No, seriously.  I’m asking because suddenly I’m into quirky objects surrounding toast.  And it’s not because I’ve been on a low-carb thing for a couple of weeks (I hate you, quinoa).  For instance, I have a new office to decorate and since the average New Yorker in Publishing spends roughly 1.5 million hours a day* at work, I thought I’d make it homey.  Wall decals are pretty cool and there are a lot of options out there.  For instance, there’s a wall-sized Super Mario Brothers set, though I don’t think 1UP properly sets up the ‘I’m a Marketing Executive’ message.  But then, there’s this pretty rad Rube Goldberg machine decal that eventually makes toast.

No, those aren’t my feet.  Nor toast.

Same day, in Google Reader, up popped a defibrillator toaster. And Toast Bandages.  If I was working for a women’s lifestyle magazine, I would declare Toast a TREND and immediately speculate when it would be pregnant with Robert Pattinson’s love child.  So why is toast suddenly ironic?  Why not english muffins?  Is it because it’s plain and accessible?  Is it because the hipsters declared it so?  Is it because I made fun of hipsters?

I swear this has to do with publishing: when society pounces on a trend, sometimes it’s not really clear why that particular item/theme/person is popular. But the curiosity is there, as is the need for instant gratification.  Do I think there should be five new books on the history or toast?  Not necessarily.  There will always be noise on the internet and there will also always be a group of people pointing to what they find fun and interesting.  The question is:  how are you ready to connect?

PS: Here’s the title reference. If you knew already, you have my unwavering affection. Hat. Tip.

PPS: I hold no responsibility for any toast memoirs.

*Rough estimate.

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Sherrilyn Kenyon and Karen Marie Moning are two frontlist authors with huge followings. They are also fairly tech savvy. In the early 2000s, both authors began role playing games with their characters. Moning currently has a free web game associated with her characters on her site. Both authors have extremely active message boards. Readers have become so invested in the series that fights have broken out amongst the readers over the roleplaying leading to Moning releasing a statement that Official Character Pages would be created instead of allowing the readers to co-opt those characters and run amok on facebook. JR Ward, another NYTimes Bestselling paranormal romance author, has an active message board. If you belong to the message board, you can read Ward posting as the different characters in her books, bantering back and forth as if those characters were actually part of the message board community.

Beyond the romance world, Janet Evanovich has engaged her readers by inviting them to compete for the right to title her next book. I’m not sure when she started this but the contest goes like this: you email or mail a title and if your title is picked, your name is given to a character in the book you titled. Avon Romance is having a similar contest, urging fans to submit a plot idea for a novella. The author of the winning idea will win $1,000 and four Avon historical romance authors will pen a novella collection using that plot.

How does this tie in with social currency? All of these ideas can be used to harness an audience, increase visibility of the house brand, and encourage readers to return to a webspace. By participating on the message board, by sharing a book widget, by tweeting about a book, the readers can earn social currency. This currency can then allow them the right to real world benefits such as buying the right to be named in a book, the right to participate (not make decisions, but simply participate) in a cover conference, the ability to help craft a cover blurb, to get a sneak peek at an anticipated release, be sent a specially bound copy of a book that is different from all the other mass produced novels, and the list goes on. The idea is to leverage the everyday activities that publishers undertake to produce a book and allow readers to use virtual currency to be part of those activities.

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What readers want today will not be want they want even twelve months from now.  One speaker at Tools of Change said that readers are always complicating the situation by buying new devices and wanting new things.  This was said with affection, though, not disdain.

It’s important to remember that readers are fickle and that there is no one set of tools that will work for every reader, all the time.  When Sarah, Angie and I were preparing for our own talk at the Tools of Change, we engaged in a heated discussion over whether the cover blurb should be included at the front of an ebook or in the metadata to be pulled up at the reader’s convenience.  Angie and I are both avid book readers and in some ways we are a lot alike but our own preferences in how we consume the book can be quite different.

Take a look at the iPhone/iTouch as a reader.  Some people believe it is too small.  Others find the convenience of the size perfect for their reading needs.  Some readers like the flat readable aspect of the eink screen and others clamor for a backlight.  Everyone likes the convenience of the one click shopping.

What’s the answer to the reader fickleness? It’s not to denigrate the reader for being fickle. You just have to accept it.  This behavior will not change.  You have to embrace it. It’s reader fickleness that allows you to take advantage of our impulse buying purchases.  It’s reader fickleness that makes us take chances on new authors.  It’s reader fickleness that will open new markets and new opportunities.

Embrace us readers, warts and all, and we will buy your books and be your evangelists.  Denigrate or talk down to us and we will be fierce adversaries.

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