you go to learn how to better promote your organization or tell stories that fan the flames of passion for history in other people? Add a comment to this entry or give me a shout out and tell me about them.

Here’s a great blog post from the Brooklyn Museum on how they did a recent test with Twitter. While the result wasn’t a resounding success, they should be roundly applauded for having the guts to test out an idea. I hope they get the opportunity to do it some more. They also deserve massive kudos for sharing the results on their blog. Heck! While we’re at it, I’ll throw them a high five for even HAVING a blog!

Great job, Shelley Bernstein & the Brooklyn Museum!!

Blog - A blog, short for weblog, is an online collection of news, thoughts, lessons, journal entries, punditry or other writings published in chronological order on a website. They are sometimes hosted by the blog owner and sometimes by a third party such as Wordpress, Typepad or any number of other hosts. While they were originally diary or journal entries online, the use of blogs has expanded to include many other uses. Some people have even used blogging platforms to build whole websites on (possible, but not generally recommended). General Motors-Europe appears to have built their whole Social Media Newsroom on a blog platform. (Smart!)

Not Enough History Blogs
Now that we’ve gotten the whole definition thing out of the way, you probably know or at least have a good idea of what a blog is since you’re reading one. But in the history arena, I wonder how many people really understand the power of blogging. The activity of blogging has been “mainstream” for nearly half a decade now. Yet, I did an unscientific poll of 150 random websites for historic houses, history museums and history-related organizations. Of those 150, about 5 had a blog. Of those 5 only about 3 were very active. Wow! That’s 1-2% of my sampling who were using a blog to reach out to the public and start a conversation. That’s shocking considering there are millions and millions of blogs out there and thousands more come online daily. These are numbers that would make a Luddite proud. I have several reasons I suspect are behind this, but those can wait for another post. Today, the question is…

How Do We Change This?
Solving this problem is really, really easy and cheap. Solving it well is a bit tougher, but nothing we can’t overcome. First, starting a blog can be done easily and free. Go to Wordpress or Blogger, register for a free account and start up a blog. I recommend Wordpress because it’s a great blogging platform and is fairly customizable. This is the best option for someone who hasn’t kept a blog before. If you’re more experienced or more adventuresome, you can download blogging software to run on your own servers or use a hosted pay service such as Typepad (also very good).

Second, before you start your blog sit down and make a list of what you hope to accomplish with it. Is it for community outreach, to talk to your membership, to seek out new members, to generate new visitors or a combination of these things? Know what you want to accomplish.

Third, what kind of information are you going to put on the blog. (This ties in somewhat with #2.) Will it be organization/company news, personal observations, historical facts, biographies or some combination? There are a ton of things you can write about, but select carefully and then stick with it. Don’t change what you’re writing about unless you feel you need to and the change is on purpose. The reason being that readers will quickly come to expect certain things of what you write. If you write about your historic house events for two months and then you suddenly start talking about your dog Wolfie and your mother-in-law, they’re going to be confused and go away. Keep in mind, though, that it doesn’t have to be stale, dry, boring information. Write about things that will entertain and get your readers personally involved. Write stuff that starts conversations with them. It can even include personal stuff if that’s the voice you want for your blog. It’s your choice, but whatever you do, do it on purpose and with purpose.

Finally, decide who will do the blogging. It can be one person or several (a group blog). Both kinds have been successful. Just make sure whoever is writing WANTS to do it and is passionate about conversing with your audience. If you’re merely forcing them to do this, readers will see that.

Have questions on starting a blog for your history-related organization or project? Give us a holler and we’ll lend a hand. We’ve already got the branding fire going and the irons are getting hot!

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