9-Year-Old Girl Loses Mom, Teaches Me About Life

What do you say to a nine-year-old girl who just lost her mother to a long battle with cancer?

That’s the thought that filled my head as Maggie raced towards me as I entered the room of her mother’s wake.

Maggie is an energetic, acrobatic girl who loves competitive dance, gymnastics and playing softball.  I know her as my daughter’s good friend for the past 4-5 years and from my time coaching her on a girls softball team with my daughter.

She ran to me like my own child would. 

She surged without hesitation, jumping into my arms as if I could swallow her up and insulate her, from the cold reality that surely engulfs her broken heart.

I recently lost my dog and thought how sad that was, but this is a tragic human loss that words can’t describe.  Why should a girl grow up without her mom?  What is her fate?

When I lost my dad a year ago I was 49 and understood age and circumstances can take those we love.  But she’s only nine and won’t be able to experience some things a child should get to do with her mom.

Jerry Lewis, a celebrated comedian who did wonderful work using his notoriety to raise billions for the Muscular Dystrophy Fund, also died recently.  He was 91.  We don’t like to see these people leave us, but death doesn’t discriminate by age or any other factor. We understand his death, but not that of Maggie’s mom.

Sure we can reason these things in our head, and we must if we are to function, but it is just incomprehensible to me that this lively girl won’t get to cuddle with the one who understood her best and loved her the most.

But Maggie taught me something. 

She didn’t cry in our embrace or say she was angry at the world.  Instead she spoke calmly and clearly and allowed me to pay my respects and then transition into our usual banter about her summer and her upcoming dance competition.  She will persevere and live her life and take things one day at a time, though her world is surely to change and challenge her along the way in ways most people would never give thought to or have to deal with.

We should all be as courageous and playful as Maggie.  Sometimes kids lead the adults and I hope this is one of those times.

Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2017©. Born and raised in Brooklyn, now resides in Westchester. Named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs 

Who Will Make A Case For Books?

If a person is the sum of what he or she reads, why isn’t the world smarter, better and nicer?  What’s stopping us from acting on what we know to be true, based on the information we consume and the ideas we are exposed to?

The problem is that the influence of the once-prominent book is being eroded by cheap, easily accessible content online.  We’d like the think the two can work together and actually support one another, but often the two are in direct conflict of a consumer’s time and money.  Even worse, people may be influenced or moved by online content that is not vetted, complete, or unbiased, leaving books on the shelf that could very well provide the depth of information and truth so desperately needed today.

It shouldn’t have to come down to the Internet vs. books, and yet it does.  When you have a free source of writings it will interfere with how much time one can read books. And when it’s free, it gets harder to demand fair compensation for a book.  I believe each of us continually has to state the case, publicly and privately, that books matter and need to be read if society is to ever advance.

The Internet can play an important role in the dissemination of information, but it needs to clean its act up. Fake news, biased content, opinion dressed as fact, or shoddy research and sloppy editing leave the Internet needing a sheriff to swoop in and clean it up. 

Books, though they too, can be subject to what dooms the Internet, offer something wonderful and need to be championed and protected.  There’s a rich history to books that deserves preservation but books are not just museum pieces or a collector’s item.  No, they can surely, inform, enlighten, entertain or inspire us to live better lives, have deeper experiences, and unite to help one another.  

Books transform and shape us.  They capture something worth exploring, something that can’t merely be blogged or tweeted about.

It’s not so much an issue of what’s the case for books, as all book lovers can rattle off reasons why they love books, why books are important, and why we must consume them.  But who will make this case?  Who will go out there and talk not just about literacy, free speech, or a specific book, but the very need to promote, protect, read and share all books?

I need you to step up to the plate and insert books into your chats with friends, visits with relatives, emails to colleagues, small talk at the bookstore, your social media, your dating profile, and whenever a conversation takes place.  I need you to show books off – publicly read books and recommend others enjoy books too.   

We each must make the case for books before it’s too late.

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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2017©. Born and raised in Brooklyn, now resides in Westchester. Named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs 

Put Up A Statue For Books

When discussions of remaining statues of Confederate General Robert E. Lee came up in the wake of the Charlottesville riots, my first reaction was these statues should come down. They have come to be symbols of racial segregation and rallying cries for Neo Nazis.  Why honor someone who lost a war, a war that nearly destroyed our country and could’ve left it with slavery?

