Confession #6: A Bad Website is Much Worse Than No Website at All

Everyone pretty much feels like they should have a webiste today. This is true. In the digital world in which we live, you should have some sort of website if you are trying to sell something or disseminate some sort of information. It’s important. A person or company’s online presence tells a lot about them/it. However, a bad website will hurt your reputation far more than not having one at all. I’ve come acros some truly bad websites in my time here at the UPF while searching for contact information for scholarly journals or doing research and also just in my travels across the internet in general. So here’s my top 5 pet peeves when it comes to bad websites

1.  Animation: Nothing on your webiste should move. Like ever. Unless it’s something really awesome like this (Seriously, check it out. It’s amazing) If you can’t compete with that level of awesomeness, the answer should just be no. Don’t insert any sparkly or animated banners. Don’t insert cute graphics of animated woodland creatures or whatever. You might think that they’re brilliant. But I guarantee you that 99.8 percent of the population won’t find them as adorable as you do. If it doesn’t have to move, it shouldn’t.
2. Bad Colors: A bad color scheme is like the kiss of death for a website. Neon colors are almost never appropriate. They especially should not be used for text. Ever. In fact, no color should really ever be used for text unless it’s a dark neutral color like black, brown or dark blue. Let’s take this website for example The green writing makes me feel like I’m going blind. The company is legitimate, but I feel like I just stumbled onto a really really bad internet scam. It’s definitely not a place I would ever buy anything from.
3. Bad Colors Continued: Colored backgrounds should be a border, not the background for your text. The last website is also a prime example for this. Even if the text was white, it’s much harder to read white on black than it is black on white. There are always exceptions to every rule, but the majority of your text should be on a white or similarly colored background. To get someone to stay at your website or revisit it, you want it to be as readable as possible.
4. Too much scrolling: Scrolling should be at a minimum and definitely never horizontally. Think carefully about the amount of information you put on each page. Because if it wasn’t my job, I never would have waded through this site for the newsletter contact information. Having too much information is as bad as not having enough. You want to tease the reader to convince them to move from page to page in the site. Give them just enough information to keep them interested. That’s why news stories are almost always broken up onto multiple pages. If someone feels overwhelmed by the amount of information you are throwing at them, they aren’t going to stay on your site for very long.
5. Contact information: This is probably my biggest pet peeve. If you want people to be able to get in touch with you, make it as easy as possible. I spend hours at my internship trying to find contact information for people. Sometimes it’s literally impossible. Don’t be one of those people. If you want them to email you, give them an email link. If you want them to facebook you, give them the link to your facebook page. The point of every website should be engagement. People can’t engage with you if you don’t give them the opportunity.

There are other things that makes websites bad, but these are the biggest things to avoid for me personally. Websites should be clean and attractive. A messy website is like inviting people over to your house with dirty dishes piled up in the sink and garbage all over the floor. You don’t want people to see your mess in your real home. You shoudln’t want them to see it in your online home either.

Confession #5: Publishing is a very long and complicated process.

I’ve been working at the University Press of Florida for about a month and a half now, and I think I finally have some sort of grasp on the publishing process. It’s long, complicated and fairly messy most of the time, but the end result is a shiny new book with your name on the cover. That’s pretty much every writers dream. It’s certainly mine. Understanding how the process works will go a long way towards getting yourself published too. So here’s a look at what goes on inside of a publishing company:  

1. Acquisitions is where the book process officially starts. Here at the UPF we get letters of inquiry from prospective authors or finished manuscripts, and our acquisitions department works with the authors to get the books polished enough to move on in the publishing process. Academic publishing does work differently than fiction publishing though. Most larger publishers won’t accept unsolicited manuscripts. If you are a fiction writer trying to get published, you have to find an agent first. One good place to start your search is the Association of Authors’ Representatives. Everyone has their own submission guidelines, so make sure that you follow them exactly.
2. From Acquisitions your book will move on to the editorial department. Most of the shaping of the book is done with acquisitions. Editorial is more about fixing typos and making sure that all of the information is factually correct. As a university publishing company, it’s really important that our books contain all correct information in order to preserve the UPF’s reputation.
3. The next step in the process is getting a book peer-reviewed. The UPF requires that the book is reviewed by two other scholars in the field. These peer reviewers are asked to give their general impression of the book, whether or not they think the book is worthy of publishing, and to make any suggestions for improvement that they can think of. The author is given the readers’ reports and given a chance to respond and make any necessary changes to the manuscript. If heavy revision was called for, the process is repeated. 
4. After the peer review stage, the book is submitted to the UPF’s board of directors for publication approval. Board members are given a packet containing the readers’ reports, the author(s)’ resume, and some comments from the editorial department and then vote on whether or not to approve the manuscript for publishing. 
5. Once it’s approved by the board, it moves on to the design and production phase. Here a cover is designed for the book and it is formated for publishing so that it is as attractive as possible. 
6. The book also goes to the marketing department (the one I work in) where a title is finalized. A tip for authors: unless you feel like the suggested titles compromise the integrity of your book, listen to the marketing department about suggestions. Our goal is to make your book as marketable as possible. The text for the back of the book or the inside flap is written. We contact publications we think would be interested in writing a review for the book and sent out the review copies requested, and generally just work hard to make your book as successful as possible.     