On the other hand, is a statue a form of speech, for if it is, then the statues, once erected, shouldn’t be taken down.  I would never advocate for the ban or destruction of books that depict the statue.

Or is the statue public art?  If so, again, I believe it should stand.

But, if the statue is just a statue, created for political reasons, then it should die a political death.  Our history books should accurately portray the Civil War and who General Lee was, but I don’t see a good reason to memorialize a figure that nearly toppled the United States of America.

Streets get renamed.  So do schools and hospital wings.  Statues get erected; they can come down, too.  Of course, once we look to scrub the public view of the morals or symbols that we no longer value, where does one draw the line?

Will we, as President Trump suggested, look harder at Washington and Jefferson, and start to remove them from public statues, maybe even our currency?  The slave owners lose many points for owning human beings and hypocritically assigning them a three-fifths value, but Washington won freedom for the nation and eventually freed his slaves.  Washington had children with his mistress slave and was a great president.

All of this discussion of statues shows that humans are flawed, that a few can stand the test of time for what they accomplished.  Maybe statues make little sense in the first place. When they are erected they usually reflect popular sentiment of the day and as a few generations pass, people forget or fail to discover who is depicted in these statues. Many become irrelevant. 

Statues would be better off memorializing moments rather than individuals.  Honor 9/11 responders, WWII veterans, or American ideals like free speech; you can’t go wrong there.  But honoring people by name just means that over time, people will either put you in obscurity or come to despise you. Columbus, General Lee, and others, over time, have become less-liked figures.

What we really need is to mount statues across the nation – in every community – that highlights books and supports reading and literacy.  We don’t need to champion a specific author or even a book or publisher.  Let’s simply praise and honor the love, value, and beauty of books.

Now that’s a statute, if erected that should never come down.  But General Lee’s statue?  Start the demolition!

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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2017©. Born and raised in Brooklyn, now resides in Westchester. Named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs 

Is Barnes & Noble The Nation’s Largest Book Banner?

Barnes & Noble used to lead the nation in book sales and had a wonderful brand for more than a century.  It has not only fallen to a distant second place in the book market, but it has disgraced itself and all that it has stood for.

What am I talking about?

Barnes & Noble recently issued a content policy for its Nook, basically saying that titles that run afoul of it can be pulled from being sold immediately.  No appeals process, no debates, no chance for a negotiated settlement between publishers or self-published authors and the corporate giant. 

Is this really America?

That would be bad enough, but the real injustice is the content policy.  It clearly is arbitrary, confusing, and in conflict with free speech and ignores the very purpose of a bookstore:  to allow books and ideas to be sold and exchanged without judgment by the retailer.

You expect book bans from dictatorships, not here in America where a true democracy allows for all books to be sold without a corporation getting in the way.  B&N are hypocrites.  They sell all kinds of books that many would oppose for any number of reasons.  The answer is not to remove all books that possibly offend, but rather, to remove none.

If a book violates the law then I can understand why a store wouldn’t sell it, though that alone ishould not always to be the case.  But if a book is a hoax or there’s evidence a book is libelous or that it was pirated, then of course the store has a legal obligation to cease selling it. But once you get into areas of content, everything should be allowed – unless a crime was committed to create the content.  For instance, if a woman was forced to have photos taken of her nude body for a photography book, that book should not be sold in the store.

So what happened to B&N – why did they turn weak and craft some catch-all policy that could easily snare half the books that exist?  Why would they risk alienating authors and customers?  Why do they not stand up for freedom of speech and to encourage the publication and sale of all books?

Several self-published erotica books were immediately banned from the Nook for sale once the new policy was posted on their site. 

Their policy states books can be removed for “portraying or encouraging incest, rape, bestiality, necrophilia, paedophilia or content that encourages hate or violence.”

On first pass you may think such a policy sounds good until you realize there’s no way to draw a line here.  Portraying violence?  Many books portray violence, from history to crime drama to fantasy.  What we really want is to ban violence or hate or rape – but banning books that merely talk about it won’t solve the problem.

We’re going backwards here.  Books reflect the world’s realities and they indulge in our darkest fantasies.  They help us cope with life as it is and they allow us to co-exist in an imperfect world.  We can’t script happy endings to every story, whitewash the past, or act as if bad things never happen.  The bookstore is not Disneyland, nor is it a church, or a government office.  It’s a sacred place where everyone should have access to all books.

How many classics would get banned if B&N followed its own policy?  Would authors have to re-write their books to fit within the censored standards of the corporate entity that dictates which books get to live or die?  Do we not distinguish between words and actions, fantasy and reality, debate and silence?

I can’t begin to express how such a policy saddens me.  It won’t end there.  Every day some tech behemoth uses its power to pick and choose who gets to be heard, from Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to Go Daddy, Google, and now Barnes & Noble. 

For shame!

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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2017©. Born and raised in Brooklyn, now resides in Westchester. Named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs 

Can We Turn Children’s Classics Into Books For Adults?

A new book was just released about the pleasure adults experience when reading children’s books.  It’s entitled Wild Things:  The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult (Simon & Schuster).  I didn’t get a chance to see the book but its premise seems obvious, as there’s no doubt that parents and adults can feel a great amount of satisfaction and comfort in reading books intended for young minds.

Here are some reasons why adults enjoy children’s books:

1.      They are reminded of their own childhood and positive experiences in reading these same or similar books.

2.      The messages in these books are empowering, truthful, hopeful, and educational and serve to reinforce the lessons of life.

3.      They tend to simplify things and remove the complexities of adult thinking.  Sometimes we need to simplify or make life black and white so that we can navigate through tough times.

4.      These books are illustrated and give us another dimension.  We can’t just stare at screens of tweets, FB posts, or memes; instead, we wallpaper our eyes with colorful drawings of innocent yet familiar characters. 

5.      These stories recharge us and put us in a new frame of mind, providing a re-set button.

6.      If we’re reading with or to our children, we have the added benefit of seeing the world through their unbiased eyes.

7.      Children’s books also show us how much we’ve grown up and have forgotten.  These stories put us back in a frame of mind that sponges learning, values, curiosity, appreciates detail, and soothes with loving words. We feel innocence when reading children's books.

What are some of your favorite children’s books?  Do they stand the test of time?  The ones that stick out to me, hands down, are Curious George and Dr. Seuss.  Those two giants are what I enjoyed reading as a child and what I read to my children as a parent.

Those books express and represent what a children’s book should capture – adventure, curiosity, creativity, emotion and fun.  I wonder if there is a way to create an adult version of such books.  Now that could be a hot market – children’s books turned into adult fare.  I’m not talking about graphic novels or a non-illustrated book. I’m saying could we have adult Curious George or adult Dr. Seuss come alive to lead again the generations it raised as children?  

I would pre-order such books, faster than you can say:  “This is George. He’s a good little monkey and always very curious.”

“The year 2017 marks another inflection point in the study of the human mind:  The next 50 to 100 years will bring the ability not just to quantify but also to alter fundamental aspects of identity.  Today we are at base camp in a rapidly accelerating climb to the augmented brain:  Intelligence will be more malleable, and so might the subjective experience of gender or even personality traits.  To reach this summit, scientists may use some combination of genetic editing and brain-computer interfaces.  These tools thrill and scare us in equal measure.  They are perhaps best construed as an egalitarian force in a world changing at warp speed.”

--Psychology Today

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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2017©. Born and raised in Brooklyn, now resides in Westchester. Named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs 

#Trump’s #Book #Publishing #Tweets

Full disclosure:  I thought President George Bush, Jr. was our least smartest president of the past 50 years.  Just ignorant on so many levels.  He was the kind of guy some would have a beer with but not join a book club.  I’m afraid President Donald Trump is another level below Bush.  There’s nothing about Trump that says intellectual or even a book reader.  I doubt he ever wrote – or read – any of the best-selling books that bare his name.  So it is with this admitted belief about the leader of the free world that I give you the tweets Trump may one day send as it relates to book publishing:

Gone with the Wind – good #book but couldn’t it let the South win?  Rewrite that ending!

When will Bill O’Reilly write a book that will top them all – Killing #Trump?

I’m bringing back great jobs, lots of jobs.  Let’s hire more #scribners!

Publishers beg me to write an #Apprentice tell-all.  They ask me, like, daily.  Should I do it?  Maybe.  We’ll see.  Stay tuned.  I could do it.  I don’t know.

#Megan Kelly’s book was nonsense.  Why is this angry woman not content to stay home?

Never judge a book by its cover, but always flip to the back cover and see if the author’s #hot.

Oh, man, book publishers are part of the #fake news media.  Maybe they wouldn’t be so fake if they give me a big advance.