That’s a rather abbreviated description of the publishing process in a nutshell. It works differently at every company, so make sure that you are familiar with your own publishing company’s policies and procedures. A few tips for authors: Don’t fight your publishing company too hard. They have a vested interest in the success of your book. They’re not going to intentionally ruin your work, and probably know more about how to make it a success than you do. Also, remember that your book is never going to be the only book on someone’s desk. Give your publishing company a little patience and a little grace. We’re always going to get back to you. We care about your book. There’s just only so much time in a day. Authors can get a reputation for being difficult just like anyone else. It makes publishing companies less desirous to work with you.

How to: Write a Pitch Memo

Today I’m going to give you a bit further insight into the publishing world by explaining how we do one of the most common tasks here at the UPF for the marketing department. I’m going to explain how to write a pitch memo. Basically a pitch memo is a letter to a media outlet asking that they write a review of your recently published book. In publishing, you only ever pitch to general editors or book review editors. You never go to the exact person that you want to write the review because your publication might think that journalist/scholar or whatever has a vested interest in your book. So here are my steps to writing a pitch memo:

1. Make sure you have the absolute right contact information. People change jobs pretty frequently these days, and this info can be hard to get sometimes. Especially with scholarly journals. Those are a pain in the rear.
2. Learn as much as you can about the publication. See what their recent articles have been about. Does you book seem to fit? If not, you should probably start looking for another media outlet.    
3. Read as much of/about the book that you can. Try to find a really interesting fact or two. You need to be able to give your pitch memo as much of a sense of urgency as possible and spark some interest in whoever will make the decision about whether or not the publication reviews your book.
4. Start the actual pitch memo with that interesting fact/sense of urgency. It’s like the lede in a news story and should be its own paragraph.
5. Give a brief description of the book. Make it sound as interesting as possible, but also be accurate and concise. You want to catch their interest, not give away the entire book so that they feel like they don’t need to read it.
6. Talk about how your book fits in with their publication. Use your research about them to talk about how it fits with a recent article or series that they did. Like I said before, if your book does not fit they probably won’t review it, and you are wasting your time.
7. Give plenty of contact information for yourself. You want them to feel like they are your priority and this includes being explicit about how they can get in touch with you.  
8. End your letter charitably. Thank them for their time. They are a busy person, just like you. Make sure they know that you appreciate their time and consideration.
9. Proof read. This means more than just using spell check. Read over your letter a couple of times and maybe even out loud. Make sure you don’t have any awkward phrasing or missing words. Bad grammar is like a death sentence in the world of the media.  
10. If you are sending this out to more than one publication, make sure you tailor it to each publication individually. The beginning of your pitch can be the same from publication to publication, but make sure that you mention specific things about each one and how your book fits in their bigger picture.

And there you have your pitch memo. This isn’t a guarantee that they’ll write your review, but it will help get their attention if you have a well-crafted and interesting memo for them. Also, don’t be afraid to follow up with them if you don’t get a response. This does not mean to badger them constantly, but the more time you invest in them, the more time they’ll invest in you.

Confession #1: My boss is actually going to see this

As part of my job as an intern at the University Press of Florida, I have been instructed to start keeping a blog about what I do here as a way to support the UPF and also to increase my social media skills. I’ve tried blogging before. It usually doesn’t work for me. I get all into it for a couple of weeks and then I get sick or I go home for a long weekend or one of the millions of other things that just seem to constantly come up in life and boom I haven’t updated in two weeks and I just know that all of my followers have given up hope of ever hearing from me ever again.

But, I have an actual incentive for keeping this up. All of the marketing interns at the UPF are in this blogging contest and whoever has the most hits and best content by the end of the semester gets a prize. I think it’s a gift card of some sort. I don’t particularly care about the gift card, but I am an insanely competitive person. Not at sports necessarily. I love sports. I am the kind of die-hard fan who has an alarm set for ESPN College Gameday during football season and will watch four football games a Saturday if I don’t have a ticket. But having been born with little to no actual athletic ability, I am more competitive at things like board games and Words with Friends . (Tip: Don’t play that game with anyone who you actually consider a FRIEND. Things can get ugly when someone doubles your score. Friendships are ended. Plastic cups are thrown across rooms. True story.) So, being the insanely competitive person that I am, I love a good contest. Especially something that involves writing, because as a PR major I do a lot of that. And after four years at this school  I should be pretty good at it by now.  

So, here’s a little bit about the University Press of Florida

• The UPF began operations in 1945 as the University Presses of Florida, with 2 employees and a budget of $207,000
• It ranks 19th among the 114 members of the American Association of University Presses in terns of titles published per year
• It is the official academic press of the state of Florida, but people from other places publish their books here too.     

I am a marketing intern, which means that I do lots of random things like creating databases of potential future reviewers and sending authors copies of their reviews. Some days are busier than others. Today is a bit slow since I was mostly just given the chance to finish up any existing projects. I’ve been working on copy for the next issue of our catalog.  The book I’m writing about is pretty interesting. It’s about arrests and imprisonment during the Civil Rights Movement. The book is called Ain’t Scared of Your Jail and will be released in December of this year. I totally recommend it for any of my fellow history buffs. Put it on your Christmas list. And that’s not a shameless plug, I swear. I read most of the book while writing the catalog copy and it’s really good. Occasionally I’ll be given a topic to write about, but for the most part this will be all of my own thoughts and experiences about what actually goes on behind the scenes at a publishing company. Hopefully you’ll find it as interesting as I do!