My presidential #memoir will be the biggest, best, and most amazing book and is sure to beat Obama’s or Clinton’s snoozefests. Right? Am I wrong? I don't think so.

I plan to sell the Russian translation rights for Art of the Deal but Ivanka said it wasn’t a good deal.  You hear that #Putin, up the offer now.

As a peace-warming gesture to the protesters and anti-protesters and the anti-anti-protesters in Charlottesville, I’m making available free copies of Mein Kumpf and Schindler's List.  See, I can be sensitive to #both sides. 

Okay, so let me stop. It’s sadder than funny to think that the most powerful person on the planet does nothing to truly promote literacy, education or the book world.  He talks of cutting funding organizations like the NEA, and lacks any kind of leadership role when it comes to fostering a society that values books and intellectual curiosity.  But his presidency could spur a parody and humor book renaissance – assuming war with North Korea or an impeachment trial don’t get in the way.

But the tweet we really want to see?

#I am stepping down from the office of president of the United States to do something many people have asked me to do: host the ninth hour of the Today Show.

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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2017©. Born and raised in Brooklyn, now resides in Westchester. Named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs 

Making A Great Author Website In 16 Steps

A website for an author is an extremely important marketing tool and most writers have mediocre ones.  Some are too simple, cluttered, ugly, outdated or ineffective in doing what it’s supposed to do:  represent your brand, serve as a lead generator, be a point of connection, and a place of business.  So how can today’s author spruce up his or her website so that it best represents and serves one’s interests?

First, look at your site from the eyes of those who would come to visit it.  What feeling would they get?  Is everything clearly navigational?  Are things that one expects to find up on the site actually there?  Is everything updated? What’s the overall reaction one gets when seeing the site?  Does it touch all of your digital senses -- including sound, video, text, or graphics?

Second, ask yourself if you started from scratch, how different would a brand new site look in comparison to what you have?

Here are the 16 areas you should examine more closely when looking to spruce up your website:

1.      What do you have running across the top of the screen that provides a quick peek at what’s on your website?  Do you have things like ABOUT, HOME, CONTACT, APPEARANCES, BLOG, MEDIA?  Are there sections for BOOKS or other important topics?  Compare your site to what competing authors are offering and make adjustments accordingly.

2.      Under CONTACT, do you have your full name, email, phone, mailing address and social media links?

3.      For your ABOUT section, is your biography up-to-date, including the latest accomplishments and an accurate count when you reference the number of years of experience that you have?  Does your photo need a makeover?  Would you like to include a video link that introduces people to you?

4.      What free downloads do you offer in exchange for someone to provide their email with you?  Clearly highlight your offer and properly incentivize people to take an action step.

5.      Can people clearly and easily see where to click to buy your book or other items?

6.      Are there parts of your site that are blank or not functioning properly?

7.      Do you have enough visuals sprinkled throughout, such as photos, illustrations videos, charts, and graphics?  You need to break up text with design elements such as space, color, boxes, bullet points, and artwork.

8.      Is your font or typeface big enough and easy to read?  Are your background colors distracting or interfering with the consumption of content?

9.      Are your testimonials and endorsements current?  Keep adding to them.

10.  Do you have book excerpts and/or sample chapters available for those who want to get a taste of your talented offerings?

11.  Your site should always feel like something new is happening, so highlight recent successes in the media or list upcoming appearances or planned events.

12.  People buy from those they know, like, trust and believe will provide them with something they need, desire, or will find useful.  It’s imperative that your site give off a feeling that is welcoming and that symbolizes your personality and message.  Post a Q & A so people can get a flavor for your views and experiences.

13.  Only have a blog on your site if you post to it regularity, such as three to four times a month, otherwise it looks empty and stale.

14.  Do not hit people up with a BUY offer or a SIGN-UP request as soon as the home page pops up.  First sell people on who you are and let the consumer naturally conclude he or she wants to buy or sign up for something.

15.  Pit yourself on a seasonal schedule to review and revise your website – fall and spring.  The more often you do this, the less arduous the task of fixing your site.

16.  Lastly, the key to reviving your site is the choice of words used. Writers forget that words are powerful marketing tools. The words you use in your site will help determine its SEO worthiness. Make sure you use and repeat the keywords that people search for when it comes to your subject matter. Don’t forget to use a level of vocabulary that matches your subject matter, as well.

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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2017©. Born and raised in Brooklyn, now resides in Westchester. Named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs