Together with his co-author, Dr. Jack Canfield, Dr. Mark Victor Hansen has launched the most popular nonfiction book series of all time, Chicken Soup for the Soul. (Ever heard of it?) To date, the self-help titles filled with relatable anecdotes and wisdom have sold over 167 million copies worldwide and launched a brand that includes more than 100 licensed products.

Although, many authors would have retired at this point, Hansen continues to speak and to write. He describes his latest book, U R the Solution, as his way of giving back in order to make a “significant impact on the world.” Hansen spoke with mediabistro.com about the creation of his empire and the costly business decisions that could have initially derailed his career.

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Name: Mark Victor Hansen
Twitter handle: @markvhansen
Position: Author, speaker and entrepreneur
Resume: Lost over $2 million virtually overnight in a faulty business decision, had to do labor work for $2.14/hour in order to make ends meet. Bounced back as a speaker for the business market. Collaborated with friend and fellow speaker Dr. Jack Canfield on what would become Chicken Soup for the Soul. After being rejected by 144 publishers, Hansen and Canfield were published by a small publisher Health Communications, Inc. and the book series went on to sell over 167 million copies.
Birthdate: January 8, 1948
Hometown: Waukegan, Illinois
Education: Honorary doctorate from Southern Illinois University and a Ph.D. from Golden State University
Marital status: Engaged
Favorite TV show: Boston Legal
Guilty pleasure: “Eating delicious desserts”
Media Idol: Peter Guber, “because he’s a mensch.”

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Where did the idea for Chicken Soup for the Soul come from?
Jack and I have been friends for now almost 30 years, but for five years we were helping each other with [speaking engagements]. He did the educational market; I did the business market. One morning, he was [speaking] at the Beverly Hilton and I went up there to talk. I said, “What are you doing?” and he said, “Well, I am writing this book about happy little stories.” I said, “Well, that title sucks and since I gave you all these heart-touching stories, let’s do it together.” So we did.

There are a lot of self-help books around, but it seems like one of the reasons for the success of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series is because of its name. How was having a great name really important?
Don’t even write a book unless you’ve got a great title, because no one’s going to open the book unless you’ve got a great title. We had a crummy title. We both studied the work of Erik Erikson, a hypnotherapist and psychiatrist, and he said, “You know, before you go to sleep, repeat in your respective beds, in your respective homes 400 times a day “make a bestselling title,” “make a bestselling title.” And Jack called me at 4:30 in the morning and said, “Chicken Soup!” and I said, “for the Soul!” and I said, “holy crap! That fits!” I had goose bumps. Our respective wives said, “That is the stupidest idea ever,” and then 144 publishers said, “Hit the road, Jack.”

What is the process like when collaborating with Dr. Canfield? And what would you say are the keys to a great co-authoring partnership?
Jack and I are still close and see each other all the time. When we were writing the book, we basically lived together for three years. If we weren’t talking and traveling with our own families on trips, we were together. We exercised together, we talked together. I don’t want to write with an enemy. I want to write with somebody I really enjoy working with, laughing and joking with. You have got to be a great friend, first. In other words, Jack and I had a deep friendship. We were like-minded; we both wanted a book that would change lives.

You were rejected by over 140 publishers when pitching Chicken Soup for the Soul. How did you keep going when it looked like you should just give up?
We were inspired by so many other authors, some of the greatest that were rejected. We interviewed so many bestselling authors before writing the book. John Grisham had A Time to Kill in the trunk of his car for six years and went from bookstore to bookstore, giving it to them and signing them. The same with Stephen King, he was rejected too. Nora Roberts, they all were rejected. The thing is, Jack and I had a platform. In fact, we had 20,000 copies of little coupons that we had people fill out saying that they would buy the book once it came out and still we were rejected.

“Don’t even write a book unless you’ve got a great title.”

What is your new book, U R the Solution about and how is it different than the Chicken Soup for the Soul series?
My co-author in this new series is Bill Froehlich. Froehlich has done 10 major television series, including MacGyver which he wrote, produced and directed. We talked about inspiring people as to what they could do right now in the world. We really wanted to use our imagination because of the deep problems that face our nation [that were] largely created by unscrupulous people from Wall Street. So, it’s a fable that encompasses that idea. Our thought was to do a whole series, not unlike the Chicken Soup for the Soul. I had read in George Lucas’ book where he said, “Don’t do anything you can’t prequel and sequel,” so I thought we would do a series.

What would you say were some of the things you did initially to set the foundation for your success?
Well, it took us three years to write this book, because it took us awhile to create a formula that worked. We developed seven things that each story needed in order for it to be included in the book. First of all, it’s got to cause instantaneous behavioural change. It’s got to be something the readers connect with instantly. It’s got to cause happy tears. It’s got to cause your stomach to flip flop in a positive way. It’s got to cause goose bumps, God-bumps, chilli bumps, those seven things. And so we read a thousand stories to find one, and we re-edited it until it had all those elements. Every one of those stories got read and edited seven times or so.

If authors are interested in building a brand or an empire as you have done, what should they do first, before writing a single page?
They’re going to need to decide to create a brand that commands. A brand that commands has three things going for it: first of all, repetition is important. Authors have to keep the customers’ mind. The customer is going to need to see that brand over and over again and eventually you build up a rapport and a trust with them. For example, with our Chicken Soup brand, it’s everywhere so the customer thinks to themselves, “Oh, yes. I trust Mark and Jack. These guys have honesty and integrity, and I see them on TV and I have seen it in commercials.” Secondly, you need to create a brand that the customer identifies with. People identify with Chicken Soup. People can relate to the topics that are in the books. And finally, you need conformity. Apple is a perfect example of that.

What did you do to market the book that didn’t work?
What didn’t work was hiring a lot of the consultants especially about social media, who say they know stuff and for the most part, they do not and they charge a lot. In my experience, all of them are making money selling their experience, but they are not turning it into dollars. I had to figure it out by myself which is probably the best way. Go to the seminars, listen to what they have got to say, and then figure it out for yourself.

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Jeff Rivera is the author of Forever My Lady (Grand Central) and and the Founder of HowtoWriteaQueryLetter.com

If you flip to the Today show on most days, you’ll see a familiar face. Jean Chatzky is the expert on everything personal finance, dispensing practical information about how people can get out of financial ruts and mishaps. But when Chatzky first graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and took a position at Working Woman magazine, her goal was never to write about personal finance; instead she was interested in business.

“That’s where I learned about companies. I found that very interesting,” she recalls. “And what I really wanted to do more than anything…was go be a fact-checker at Forbes.”

After a detour on Wall Street as a business research analyst at Dean Witter Reynolds, Chatzky eventually landed at her dream publication and later joined SmartMoney, where she parlayed her money know-how into regular gigs on Today and SiriusXM’s Oprah & Friends show. But what makes her so well-received is that she previously struggled with her own personal finances. Now, the author and financial whiz opens up about how she created her empire using multiple media channels — and how you can, too.

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Did you ever have to take courses in finance to learn more about the technical things, or is all the knowledge you have gained from your personal experience in the industry?
It’s really what I learned on the job. I was an English major in college. I took some marketing classes. I took econ. When I was at Dean Witter, I learned how to read balance sheets, do taxes. SmartMoney, when it launched, launched with the idea that it would be a new and different personal finance magazine and be about the lives of people and not just their mutual funds.

So when did you come to a position when you realized you knew what you were talking about? When did the books come?
It was kind of a natural evolution. When I got to SmartMoney, we had a very aggressive PR effort to just get it off the ground. They launched a segment on the early morning version of the Today show. So they got this segment that was supposed to be once a week. So it just rotated. Whoever had a story to talk about would just go do this segment, and I went one week and they just liked me. I did that for about three years, then I ended up over at Today. And the book and the speaking just elbowed from there. But you know, I just made sure to do my homework whenever I had a story to talk about; I would make sure I knew it cold.

At that time are people saying, “You should just write a book,” or is that something that, as a writer, is that something that you innately wanted to do?
I think I would have eventually come around to it, but no, I got a call from a publisher that said, “You should write a book.” And I got a call from a speaking bureau that said, “You should speak.” So I wish could say that I went out and I got all these things, but…the Today show opened a huge number of doors and, you know, I’m forever grateful. I have worked with different publishers. I have worked with different agents. When it became clear that I was going to be a regular on the Today show, then they said they were going to offer me a contract, I got an agent. When the publishers came around and said, “Let’s write a book,” I got an agent.

When did all of that kind of happen…the books, the speaking. What year?
1997.

A lot of people will call themselves experts nowadays, but you’re obviously the person in everyone’s living room [on TV]…their source for money information. When did you realize you made it as an expert?
I think for me truly understanding that I could stand on my own didn’t really happen until I left SmartMoney magazine.  And that wasn’t all that long ago, about four years [ago]. When I left SmartMoney magazine, I remember having a very long drawn-out conversation with my boss at the Today show, because SmartMoney was my home for five years and I understood that I was very much associated with SmartMoney. And I was being offered a great job…and I wanted to take it. But I also wanted to make sure that this was not just the magazine.  I had some expertise that was not associated with any magazine I was at.

Jean Chatzky’s tips for making money in media:
1. Diversify your portfolio. “The more well-rounded you are in terms of being able to write everything from a blog post to a long story to shoot your own video and edit it, the more employable you’re going to be.”
2. Watch those pennies. “If you can get a grip on where your money is going, then you have the power to change where you put it and to use it to do whatever you want, whether it’s saving or paying down debt, or funding retirement or renting an apartment.”
3. Write the book on it. “It really helps to write, to put your thoughts down on paper, whether they’re in a book or in a blog or a magazine article. Because then there’s something to talk about.

NEXT >>

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 Kristen Fischer is the author of Ramen Noodles, Rent and Resumes: An After-College Guide to Life. Visit her at www.kristenfischer.com.

Publishing couldn’t be changing faster. Whereas even a few short years ago, the stigma attached to self-publishing might have caused literary agents and publishing houses to turn their noses up at certain aspiring authors, today, agents are steadily perusing literary communities and platforms for the next big eBook author. Some notables, like Joe Konrath, have even used the technology to re-launch their careers.

One such company that is on the forefront of this new incarnation of publishing is Wattpad. Nina Lassam, their marketing evangelist and a speaker at mediabistro.com’s upcoming eBookSummit, speaks to us about the rapidly changing marketplace, the success of authors using Wattpad to land book deals and why no form of technology will ever replace the literary agent.

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Name: Nina Lassam
Position: Marketing evangelist for Wattpad
Resume: Dabbled in journalism before pursuing grad school at the Marshall McLuhan Institute at the University of Toronto. Later worked in the marketing department at Ceryx before joining Wattpad.
Birthday: January 31, 1984
Hometown: Toronto
Education: BA, University of King’s College; MA University of Toronto
Marital status: Not Married
First section of the Sunday Times: “Sunday Style and Magazine – but online, so I usually read them the Friday before”
Favorite TV show: The Wire
Guilty pleasure: “Baking in my tiny kitchen”
Last book read: “Print: Anthropology of an American Girl by Hilary Thayer Hamann. Digital: Tattoo by Abigail Kirk.”
Twitter handle: @wattpad

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There are many sites that are trying to mimic your success. What is it about Wattpad that is so unique compared to the others?
Wattpad is a unique platform because of how social it is. Readers love that they can interact with authors who’ve shared work on the site. Until recently, readers used the Wattpad message boards and forums to comment on stories, provide feedback and recommend work to one another. In November, we introduced Wattpad Chat which has been incredibly popular and allowed even more interaction. We see a reader comment on a story once every 6 seconds on Wattpad, which makes it appealing for writers as well who are looking for feedback.

Some literary agents and publishers are frightened that if more writers use services such as yours and publish their eBooks directly, that this could cut them out completely. What do you have to say to them?
What I see on Wattpad is quite the opposite. Authors looking to get published do not know how to approach publishing houses, and the consolidation in the industry has made it even more intimidating. The uncertainty in the industry has also made it challenging for authors to establish what constitutes for normal. I think agents will continue to have a role in publishing books and helping authors profit from their work. The status quo keeps changing and, as long as agents continue to work for an author’s best interest, their role will remain valuable. We know of many agents who have created Wattpad accounts to look [for] talent on Wattpad and if they aren’t subtle about it, they are inundated with questions and requests.

What success stories are you most proud of from writers who’ve started their professional careers using your site?
The most exciting moments in the office come when we see the authors accomplish their publicly stated goals. It’s great to hear from younger, aspiring authors how supportive their families are and how much confidence their success on Wattpad has given them in their writing. Of course, we are delighted to hear that the site has garnered more sales for authors or helped them secure a publishing deal, as well.

“I think any medium that enables more democratic access should be celebrated.”

What was it about Wattpad that made you want to be a part of it? Certainly someone with your background could have chosen any platform.
Actually, I had been trying to work for Wattpad for a while. I think any medium that enables more democratic access should be celebrated. Wattpad has no barrier to entry; as long as you have an internet connection, it is completely platform agnostic. I think that is so important and when I see the demographics of Wattpad users I think it has a valuable real-world application.

Some people say that sites such as Wattpad allow the lowest common denominator of writers to get published. What have you done to separate the wheat from the chaff so that readers can discover quality over quantity?
Any site that is made up of user generated content is going to have a huge variety of content and quality; just look at YouTube. Some days the most popular video is an incredibly moving dance performed at a busy intersection in the rain, and other days it’s a cat who walks around with a box on his head. The same occurs on Wattpad. Because Wattpad deals predominantly with young adults, it’s easy to spot what’s trendy among the age group. For example, last summer werewolves were so popular we had to give it its own category. That being said, a good story is a good story and will always stand out.

Some of the things we’ve done to help encourage readers to look beyond the most popular titles is added a “Featured” section where we promote titles for a limited time. Additionally, if a title has been recommended by a third party such as a magazine or blog, we have a section called “As Seen In.” This way, readers can find titles recommended by sources external to the community.

You mentioned last summer that werewolves were popular. What trends are hot now and which ones seem to be on the verge of breaking?

Historical fiction, especially set in the Victorian Era, is gaining steam. No pun intended.

Besides writing great material and promoting on Facebook and Twitter, what can writers do to build a fan base on Wattpad?

Knowing your audience is extremely important. If you are writing a self-help book, visit forums and organizations that deal with the topic you are writing on. If you’re writing a book for businesses, use business-specific social media, such as LinkedIn.

Additionally, authors should start marketing early. Putting in six months of work before your book comes out may seem like you’re over preparing, but it will make a huge difference. It takes time to build up followers on Twitter, Facebook and your blog, beyond your existing network. The longer you give yourself, the more effective your marketing efforts will be.

Lastly, your marketing efforts should focus on awareness of your book and also on making fans – which means letting readers get to know you, not just your writing.

“Putting in six months of work before your book comes out may seem like you’re over preparing, but it will make a huge difference.”

You have a new self-published writers program. What is that all about and how does that differ from companies such as Author Solutions?
Wattpad is a marketing platform for self-published authors to find readers. We do not publish books or have any commerce on the site. Authors are invited to share their self-published work with readers and create a fan base that they can direct to a point of sale, which might be Amazon or a self-publishing site such as Lulu or Smashwords. With our program, we encourage self-published writers to contact us directly for guidance on how to make the most of marketing on Wattpad. We are also working with PW Select.

I went on your site and found numerous copyrighted materials under different titles. What are you doing to protect author and publishers rights?
I certainly hope you reported them! We have a zero tolerance policy for piracy. In addition to being user-moderated, we have a content filter block that blocks potentially copyright material. We receive ONIX files from publishers to help us identify these infringing uploads. It is not perfect, but we have generated more false alarms than misses — by design, just to err on the safe side — and our filters continue to improve. Currently, Wattpad is also working with the Association of American Publishers or AAP to refine their anti-piracy best practices.

Bookstores are closing, and many say we’re about to see another tidal wave of lay-offs from New York publishing houses. eBooks are taking off, but still represent less than 10 percent of revenues. Where do you see the future of book publishing going?
I see eBooks continuing to increase their market share as they become the new norm for reading. On Wattpad, the majority of readers and writers are teenagers, and I think most parents are encouraged by how much more interested in reading young people are when they can do so on their mobile phones or personal computers. I think the success and mainstream popularity of YA titles has also contributed to the acceleration of eBook adoption.

What future developments can we expect to see from Wattpad?
More social features are the most requested features from readers and authors and will continue to be an area of focus.

NEXT >> Hey, How’d You Use Social Media to Crowdsource A Cookbook, Food52?

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Jeff Rivera is the author of Forever My Lady (Grand Central) and a GalleyCat contributor.

With 56 bestsellers to his credit, including the popular Alex Cross series, and the distinction of being named the highest earning author of this year by Forbes, James Patterson can’t miss.

Yet despite his commercial success, he hasn’t been without his criticisms. Some have said Patterson lost his touch by using a slew of co-authors, and even Stephen King once called him a “terrible writer.”

Patterson, however, says he’s never been interested in being a literary type who engages in a “show-off prose.” His m.o.? To write books that the masses will be interested in. And, from the 170 million copies he’s sold thus far, that strategy is indeed working.

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Name: James Patterson
Position: Author
Resume: Started as an advertising executive at J. Walter Thompson before dabbling with writing his first novel, The Thomas Berryman Number, which won an Edgar Award. He followed that with Along Came a Spider, launching his career as a thriller writer, and 56 New York Times bestsellers followed.
Birthdate: March 22, 1947
Hometown: Florida
Education: Graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in English from Manhattan College and summa cum laude with an M.A. in English from Vanderbilt University
Marital status: Married
Favorite section of the Sunday Times: “The Book Review or the obituary section.”
Favorite TV show: 30 Rock
Guilty pleasure: “Walking the golf course three or four times a week around 7 AM.”
Last book read: The Glamour of Grammar by Roy Peter Clark and Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue

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How did your background in advertising prepare you for becoming a bestselling writer?

Well, I met a lot of serial killers working in advertising so… But seriously, I think it made me aware of thinking about the kind of audience with whom I’m talking to and what they might be interested in. I have a 12-year-old and it is something I talked to him about now and that is, when you sit down with people you’ve got to think about who you are speaking with and what might they be interested in.

You were at one time a midlist author with your first title. How did you position yourself into becoming one of the biggest authors of our time?
I didn’t. I don’t do any of that. It is all emotional with me. [For] the first book I wrote, I was 26-years-old and I won an Edgar. I think what happened, more than anything else, was that I was with a woman who was dying of cancer and she was sick for about three years. And that is when I think I was sort of in purgatory in more ways than one. It was a terrible time and then after Jane died, I said, “Okay, well now I wanna sit down and try to write a book that a lot of people will be interested in reading.” And it was soon after that that I wrote Along Came a Spider.

What is the difference creatively in approaching your novels for the masses compared to writing a literary novel?

I probably wouldn’t try to write a literary novel. I think I can write an acceptably good novel, but I am not particularly interested in talking to that audience. I think a lot of the things that are praised are just kind of show-off prose, which is just not my thing. I can appreciate it, you know. I’m a big reader and I read all kinds of things, but it is not something I want to do.

“I write books that people really want to read. That is what I think is the brand.”

One of your latest agendas has been creating books “for boys.” Why do you feel we’ve lost so many boy readers, and what type of titles are you creating to change all of that?
Well, one of the things that’s gotten me busy up to my ears now is that I have a lot of young adult books such as the Maximum Ride series. I was nominated for children’s author of the year at the Children’s Book Awards. My agent at the time felt that my style would really be a good start for kids because it is very fast-paced. I believe that probably the best way to get most kids reading is to just give them books that they love. There’s millions of kids in this country that haven’t read a book that they like, and that’s not a good idea. And it’s even worse for boys because they are more impatient. They don’t like to sit, you know. The Witch and Wizard is actually the biggest kids series by far that I’ve done, and we have a movie coming now.

With so many titles being released under your name, how do you avoid diluting your brand? And what can other writers who enjoy writing different genres do?
I write books that people really want to read; that is what I think is the brand. So, whether it is a romance or a young adult or whatever, if you pick up one of my books, the pages are gonna really turn fast and that’s the connection that I have with the readers. I think that people have to write stuff that they have some passion for. My success revolves around the fact that I am fairly analytical, logical, have a pretty good IQ but I’ve got street smarts too. You know, a lot of people who have nice IQ’s are just dumb as a brick when it comes to thinking about how other people think and what they might like and how to act in public and things like that. I think I have, you know, gifts involved of those areas. I mean, if I am writing a story that kids are supposed to not want to put down, if I don’t feel it, then I don’t think kids will feel it. If I don’t think that the pages are moving in the story and the characters aren’t involving, then I’m going to assume that the people reading it won’t.

You recently formed a film production company which will self-finance some of your own pictures. Why was this important and what challenges have you had to overcome?
We have an entertainment company and right now there are a few video games we have, such as with the Women’s Murder Club. We have a kind of a big mass audience game with Sony coming in the fall called Catch a Killer, which is kind of fun because I haven’t really played around in that area. We have comic books with IDW called Murder of King Tut, and they are going to do comics of another series that I’m working on as a book. We have a TV deal with Fox, a TV movie with Lifetime and Sony, which is shooting in September, and then we have two features: one Alex Cross and one Witch and Wizard. Alex Cross is supposed to start shooting in first quarter and we have David Twohy who wrote The Fugitive script. Idris Elba is going to be Alex Cross, looks like. He is really, really good.

“Just write a terrific book that has some kind of a hook or uniqueness that people are going to respond to. That’s really the best advice I can give most people.”

Your character Alex Cross is African American. Many authors wouldn’t have dared to write about a character of another race, particularly one of color. What prompted this decision?
Well, I think part of it is I grew up in a town that had a very large African American population living in New York and still is a troubled town now. It was just the murder capital of New York state, and now the problem is between Mexican gangs and African American gangs. My grandparents owned a restaurant and the cook was a black woman. She was having problems with her husband, and so she lived with us for three or four years. During that time, I spent tons of time with her family, who I loved. I loved the food; I loved the music. I thought that they are a very wise people, and that experience to some extent gave me some of the feelings for the Cross family.

What do you do marketing-wise to promote your books effectively, and what can a beginning author do to make an impact from the very start?
Write a good book; that is what most authors can do. Just write a terrific book that has some kind of a hook or uniqueness that people are going to respond to. Write it in a way that people will not be able to stop reading it, and that they will compulsively read. That’s really the best advice I can give most people.

With the market shifting to eBooks, why have you chosen not to create your own publishing company and sell directly to retailers?
If I were to announce that, I think certainly initially it wouldn’t be looked at as a good thing. You know, it is something you think about every once in a while, but my life is good. I like the publisher and the people there and am not interested in hurting them. And I don’t particularly want to do something that would create more upheaval to people in the publishing business. I think it is an important business. I think it is dealt with kind of unfairly by the media at times.

NEXT >> Author Alliances: Pool Your Book Marketing Efforts

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Jeff Rivera is the author of Forever My Lady (Grand Central) and the founder of GumboWriters.com.

“Pack your knives and go.” Gail Simmons did just that — and hasn’t stopped since. Fresh from college, all she wanted was to be a food writer. But the Toronto media scene was lacking, so she packed up and headed to New York. Her ambition propelled her through culinary school, two grueling kitchen jobs, a ‘stars aligning’ stint as food critic Jeffrey Steingarten’s assistant, and a job handling events and PR for chef Daniel Boulud — and no regular bylines. But when her behind-the-camera experience with Boulud helped her land a role at Food & Wine back in 2004, she couldn’t have anticipated the next course: a screen test and a plane ticket to San Francisco to judge the first season of soon-to-be Bravo sensation Top Chef.

Fast forward a few years, and Simmons is a household name and host of her own show, Top Chef: Just Desserts. Ahead of tonight’s season finale, we caught up with Simmons to discuss whether every magazine needs a TV presence to compete, her plans to pen a book, and her tips for a stress-free Thanksgiving.

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Name: Gail Simmons
Position: Host, Top Chef: Just Desserts; special projects manager at Food & Wine
Resume: Got her start as an intern for Toronto Life, then wrote for a newspaper in Toronto before moving to New York to attend culinary school. Worked as a commis at Le Cirque 2000 and Vong. Served as food critic Jeffrey Steingarten’s assistant for two years, through whom she met chef and restaurateur Daniel Boulud. Worked as Boulud’s special events manager for almost three years. Joined Food & Wine in 2004 as special projects manager. Became a judge on season one of Top Chef, and began hosting Top Chef: Just Desserts in 2010.
Birthday: May 19
Hometown: Toronto, Canada
Education: McGill University in Montreal; the Institute of Culinary Education (formerly The Peter Kump New York Cooking School)
Marital status: Married
First section of the Sunday Times: “I would say the Style section. But, really the Wednesday Times is more important to me.”
Favorite TV show: 30 Rock
Last book read: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. “The book I’m reading now is called The Last Fish Tale by Mark Kurlansky.”
Guilty pleasure: Spicy chicken wings. “In New York, when I’m having a craving, the best I have found are at this place Wogie’s.”
Twitter handle: @GailSimmons

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What do you think makes a good food writer?
It’s all about the research. If you do your research really well, it will sort of write itself. It’s not just about just going to the library, but research means tasting, and tasting, and tasting again. And trying, and learning, and being adventurous, and keeping your eyes and ears open, and knowing both sides of an argument, and retasting. And then retasting again. I don’t think that anyone can write about food without knowing about food. I’m not saying that there’s one way to become a food writer. There are so many ways, especially in this amazing age of digital technology, and so many ways to go about a job, or getting a job. But you have to understand food beyond just liking to eat.

How has your role at the magazine evolved since the franchise with Top Chef has really taken off?
It’s totally changed in every way. When I first started Top Chef, my role at the magazine really was running the event department, which means I was directing the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen. After three or four seasons of juggling both the Classic and leaving for large periods of time to film Top Chef, we realized that that didn’t make much sense.
My role at Food & Wine has really become more of an ambassador for the magazine because Top Chef in all of its incarnations takes up so much of my time. But I still do a lot of other appearances for Food & Wine. I do a lot more cooking demos and on-camera stuff for them, not just for Top Chef but the Today show, The Early Show. I work really closely with the editors on a number of content projects. I try to write a little bit for Food & Wine, as much as I can and time allows.

“You can’t just live on a piece of paper, just like a chef can’t just live behind a kitchen door anymore. To really expand, you need to be multi-dimensional.”

Do you think that magazine brands now need to have a TV presence to compete?
I don’t think they need it; there are certainly many that don’t. No matter what your brand is, whether it’s a magazine brand, whether it’s a restaurant brand, whether it’s a product brand, I don’t think that in this moment you can be two-dimensional in any way. You can’t just live on a piece of paper, just like a chef can’t just live behind a kitchen door anymore. To really expand, you need to be multi-dimensional. Food & Wine isn’t just a magazine anymore, it’s a brand. Obviously there’s our big TV component, and we’ve been so grateful for that relationship with Bravo, and how well that’s translated.

Bravo really was the first network that really successfully, at least as far as I can remember, integrated magazines into the television experience in a really organic way that gave Bravo credibility and gave the magazine credibility and didn’t feel forced. Food & Wine, from a publishing standpoint, had to become not just two dimensional, not just three-dimensional by adding that TV layer, but four, five, six-dimensional in that now there also needs to be an incredibly strong online presence, an incredibly strong iPad application, which we just launched and we’re super proud of.

Bravo puts a lot of effort into engaging all of its fans on Twitter. How do you use it to connect with your audience, to promote your projects?
It’s an amazing tool to have this live, real-time experience with people who are looking to you for information, people who are interested in you. And it’s so reciprocal, right? Because there’s people that follow me but there’s also people I’m following, and I am following all of these people for the same reason that people are following me. My kind of test is, well, what do I want to know from my favorite people who I follow? And how can I give people who follow me that experience? I really try to only use it as a tool to connect with people who aren’t living in New York City, necessarily, and want to know like, “What’s Gail doing?” I give information I think is relevant and interesting, and obviously if that means I’m going to be making a public appearance I want people to know because if they want to join me, I want to have them there. If I am in an article that I think is relevant, or if I’m doing some kind of event or a charity, if I have a product or a brand. Ultimately I’m hoping to do a book.

Like a memoir?
Well, I can’t really discuss it yet. We’re just at the beginning of figuring that out, and so obviously — if people are looking for information from me in the short format, I hope that they’ll want to know more in the long form when that comes out.

Let’s talk about Top Chef: Just Desserts. What was going through your mind when you landed your own show?
We just felt like the time was right. We’d had so much response from our viewers and from pastry chefs coming to us saying, “When are you going to let pastry chefs show people how to make a good dessert, for once?” We were all talking about it, and Bravo said, “We’d like you to think about hosting it.” It just seemed like the right progression for me, too, because after so many seasons of doing Top Chef, my role in the show had been well established, and I’ve worked really hard at creating for myself a voice that the audience can trust; a voice that’s somewhere between our viewer and Tom [Colicchio], that translates the kitchen experience for every person who isn’t a professional.

“Everybody who applies for a job with me has their own food blog. That shows they are committed and interested, but how do you differentiate between 65 food blogs? You need to have a point of view.”

I wanted a challenge, and it was just a perfect way to move to the next step and to try hosting, but hosting in a way that for me, felt really safe. Because it was the brand I knew, the show I loved, same format, same producers, and it was for Bravo, who have basically become my roommates. I knew I had support, but that I also could go into a new role with a new formula, with a new show that I could also make my own.

So many of the competitive reality shows want contestants to showcase their personality. What are your tips for someone who wants to show their personality through their work?
You need to have a point of differentiation. What makes you unique, especially because we are so saturated in the media world with content. Everybody who applies for a job with me has their own food blog. That shows they are committed and interested, but how do you differentiate between 65 food blogs? You need to have a point of view, but that point of view also has to be open to other people’s experiences and open to you learning every day, and you can’t hold too tight, just like a chef on the show. When chefs on Top Chef hold on too tight to an idea and aren’t able to adapt that concept, ultimately it always fails, because if they don’t execute it perfectly, and they’re not able to adapt it to the specific challenge, their dish is going to fail.

Is there a season two lined up for Just Desserts

I do not know that; that is a question for Bravo. So if you get the answer, will you let me know?

If there is a season two, was there anything that you would change about your approach? Or are you totally satisfied seeing yourself on TV?
I blog about the episodes and I work with Bravo on a lot of content for [them], so I certainly have to see them. As much as I would be happy not watching them sometimes, I’m not one of those people who can say, “Oh, I never watch myself.” I don’t have that choice. And I can get nitpick-y, but from that kind of macro level, there’s not much I would change. I’m really proud of [the show], I’m so proud of the characters, and that’s the X factor in any reality show: the casting. We really struck gold.

What are your tips for a stress-free Thanksgiving?
Full disclosure: I’m Canadian, so I haven’t been celebrating American Thanksgiving all of my life, but it is certainly my favorite adopted holiday. Stress-free is being organized. That includes, you know, days before plotting out how many dishes you’re going to need, what the menu is, where is it coming from, buying your ingredients a day or two in advance if you can so that you know you have it, so that the day there’s no disasters because you run out of limes and all of the stores are closed. And asking for help; I recently overcame that fear. I was one of those people who entertain at home and want to do everything myself. Then you’re spending your whole day in the kitchen, and you miss out on what the experience of Thanksgiving actually is, which is being with all the people who you are thankful for in your life.

NEXT >> Hey, How’d You Use Social Media to Crowdsource A Cookbook, Food52?

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By Blake Gernstetter.

Although eBooks were once thought of as just a passing fad, today there’s nothing that has created more controversy and praise in book publishing. Even other industries are beginning to take notice of the format’s possibilities, looking to it as an opportunity to expand their brands and profits.

One such visionary is CSI creator Anthony Zuiker. His latest book, Dark Prophecy: Level 26, is his second foray into what he is calling the digi-novel — a fusion of interactive and traditional reading. By allowing readers to follow the tome’s plot through film, social media, mobile apps, and the traditional printed page, Zuiker hopes to reach the “ultra level of convergence in entertainment.” Here, the creator of the biggest franchise in television history and former Las Vegas tram operator explains how and why he did it.

What gave you the idea to expand your brand from television to novels?
During the writer’s strike, we had some downtime. I always loved the publishing business and so I decided to create Dark Prophecy as a digi-novel. I’ve been so infatuated with technology and I want to incorporate publishing, motion pictures and the social communities wrapped into one experience in terms of the ultra level of convergence in entertainment. So, with the digi-novel there are a couple of things I wanted to accomplish: 1) to be able to read a book cover-to-cover to maintain the traditional experience; 2) With every 25 pages that you read, you would have an option to log into a website, enter a code, and watch a piece of the motion picture footage to sort of bridge you from one chapter to another. There’s about 20 of those in book one; and 3) When it was over with, you’d be able to join the Level26.com social community to have direct access to Anthony Zuiker and have extra content in blogs, profile pages and etc. for levels of engagement.

Your first digi-novel in this trilogy was Dark Origins. How well did that do and what did you learn from the experience?
We made some mistakes for Book One because it was so new, we were trailblazing. We had a very masculine graphic novel cover, which didn’t help things. We had the first bridge more like a snuff film, which is much too dark and had a lot of sexual deviance in the book, which was not really up the alley of my CSI audience. And we began to sit back and go, “Let’s try to right these wrongs because we really want to figure out what the rhythm is for the digi-novel experience.” We also made it inept for the iTouch and iPhone, and I feel like when you have to put down a book you’re reading to log in, enter a code and watch the bridge, that’s somewhat of a clumsy experience. I didn’t want to take the book out of the reader’s hands.

So, how is this new eBook a different experience than the first?
With Dark Prophecy, we decided to make some major changes to try to figure out the rhythm of the digi-novel that I created in that it has a much more commercial cover, [and] the merit of it is much more protagonist-based — it’s really the coming out party for my hero, Steve Dark, who is a special part of the CSI group, which deals with the world’s worst crimes. We shot a one-hour motion picture that can be watched and enjoyed separately from the book so they didn’t fight each other in the narrative. And we’re able to have CSI, for the TV show, extract a villain from Book One and put that villain in the television episode and have the storyline continue in Dark Prophecy which drops the same day. So, it’s like the ultimate cross platform of the television/publishing experience.

How did you crack Hollywood’s notoriously closed doors without any family or personal connections?
Well, this is true. I’m an only child, so I have no known ties with Hollywood. They say all great things happen by accident. I was writing monologues for a friend in college for forensic speech. He in turn took those and auditioned in Hollywood trying to be an actor. And when Jenny Delaney, who was a literary agent at William Morris, happened to ask, “Who wrote those monologues?” he said, “a friend of mine, Anthony.” She called me up and said, “If you can write me a screenplay, I’ll represent you,” which in my naive opinion meant that if I wrote something she could sell it. I wrote a movie called The Runner, which she ultimately did not represent but it did circle around town. It caught the eyes of my manager, Margaret Riley, and I signed with CAA based on one script. There is no one way into the business. There are tons of spotters out here who are looking for fresh material, fresh faces.

What was your career path like from screenwriter to creator of your own series?
Well, my manager had the smarts to convince me to take lesser money on a smaller project because she said if I did a horror sequel, I’d end up being out of the business in three years. You can’t really expect to spread your wings as a literary giant if you’re doing cheesy horror films. Fast forward to 18 months later and [the smaller project] never got made, but it did end up on the desk of Jerry Bruckheimer. As timing would have it, he was trying to start his television company. He liked the writing. He liked the voice. He called me in. I pitched him CSI, and we’ve turned out as the biggest franchise in TV history.

You have expanded CSI to include Miami and New York. What other spinoffs can we expect?
There’s no spinoff plan right now. You know, there was a rumor about the movie but again, it’s very complicated. However, my company sold a bodyguard show about Kimberly Penn, the famous female bodyguard for Shaquille O’Neal, Bill Gates, and Mick Jagger. Then, we’re working with CBS on four or five more great shows. So, I’m sort of doing double-duty as a developer of our company on top of the fact that I’m on CSI full-time, while launching a book, a father of three and a husband and talking with you. It’s kind of my complicated lifestyle.

You famously worked a day job as a tram operator in a Las Vegas casino before creating CSI. What advice do you have for aspiring writers who are juggling a day job while pursuing their dreams?
You have to find a way into the castle. You know, I think that when I drove a tram back and forth, there was a part of me that was angry, part of me that was frustrated, part of me that was thinking, “What did I do in my life to deserve all this?” There I was working for $8 an hour and I had two college degrees and worked in a tram. There’s so many talented people out there that can do what I have done on CSI, if given the opportunity. There are spotters in this town that are looking for fresh faces, the fresh producer, you know, the unique story teller. So, pursue the dream and stay the course, ’cause once you give up, it’s over.

What is your writing process like?
It’s a lonely process. In terms of me writing a pilot, it’s me sometimes sitting in a deli pathetically from 9 to 4 ordering a ton of coffee so they don’t kick me out of there, and you know, taking 10-minute breaks every four hours. You know, I laugh ’cause I see myself and my sweats with cold coffee and ice cold eggs at the Broadway Deli in Santa Monica, trying to figure out what the next scene is going to be. It’s really a non-glamorous lonely Hollywood scenario, but that’s just how it is.

What do you think about the claim that shows like CSI negatively affect the real life police process?
Have we done things in the show before that let out the police secrets? Yeah, sure. But for the most part the show becomes bigger than us, and I can’t even tell you the ratio of people that have gone on to graduate with PhD’s and graduate study degrees in criminal justice and criminal science. I have been asked about what the perfect crime is and I have a couple of ideas but they’re not really sound because it’s just really and virtually impossible to get away with anything.

Anthony Zuiker’s Tips for Aspiring TV Writers

1. Have some level of talent.

2. Be able to sell your vision verbally through pitching before you get to the written word.

3. Know how to execute your ideas.

4. Go to New York and Los Angeles to get in front of the decision makers. You have to then try to convince them that your piece of material can be profitable and is worth fighting for.

5. Do your research. There’s plenty of story points that bailed me out because of research. I’m not that creative to make things up, so thorough research and creative leads are pretty much the bread and butter of how I have survived in the business, besides having a unique voice.

NEXT >> Making an eBook: Getting Started

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Jeff Rivera is the author of Forever My Lady (Grand Central) and a GalleyCat contributor.

AOL has some lofty goals for its expansion into content creation, including becoming the number one employer of journalists. A large part of this plan involves the growth of Patch, its network of community-focused sites. By year’s end, the company expects Patch to have spawned into 500 towns across the nation.

But with this quick growth has come criticism as local bloggers question the site’s editorial oversight, while some Patch editors have complained about long hours. Then, throw in a couple plagiarism complaints for fun and dumping on the set of community sites has almost become in vogue. That hasn’t forced Patch editor-in-chief Brian Farnham to pull off the breaks, and, in fact, he seems to take the small setbacks in stride. After all, he’s just dealing with issues established media companies handle everyday. At least, that’s how he likes to look at it.

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Name: Brian Farnham
Position: Editor-in-chief of Patch
Resume: Started out as a fact-checker and writer for New York. A year later, joined Sidewalk.com, Microsoft’s online city guide, to write movie and tech reviews and to edit the book review section. Freelanced for New York publications and wrote a book about iWon.com, a site that received $100 million in funding from CBS. Moved back to print in 2000 as associate editor for Details; promoted to deputy editor four years later. Named editor-in-chief of Time Out New York in 2006 and editor-in-chief of Patch in 2008.
Birthdate: Sept. 14, 1971
Hometown: New York, NY
Education: AB, Bowdoin College; MFA, Columbia University
Marital status: Married
First section of the Sunday Times: “I read it online or iPhone, so no section per se; [I] usually start with Frank Rich.”
Favorite TV show: Modern Family
Guilty pleasure: Apocalyptic sci-fi novels
Last book read: The Ask by Sam Lipsyte
Twitter handle: @brifar

What’s it like managing such a large network?
It’s a combination of awesome and intimidating. The growth that we’re experiencing right now is phenomenal. We’re hiring about 30 people a week to hit our goal of 500 plus markets by the end of the year. And, obviously, most of those are journalists — the editors that we are hiring to run these sites. So, given the recent events in the industry and all the news and reality of the economic downturns, but also newspaper woes and people losing their jobs or taking buyouts, it’s obviously incredibly gratifying to be able to be apart of something that’s growing that industry. So it has kind of been a thrilling ride so far.

How much interaction do you have with the community editors Patch currently has?
Well, in the early days I had a lot, right. We had a handful of sites, and it was pretty much me and a couple other people managing them, so I was very hands-on, and loved that. And then as we grew, I became less and less hands-on, but that was always the plan. The way we are structured is we hire regional editors who oversee 12 local editors, which is what we call them. So we have a local editor, [and] then there’s a regional editor managing 12 of those bundled together. And then just under me, we have four editorial directors who oversee large swaths of the country. So everything kind of rolls up to them, and then to me. I have contact with them through a variety of calls and meetings that we do.

“All of our content is produced locally, right, so it’s in no way a farm. It’s really a network of independent media outlets.”

Do you welcome the title “content farm?”
No, I don’t think it applies to us at all. Content farm generally applies to the sites that, well, the mainly the ones that have big networks of disaggregated freelancers who sort of opted in to be tapped when things are needed. We’re not that at all. All of our content is produced locally, right, so it’s in no way a farm. It’s really a network of independent media outlets is the best way to think about it.

Patch has come under fire for its lack of editorial oversight for unseasoned journalists. What’s your response to those cries?
Yeah, you know I think that is kind of an unfortunate stereotype really of our people. We have now, a couple hundred editors. The average experience for the editors is nine years of journalism experience. So it’s not as if everyone is right out of school. I think those things have been overstated a bit. Yes, there have been this and that incident, but not as many as I think some of the echoing in the blogosphere makes it seem like. Every newspaper or media company that deals with journalism and human beings deals with mistakes at some point. The real thing is how quickly you respond to those and correct them and how transparent you are about them. So that’s what we are really concentrating on.

Are the stories fact-checked before they run, or do the writers work on an honor system?
They are fact-checked by the reporter or editor. So any freelancer who writes for us, the editor is editing that copy. That’s not going live without someone seeing it. And when the editor writes something, usually the regional editor is looking at it beforehand again, but not always. But the editors all know to fact-check their own work.

How does Patch get implanted in a new community?
The most important I’d say, just because it’s sort of the first and most powerful, is whenever we launch a site, we send a team in — a three-person team of freelancers, and the local editor is actually a part of that. What they’re doing is building up our directory. We go around to every organization, every business, every park and government agency and we hand-collect that data. We put it into structured fields. We take numerous photographs. And then we build up that database and it becomes a really rich yellow pages for us.

“The local editors are all basically chief marketing officers of their sites. They are the ones figuring out how to promote it day-to-day.”

But then after the launch… We just do a lot of grassroots outreach of the editor constantly. The local editors are all basically chief marketing officers of their sites. They are the ones figuring out how to promote it day-to-day. So we help them with the overall strategy, but they are really the ones out there pounding the pavement, handing out flyers, and just meeting everyone they can.

How do you manage your relationships with the local blogosphere, especially since you and the other top editors are spread so thin?
We tell everyone that the local editors are masters of their domain. So that includes the content and the markets themselves and the people in that ecosystem, whether they be bloggers or the weekly newspaper, radio station or whatever. That means that we want them to sit down with the bloggers and share content and figure out ways to work together. We look at it as we are coming into a new market, and we are not going to assume we know more than [the local people] do or that we are bigger or better experts for that community than they are. We have an open linking policy if we didn’t get something we want to point our users to it, and hopefully other sites want to do the same.

In light of the plagiarism accusations, what guidelines or rules has Patch put in place to avoid them?
We put a number of rules in place before. We definitely had a zero tolerance policy for plagiarism. Everyone knows what not to do. I think, the incident you are referring to, one was actually a freelancer; it wasn’t a full-time editor. And you know, the other was an unfortunate mistake. It was really kind of, I’ll say understandable just because of the way sometimes [things] happen online where you will have a photo that in this particular instance was actually a public domain photo. It was a police mug shot, and you know it was definitely the wrong thing to do to take it. It shouldn’t have happened, but you know, I think there is a lot of gray area online, I’m not saying that this is an excuse, it’s something you have to navigate. But these things, every media company in the world, again, deals with these mistakes, and it’s something you see from time to time. And the best you can do is use them as lessons, and remind people what the standards are, and move on.

Patch has received a lot of heat from the blogosphere regarding the pay and hours of community editors. But why would a journalist want to work at Patch, and what’s there to like about the gig?
I think there’s a lot to like. I don’t want to speak for all the editors, but having talked to a number of them, I know that one thing I hear is first it’s ownership. It is really a chance to sort of run your own ship. And a lot love that. And the other thing is the flexible schedule. We try to structure the jobs so that people can find the time they need to take off whenever they need it, and we certainly put a lot of things in place to help people, whether it’s a freelance budget so they can pay people to help them… You are getting a site, and it’s your job to fill it. And we are not telling people what they should write about. In fact, we always say, ‘You are the local expert, you tell us.’ And I think the majority of our editors really get that. They really love the autonomy that they are given. They’re also marketing, and they’re also learning to sort of run this small business to some degree. So there’s many aspects of it that they can sink their teeth into. I think it makes it, obviously, fast moving, but it’s also really interesting.

Besides being local, what is Patch’s editorial niche?
Our philosophy is that we are not a news site. We are really a community site that’s got news and information and that the entire purpose is to digitize small communities and to give them experience online that people in bigger cities kind of take for granted. I figure niche, if anything, is really creating a complete hopefully comprehensive experience of the community online in a way that that community would recognize and doesn’t feel like it’s being served from somewhere else.

NEXT >> Relocating For Your Career

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Ryan Derousseau is a freelance writer in New York City, You can find him on Twitter at @ryanderous.

When Janet Evanovich left her publisher of 15 years in July, word in the book biz was that she inked a new deal with Random House‘s Ballantine Bantam Dell for a cool $50 million. Although the author denies the reports about her huge payday, the truth is, her success as a novelist is already solidified: 45 books, millions of fans, and a Katherine Heigl movie based on her title One for the Money in the works. The New York Times also recently reported that Evanovich made $16 million in 2009 alone.

But Evanovich isn’t in it for the money or the fame. The now bestselling author once languished in obscurity as a struggling romance writer for a decade, because, she says, she was unwilling to place business and financial needs over her craft. “I had the attitude that you create art for yourself and if someone else sees something in that, that’s fabulous,” she said. “But after 10 years, it wasn’t getting me anywhere and it probably wasn’t who I was. At some point you realize you could be the most fabulous writer in the world, but if no one is reading it, it isn’t any fun.”

With her latest release Wicked Appetite now in stores, Evanovich discusses with
mediabistro.com the challenges of being a woman in the business, her new co-author program and why she feels the media ‘lies’ about her.

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Name: Janet Evanovich
Position: Author
Resume: Began her career writing romance novels under a pseudonym after failing to sell her first three novels. Gained international fame writing the Stephanie Plum mystery series, with 16 landing on The New York Times bestsellers list. Sold the movie rights to the first title in the series for $1 million.
Birthday: April 22, 1943
Hometown: South River, NJ
Education: BA from Douglass College
Marital status: Married
First section of the Sunday Times: Doesn’t read The New York Times
Favorite TV show: Bobby Flay’s Throwdown
Guilty pleasure: Mac ‘n’ cheese
Last book read: A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity by Bill O’Reilly
Twitter handle: Doesn’t use Twitter

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With the eBook revolution threatening to overtake print books permanently, what are your thoughts about how this could affect your revenue?
Yeah, I love eBooks. I think they’re great, and I’m not sure how they are going to affect my revenue. I’m not sure anybody knows. I think we’re going to have to wait and see how it shakes out. What I know is that they are not going to go away. The kids have come up being so comfortable on the screen, and now even all ages are buying into the Kindle and iPad. eBooks are here to stay. I think that anything that expands the market, anything that encourages people to read, anything that enhances the reading experience, makes it easier, makes it cheaper, makes it more interesting — fabulous, I just love it. I think we haven’t even seen the beginning of eBooks. All kinds of great things are going to come out of it.

“I go to NASCAR races, and I hang out with my crazy relatives, and I prowl South Beach. I think that stuff kind of gets moving around in your head and helps to give you new ideas.”

Today’s authors stand to make dramatically more income by self-publishing and publishing directly on formats such as Amazon’s Kindle. Have you given any thought to doing the same for your future titles?
Actually, I have given it some thought, and then I’ve said, “What? Are you nuts?” It’s not that simple. I think that there are a lot of people out there self-publishing and who have the ability to get their work out now because of the Internet, but it has lots of limitations: distribution, publicity, marketing. There are just many, many components that for me, at least at my level, just don’t work for me. I am actually really happy to have help from a publisher. It’s enough to keep my ass in the chair and keep writing without taking on that also. And I mean, I have my whole family working for me and they’re all doing their own jobs, and I can’t imagine one more job added to the list.

You’ve written somewhere close to 45 books, some under a pseudonym. How do you keep your writing fresh?
I think that you have to continue to live and get new experiences that relate to the people you are writing about. I spend a lot of time in bars and shopping centers, and I go to NASCAR races, and I hang out with my crazy relatives, and I prowl South Beach. I think that stuff kind of gets moving around in your head and helps to give you new ideas. I have a family, we are very close, we are like a little herd. We all live together within three minutes of each other, and when I am running out of ideas, somebody always has one.

You recently switched publishing houses from St. Martin’s to Random House. What were your former publishers not providing that you felt your new publisher will be able to?
Well, I don’t know. We are going to wait and see, aren’t we? I think that sometimes… just a change is refreshing. I loved St. Martin’s; I could not say anything bad about St. Martin’s. My editor, my publicist, my publisher are all my best friends and when I go into New York, it’s girls’ night out. We just loved each other, and I still do. I think they did a fabulous job for me, but we had some differences about moving forward, about the projects that I felt very strongly about in the future, and that really was not so much a matter of money, it was a matter of a vision. I just had a slightly different vision than St. Martin’s. So, I just felt like maybe I needed a change, maybe I needed some new ideas. Sometimes you are the new girl on the block, and there is just a lot of enthusiasm and there’s a lot of energy. You all of a sudden have this rush to do something fabulous.

“If you are a guy and you make a lot of money, you are a success. If you are a woman and you make a lot of money, you are a bitch.”

Reports in media had you asking for more than $50 million for your next deal. For the record, is that what your new publishers gave you and how were you able to justify such a high asking price?
Yeah, I think the word was “demanding”, and it was not true, I don’t know where that figure came from. I have no clue, but that was not accurate. Now, having said that, I do make a decent amount of money, but not only was that not where the negotiations were stalling but the figure was wrong. Possibly at some point that was said in jest and floated out there. But no, it was not a serious accurate figure. Everybody lies about that. You can’t put too much stock in any of those numbers that come out of that. Either they are inflated or they are lessened, because you know if you are a guy and you make a lot of money, you are a success. If you are a woman and you make a lot of money, you are a bitch.

You’ve made the ‘Janet Evanovich’ brand very much a family affair, with key members of your family, such as your son, acting on your behalf. How do you feel your family has better served you over those who are not blood-related?
First of all they are very, very talented. They are very bright and we’re all very different. My son is brilliant, he is our finance officer. He also is my agent now. He is an amazing negotiator, he’s just the nicest guy but very, very smart and Peter just gets along with everybody. He can ease you into a contract and everybody’s happy with it. He also helps edit the books for me, and then my daughter is a little bit more on the other half of the brain. She graduated as a film and photography major and then came on board and created our website. Alex does all of that for me. She sits on top of the co-author program. She has an editor working under her, but she’s the bottom line person for that.

Tell us more about this co-author program.
Several years ago I did some co-authored books with Charlotte Hughes; then Charlotte decided that she wanted to go off on her own and the program kind of died out. Then, last year we realized that we were missing the co-author program. We would like to have, maybe three or four co-authors that we’re working with and bringing them out in hard cover. It’s one of those situations that if you find the right person, everybody wins. There are tons of really good writers out there, but for one reason or another, they just have not had the support that allowed them to build audiences. So, for these writers out there, it gives them an opportunity to get a much larger market. If somebody’s interested in being part of our co-author program, they should contact my son, Peter Evanovich or they can send me a letter. My post office box is on all my book covers.

Some have complained that the Stephanie Plum series just rehashes the same plots over and over. What do you say to those naysayers?
I ignore them. I think, first of all, you never go on Amazon and read the reviews because they’re demoralizing, and I try to do the best that I can everyday. And sometimes I feel like I write better books than other times; that’s just the way it goes, and sometimes it is true that the books are similar. Some people like it because it meets their expectations, some people get tired of them. If you’re one of those people who are tired of them, you should stop reading them, move on. I am serious, move on to someone else. Maybe after a year or two you might want to come back, because it will be fresh.

It isn’t that I don’t listen to what critics say, it’s just that you have to make up your own mind at that point if it’s valid. Sometimes it is and you try to correct things, and sometimes you decide that it isn’t. When I get up in the morning, I don’t just sit down and say, “You know, they are paying me a lot of money. What the heck! I’m just going to knock out a hundred pages.” I don’t know of anybody writing a book, painting a picture, creating music who does that. We are all dying to do the very best that we can everyday.

NEXT >> Making an eBook: Getting Started

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Jeff Rivera is the author of Forever My Lady (Grand Central) and the founder of GumboWriters.com.

You know that Facebook “Like” button you see everywhere these days? It’s just one of the new tools the social network has introduced which it hopes will turbo-charge traffic and user engagement for media and entertainment companies. Facebook is serious enough about that hope that it recently assembled a team to build tools for and work directly with news, entertainment, and publishing companies.

Leading the charge is Justin Osofsky, a three-time Harvard grad, former McKinsey & Company consultant, and cooking aficionado. Mediabistro caught up with Osofsky to find out how media companies can better use the site to add to their bottom lines.

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Name: Justin Osofsky
Position: Director, strategic partnerships, Facebook
Resume: Started as a consultant with Gen3 Partners and McKinsey & Company before joining Facebook’s Business Development department. Became head of product marketing for Facebook Connect in the summer of 2009 and began leading media partnerships in June of 2010.
Birthdate: October 28, 1977
Hometown: New Orleans, La.
Education: A.B. Economics, Harvard College; J.D., Harvard Law School; M.B.A., Harvard Business School
Marital status: Married
First section of the Sunday Times: Sports section
Last book read: The Big Short, by Michael Lewis
Guilty pleasure: A dressed oyster po’boy
Favorite TV show: Modern Family

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What does a typical day look like for you?
My team works with partners and journalists in the media industry to help them understand how to best use Facebook to increase engagement, increase traffic, and, for journalists, to advance their story. First we engage with them on a business level to understand what their strategic objectives are — what they would like to accomplish from working with Facebook — and then how to best work with them to help them accomplish that. We also offer engineering resources to help people understand how to build with Facebook tools and how to create these experiences really effectively. Some of the team focuses on “insights” to help understand what products are working, how they’re driving value to you, and how one can improve the product experience.

At the end of the year, what are you, personally, going to be measured on?
Our goals are to drive value to partners. We want our partners to see increased traffic from Facebook. We want them to see increased engagement on their sites.

You’ve said on several occasions that you’re on a “listening tour” to find out what media companies want and need. Who have you met with and what have you heard so far?
We’ve been meeting with lots of folks, from large media organizations to journalists that are using our products, [and we’ve been meeting them] in settings ranging from individual one-on-one meetings to larger group settings, like Hacks and Hackers or the Asian American Journalists Association. Some organizations are using Facebook in really innovative ways to advance a story. Andy Carvin at NPR recently wrote an article talking about how he and NPR are using Facebook to find sources. They were able to find hundreds of people willing to go on the record to talk about their experiences related to the earthquake in Haiti or [giving up] cable TV.

What else have you heard?
We’ve heard that the way in which you implement the Like button can definitely impact traffic. If you show the faces of [your readers’] friends who have “liked” articles, people tend to click through more. Another really interesting finding: We have a Recommendations plug-in, which shows the content that your friends recommend, share, and care about within [another company’s site]. If you implement [the plug-in] both on [the site’s] home page and on story pages, you see outsized results. It kind of makes sense. When readers are experiencing the recommendations of their friends on article pages, where they’re already reading the content, that’s a great place to reach them.

Where are the stumbling points as media organizations start to use Facebook?
Media organizations produce great content and are very good at delivering it to the right audience. What Facebook adds is a social dimension, the ability [for a reader] to experience what [their] friends care about. What’s really important [when implementing these tools] is to immediately offer value to the reader. When you go to CNN or the Washington Post, you immediately see what your friends recommend. We think those are really good examples of what it means to share and recommend content with your friends. Implementations that don’t bring that front and center tend to perform a little less well.

“When you and I go to Facebook.com, even though we type in the identical URL, we’re fundamentally having a different experience, because we have different friends, and they share different content.”

How does Facebook “win” if media organizations are doing better?
Our readers share over 30 billion pieces of content each month. When you and I go to Facebook.com, even though we type in the identical URL, we’re fundamentally having a different experience, because we have different friends, and they share different content. Simultaneously, when I go to CNN.com and when you go to CNN.com, we’re now having a different experience as well, because we have different friends who care about different things within the CNN.com experience. We think that’s the way both Facebook and our partners win — by working together to create these experiences.

The traditional media world has its own preconceptions about how people search for information, how they retrieve it, and how they consume it. What are some things about the new world that traditional media companies should understand?
News has always been social. A recent Pew study showed that over 70 percent of people said a top reason they consume news is to share it with family and friends, and over half of Americans rely on their friends and family for the news that they receive. We’re now focused on how we can best enable those experiences. With the Facebook news feed, it’s more meaningful, and people spend more time on it because it’s based on their friends. In turn, people are spending more time on our partners’ sites.

Some observers are saying that Facebook is kicking up its efforts in this arena because people are still doing more sharing on Twitter than on Facebook.
We think Twitter and Facebook complement each other very well. But we think Facebook can offer unique value because you’re bringing real identity and authentic connections that people have as they share.

Should Google News be scared of Facebook?
I think Facebook’s doing something quite different than Google. We’re enabling people to share content with their friends and have a custom experience. That feels very different from what Google is doing.

“Our media partners are seeing that having this direct connection and channel, and the ability to deliver content to an audience at the right time, is delivering a lot of value.”

Is it correct that Facebook doesn’t plan to share revenue from advertising placed on media companies’ Facebook pages
That is correct. It’s not something we offer at this time and, to be honest, it’s not a request we hear from page owners. I think our media partners are seeing that having this direct connection and channel, and the ability to deliver content to an audience at the right time, is delivering a lot of value.

Google has taken a lot of heat for not sharing advertising revenue with news organizations. There hasn’t been the same kind of outcry about Facebook’s non-revenue-sharing policy. Why do you think that is?
I think Facebook is offering a lot of value to media partners by creating the connection that they have with their readers and enabling them to publish to them. The other thing is that Facebook, as a platform, is very much focused on creating experiences on the sites of media partners themselves, which allow the experiences on partner sites to become more engaging. Users experience more content and click on more content and then share it back to drive more traffic from their friends.

As a Facebook user yourself, what do you hope Facebook will be enabling you to discover, say, two years from now?
One of my passions in life is cooking. I love cooking on weekends and experimenting with new recipes. It would be really exciting to see a very custom cooking experience on the Internet. So, if I show up to a recipe site, [I have the ability to] understand what my friends want to cook, what worked for them and what didn’t. What happens today is I often show up at sites, and there are great reviews around recipes, but I don’t know the person who contributed the review. It would be awesome if I knew that [a friend] really knew how to cook really well, and the first review I saw for a recipe was from [that friend].

Last question, you said before that you think Twitter and Facebook are more complementary than competitive. But: you vs. Twitter head of media partnerships Chloe Sladden in a thumb-wrestling competition. Who wins?
I’m very clumsy, so I’d never bet on myself in thumb-wrestling.

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E.B. Boyd is a freelance writer in San Francisco.

Given print media’s ongoing travails, it’s difficult to get excited about newspapers these days — particularly at the tech-heavy South by Southwest Interactive conference kicking off this Friday in Austin, Texas. However, bridging the gap between the beleaguered newspaper industry and social media innovation is print journalist-turned Internet editor Robert Quigley, who’s showing the rest of the business how newspapers can embrace — and advance their coverage using — social media at The Austin American-Statesman. A self-proclaimed “Twitter addict,” Quigley operates the Statesman‘s main Twitter account, and is behind the newspaper’s aggressive social media effort that boasts 40+ reporters and six general feeds using the service to disseminate breaking news, cover local events, and interact with readers near and far. Half Web assignment editor at the paper, half social media strategist, Quigley will lead a SXSW talk this weekend entitled, “Old Media Finds New Voice Through Twitter.” We caught up with him by phone to discuss how he’s helping the Statesman acquire new, younger-skewing readers thanks to the “full-frontal assault” he leads using social media tools, the way old-media training can fuel online accuracy, how newspapers’ online video can work, and where print and social media both stand relative to the dreaded m-word — monetization.

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Name: Robert Quigley
Position: Internet editor for Statesman.com and Austin360.com, sites of Austin daily newspaper The Austin American-Statesman
Resume: Started as a sports writer in Nacogdoches, Texas in 1995, came to the Statesman in 1998 as a page designer/copy editor. Was a news and sports copy editor and page designer, assistant news editor, front-page designer and letters editor before taking Internet editor job in January 2007.
Hometown: Born in Rochester, N.Y. but moved all over the country as a child. Austin is home now.
Education: Political science/journalism from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Tx.
Marital status: Married since 2001 to Emily, a copy editor at the Statesman.
First section of the Sunday paper: Opinion/insight
Favorite TV show: Curb Your Enthusiasm
Guilty pleasure: “Playing my Wii.”
Last book read: Ship of Ghosts: The Story of the USS Houston, FDR’s Legendary Lost Cruiser, and the Epic Saga of her Survivors

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What were you doing before you became Austin American-Statesman‘s Internet editor?
I came to the Statesman in ’98 as a page designer and a copy editor on the news desk, and worked my way being a sports copy editor, assistant news editor and Page One designer. Then I went to the editorial board as a letters editor, and also edited the editorial page. When this job opened up, I applied for it and went from that to this.

What got you excited about moving over to the Web side?
When I was assistant news editor on the copy desk, I would slog along on the news desk at night, basically, when the main editors leave. I was kind of in charge of story play and calls on things, and I really enjoyed doing that pushing and working with the whole newsroom. When I applied for this job, I was seeing it as another way to get back into working with the whole newsroom. I wasn’t thinking social media at the time, to be frank. It was more like, “Online’s where the excitement is now, and I want to get into that.”

Describe what you do as Internet editor.
Half my job is being the social media coordinator for the Statesman, coming up with strategies and implementing them, as well. The other half of my job [is] working as an assignment editor for the Web. I work with all the different departments through the newsroom as a breaking news desk editor, coordinating coverage when there’s breaking news and making sure that everybody’s working together and we’re getting enough on the Web quickly. I also work on special projects to make sure they’re Web-friendly.

Was the 50/50 breakdown within your position in place when you entered the job?
[The job] was created in January of 2007 — we didn’t have an Internet editor at the time. We had a production editor in charge of Statesman.com, and we had a production editor in charge of Austin360.com (our two Web sites), but this job it didn’t exist until my boss at the time — Tim Lott, who’s now our VP of Internet — came up with the description. He said half the job would be social media. At the time, we didn’t really have social media efforts underway, so I was supposed to figure it out and make it work.

When I started we had Pluck, an Austin company that does social media, mainly for newspapers, but also for other businesses. They do site-wide commenting and reader blogs for USA Today, Houston Chronicle and several others. We were one of their first customers several years ago — what we did with them was host reader blogs on our site. That was our main social media component when I started. I spent a lot of my time trying to nurture those reader bloggers. We had about 15 or 20 who blogged continuously on the site, so I was trying to grow that community.

What does the social media coordinator half entail?
I started out trying to get that reader blog community going. I did that for about a year, pushing hard for that. Then, last year around this time, we upgraded to get site-wide commenting, and I was the project leader for that. I spent 80 to 90 percent of my time that first couple of years doing the assignments editor half. It wasn’t 50/50 — that’s what it was supposed to be, but it wasn’t. But I was in charge of the project of upgrading our software, figuring out how to migrate all our bloggers into the new software, things like that. As time has gone on, I’ve come up with strategies for Twitter. Now I probably spend more time [on the] social media side, less on the assignment editor side. Part of that is due to the newsroom evolving and the culture changing. It doesn’t take as much prodding as it used to, to get things online.

That was going to be my next question, about the newsroom’s attitude toward the Web —
In the newsroom, we had buy-in relatively early here for the Web in general, but I still had to push quite a bit when I first started, so I put a lot of effort into that. I think that people have gotten it now — now, at the 10 a.m. budget meetings, I’m not asking for things. People are just telling me what they’re going to have for me, so that’s changed a lot.

So at the Statesman, those who previously thought of themselves as print-only journalists now consider themselves journalists for the Web, as well?
Oh, no question — we’ve made a huge shift here. For the past four years or so, we’ve had a giant shift, but even in the past year I’ve seen a sea change in the way our reporters and editors have to do their jobs—and photographers and everybody else, too. We don’t have a separate online staff for reporting. For the most part, everybody has to do both jobs: They have to get print stories done and they have to get them online. We’ve been saying for years that we’re an online-first publication — our editor made that proclamation four or five years ago, but [now] it’s really happening. People are thinking about the Web first. I wouldn’t say [that about] every single person, but we have really good buy-in here.

How would you describe the connection between that buy-in and Austin itself? It seems social media and new digital technologies get accepted faster there than in other parts of the country.
[Austin] is a very high-tech, looking for the next thing town. Social media is big here. I would say perhaps there’s nowhere else in the country where it’s bigger, based on population. This is a place where when you come here to work, generally you stay because [Austin’s] a great city — great climate, cool people, everything. That culture is in the newsroom, too. Everybody who has friends outside of the newsroom is friends with people who are doing a startup, or have done three startups, so it’s contagious. I think we have been pushing the envelope for quite a while here online, and it’s paying off for us.

“Twitter is not going to save a newspaper by itself, but I think it’s part of a strategy of being in touch with the community that can, in the long term, save [newspapers].”

Does the Web-savvy culture and community in Austin create pressure at the paper to stay in front of new technologies and adopt them for your stories and coverage?
Not really. With social media, one of the great things is that when you’re doing it well and you’re really involved in the communities out there, people care about you. I think it’s a plus that this community is so forward-thinking, because I can lean on them for advice and to give me good feedback on what we’re doing. I haven’t felt pressure because of the community. I’ve felt more support, really.

You mentioned Twitter strategy — when did you first become aware of Twitter and what were your initial thoughts?
The history of the Statesman.com’s Twitter feed is that one of our tech guys during the 2007 South by Southwest set up an account for us, thinking that we’d probably use it at some point. In February of 2008 — almost exactly a year ago — I set up an account for myself after being pestered a little bit by a colleague of mine, Christian McDonald, one of the early Web producers. He kept saying, “You need to get on Twitter, you’ll really enjoy it.” Every time he would try to explain it, it sounded kind of dumb to me, like “What do I care your friends are eating a sandwich?” You know — the same thing everybody says when they first try Twitter. Then I got on there and became addicted. I was having a lot of fun with it, found lots of new people [to whom] I could pose questions to and get their responses.

So I did that for a couple months, and then in June of 2008, I thought, “I’m posting news tidbits already, just naturally — why not have the Statesman post news tidbits [to Twitter] officially?” [Initially] I’d thought it was my idea — I went and looked, and of course there were dozens of newspapers already on Twitter. Most of them didn’t have any followers, except for one account out there, which was @ColonelTribune. [At the time] he had 600 followers, and everybody else had two dozen, or something like that. So I went and checked him out. It’s by The Chicago Tribune, and it’s an avatar they created to give out news. [The Tribune had] created a little character — a persona and everything — and they were sending out Tweets linking to things on their site, except in a conversational, fun way, like, “Did you see this cool story,” instead of just RSS feeds like all the other newspapers seemed to be doing at the time.

I went in the next morning to my boss and said, “I’m addicted to Twitter, and I think it might be a good way to deliver news. Could I try it out for the Statesman account?” And he [said], “Yeah, go ahead.” I went back to my desk and just kind of did it without going through any red tape at all. I started posting news stories there that morning, in a very personal way — the way that ColonelTribune did, but without the persona. I just did it as me, but with the Statesman logo there. I wanted to treat Twitter [for Statesman.com] the way that I was treating Twitter with my personal account: I was trying to be very personable, and just point out things that I thought were interesting on our Web site that day. We had 18 followers when I started on that morning in June, and by the next day we had 80. Without doing any advertising, marketing or anything, we were building 15 or 20 followers a day pretty early on.

We just went over 4,000 followers [the week this interview was conducted]. Now, we’re adding somewhere around 29 followers a day. Most of them are still local, which shows the growth of Twitter. We had one reporter and one editor who were using Twitter when I started. The reporter was mostly using it for personal kind of fun, but also mentioning news once in a while, and that’s our tech culture writer, Omar Gallaga. He has our top number of followers for an individual reporter. We have more than 40 [reporters on Twitter now], writing about their beats, conversing with people. And we have five or six official news feeds [on Twitter]. We’re getting good traffic out of it, but we’re also building our brand, and getting good feedback from people.

The most exciting part to me right now is that reporters are understanding [Twitter], picking it up and using it to converse with readers and build little communities, basically. During Hurricane Ike [in September 2008], we had four reporters Tweeting to one account from Houston. At one point, our reporter was Twittering minute-by-minute as they crossed the causeway into Galveston. During that weekend, we received 300,000 page views directly from Twitter onto Statesman.com. I think that was the event that vaulted our social media efforts. Suddenly, Twitter wasn’t something to giggle at — it was a serious journalism tool.

You’re giving a Core Conversation at South by Southwest, “Old Media Finds New Voice Through Twitter.” What will you tell people in that talk?
I invited ColonelTribune to give the speech with me — the guy behind it, Daniel Honigman. We’re going to talk together about Twitter, mainly: How using social media, you can connect with your readers in a way you never have before. Three years ago when I was letters editor, those letters [from readers] I put together for the paper — 10 of them [per issue] — that was all the feedback that we allowed as a newspaper. Now, people can sit there and converse with our sports columnist. They can ask a question about why are there fire trucks around a certain building downtown, and I’ll get a reporter to find an answer and get it for them. [Twitter] is giving people a new way of looking at our product. The feedback is so overwhelmingly positive. It’s amazing because as a newspaper, we’re not used to hearing positive feedback at all. Usually, the only time [readers] contact you is when they want to complain. And here we are getting a lot of people saying, “You guys get it,” or, “This is the future; you understand it.” Twitter is not going to save a newspaper by itself, but I think it’s part of a strategy of being in touch with the community that can, in the long term, save [newspapers].

The current state of the newspaper industry: What’s your assessment?
It’s rough. The economy’s bad all the way around, but newspapers have a bit of a business model problem. And nobody’s really figured that out yet. The Statesman is weathering the storm better than most — I think that’s partly because of where we are, and the fact that Austin’s probably weathering the storm better than most cities. But it’s also [that] we have been very aggressive with our Web coverage, putting a lot of effort into it. We realized early on we had to, and we pushed ahead. But it’s not a good time for newspapers. We have to find ways to reinvent ourselves. We have to think of new ways to make people care about our product. Social media is a way for people to see that — at the very least, [for users/readers] to see that you get what they are about. Facebook, and Twitter, and StumbleUpon — that’s where people are right now. That’s where they converse with each other, that’s where they spend their time, and it’s getting more [prevalent] as time goes on. If a newspaper’s not there — if a newspaper decides that’s below them or not interesting to them — they really can become irrelevant.

A difficult word for a lot of newspapers, as well as social media tools, is monetization. There’s almost a parallel problem — Twitter itself is trying to hit upon a business strategy that will enable it to keep growing, and the newspaper industry needs a new business model to survive. What’s your take on how to monetize social media, and media in general?
Social media’s probably the tougher one, I would guess. You can’t say that social media is going to bring in a ton of money for your organization at this point. What I would argue is that the effort is more about marketing our brand, than direct dollar to dollar payback. You’ll find that a good portion of people on Twitter are in the marketing field, and that’s because you can market a brand really well there. There’s good return on investment as far as seeing people say that they bought a product because of what you said on Twitter, or say that they feel better about your product because of what they’ve seen [you do on Twitter]. That’s as true for [newspapers] as it is for Dell or anybody else. If [newspapers] don’t do this, we risk becoming irrelevant. We are in the communications business, and [social media], at an increasing rate, is how people are communicating. If [newspapers] decide they don’t want to be there, they’re missing the boat.

[Social media] can be used for good customer service. It allows us to respond to complaints and people who need help quickly. I’ve used [Twitter] several times to help people who said they weren’t getting their paper delivered. I’m an editor in the newsroom; I’ve helped out there [using Twitter]. I’ve helped people who say they can’t find a story, or they had their picture taken at an event and are wondering where it is. [Twitter’s] good for that –it’s good for seeing what people are saying about you, and responding to them.

It’s not about making money right now, necessarily, but in the long run it could be, and probably will be. Just from being on Twitter every day and paying attention, I would say the demographic skews relatively young, and it skews to tech-savvy people — it’s a crowd that we don’t get with our print edition; even with Statesman.com, our online edition. We skew older, we skew with a different demographic quite a bit. But [Twitter] brings in new, unique users — that is the holy grail for us. As the Web site ramped up in the past decade, we were seeing phenomenal growth, as were all newspaper Web sites — and TV broadcast Web sites, for that matter — mainly because of penetration. More people were getting online more often, and then, more people were getting broadband, which made them more avid Web surfers. So we naturally saw an increase, but as an industry, [newspapers are] getting to a point where we’re reaching that plateau, that saturation point. Now the game is finding new, unique users out there, and Twitter brings them in.

I did a survey on Twitter a month ago, and I asked my followers a couple of questions: I asked them how often did they read the newspaper in print, before they started following our [Twitter] account. I asked them how often did they visit our Web site before they started following the account, and then I asked them how much do they do it now. It’s a big change. It’s made them loyal readers of our Web site: Before they followed us on Twitter, 58 percent [said they] either never visited us or came a few times a month. Now that they’re following us on Twitter, 90 percent [said they] either visit a few times a week or every day. That’s probably my best argument when I’m talking to money people — we’re bringing in a new audience.

“As editors at a newspaper, we should be thinking the same way about online video as we do with stories — why have a bunch of wasted space when you can get right to it?”

It’s easy for rumors and unverified information to travel quickly via Twitter — how do you handle that at the paper?
The way I handle it for the [Statesman.com] account is if I see something out there, I hustle — I run and find a reporter who can make a call for me and verify. The moment I can get verification is when I re-Tweet or post our own information. I do not do it before that. I will not re-Tweet that the Capitol’s on fire unless I can verify the Capitol’s on fire. And by verify, I mean the old standard way of getting somebody to either see it or get a call from the fire department saying it’s on fire. That works for us, just that one step — double-check, make sure we know what we’re talking about, take a deep breath and then post. I haven’t run into a problem with that yet.

Reporters are posting, as well, and we have yet to run into that with them either. We’re all so ingrained with our training in the way we did things in print for years and years that none of us are going to throw out a wild rumor. We have the capability, but ever since we’ve had blogging we’ve had that capability. We just don’t do it.

What’s your take on the extent to which verification takes place within the blogosphere?

I think that bloggers who do due diligence, who make phone calls or meet with respected sources and can name them, or at least back up their information with facts, do better. I think people will trust bloggers more — whether they work for a newspaper, or they’re independent — if they are more accurate. The way to be more accurate is to verify. I don’t think that you have to work at a newspaper to be a good journalist. Bloggers out there who verify their facts, who use good sources, do just as well as anybody else, and I think they rise to the top.

What social media tools are you most fired up about these days, aside from Twitter?
I’m very interested in link journalism, and using Publish2 as the tool for it. We’re using it already on our state political coverage index page: (check it out under “recommended reading”). I am going to look to unroll it on our Longhorns sports page and in other spots, as well. Ideally, as our reporters read interesting things about their beats, they would be submitting links for the aggregation page.

We have dozens of reporters blogging, and some of them do it very well. I want to make a new push to sharpen their blogging skills, including how they can use social media tools. I also want them to work on building relationships for link exchanges with other (non-mainstream) bloggers, and to continue to focus their blogs on the best content possible.

[I want] to start using StumbleUpon more, figuring out how to leverage Digg better. I’m also interested in things like 12seconds.tv, building community on Qik and YouStream. I think the future is just trying to move out there [online] and find out where people are talking about [the Statesman] — where people are talking about local news, even if they’re not talking about us, and make sure we’re participating.

Is there significant enough appetite for Web video to keep it an active part of online media?
To be frank, I think that we still have to figure that all out. I think video can work online. I think that video, when it does the right thing, and is done the right way, does work very well online for newspapers. But we haven’t figured out the perfect formula yet, and that’s part of what I want to do: I want to look into those communities — look into YouStream and look into Qik, and YouTube even — and find out what works and what doesn’t, what we’re doing wrong and what we’re doing right. I think there’s room for video to work. I am particularly interested in 12seconds.tv because I think part of the reason why there’s not huge growth in online video views at newspapers is because most people are reading our stuff and looking at our videos while sitting at work. It’s hard to watch a two-minute video when you’re worried your boss is going to walk behind you, or you’re going to annoy the person in the cubicle next to you. So, 12 seconds of a breaking news event… We had a fire on 6th Street down here [in Austin] this morning that burned down a couple of dance clubs. If we could have gotten 12 seconds of the flames and put that up, I think that’s all you need. And maybe there’s some happy medium — maybe 12 is too short, and we need to figure out how to do 30-second videos. But we need to figure out the formula. I don’t think [the media industry has] really figured it out yet.

What types of video do you most enjoy watching online?
I tend to push towards really short breaking news, cut right to the chase-type videos. If there’s a canoeist going over a dam in a flood or something like that, I don’t want to see the 45 seconds that lead up to it, where he talks about how he’s going to do it — I want to see it happen. I think that’s true of anybody. If you get a YouTube video that sounds promising and it’s four minutes long, you tend to slide that little slider up and see where you get to the meat of the action. As editors at a newspaper, we should be thinking the same way about online video as we do with stories — why have a bunch of wasted space when you can get right to it?

We’ve improved on that a lot in the past year or two, where we’re not only editing tighter, but our are thinking that way. We’ve given out several cameras to reporters in the newsroom, and we’ve been working with them to try to find ways to get to the most interesting parts of videos. There’s a future for video if we push for that — well-edited, good content.

What do you and your colleagues do to distinguish your SXSW coverage from that of everyone else who descends upon Austin to cover it?
We’re going to run a full-frontal assault with Twitter. For the first time during the Austin City Limits Music Festival, we scraped together Tweets from not only our staff members, but also people following our account and posted them on our Web site through this application that our developers built. We’re going to do a similar thing for South by Southwest. The reporters can direct message our main account, and it re-Tweets it out — it’ll say “via Robert Quigley,” with my Twitter account, and then it’ll say “dispatched from South by Southwest.” Somebody can follow just that main account and get all reports from all of our reporters. We’ll also scrape what everybody’s saying who’s following that account. When they mention certain keywords, it will post on the [Statesman.com] Web site, as well.

Another thing we’re excited about [is] having social media awards for the first time ever [during SXSW]. I came up with the idea of awarding 25 people in Texas — they’ve got to be Texas residents — whom we feel are good at social media. We’re going to name an overall winner as well, and we’re going to have a big party during South by Southwest at a venue downtown to honor the winners, and give out awards. That’s a big part of our [SXSW] marketing push, just to have our name out there as we’re doing those awards. We had 125 nominees for that, and [named] the 25 winners on February 18, and we’ll name the overall winner at the event itself.

What are the criteria for judging?

Omar Gallaga is one of the judges, I’m a judge, and Addie Broyles — our food writer who’s really into social media (is really good with Facebook and Twitter, and she also does Tweet-ups for foodies) — the three of us are going to be judges. I asked for links from people who nominated [others], whether it’s because they’re really good at building a community among commenters on their blogs, or whether they’re really big into the YouTube community, or Twitter, or Facebook, or StumbleUpon. It’s not like there are any harsh guidelines to social media, as far as doing it the right way or the wrong way, just what we think is best as a panel of judges.

What do you think are going to be hot topics this year at the festival?
I think that we’re hitting on it right now: Where’s social media going? Here we are, at a spot when the economy is down, when everybody’s cutting back on what is seen as frivolous spending. You heard me do my little dance about how to monetize [social media]: There really is no good answer. So, social media is one of the things that is getting cut at a lot of places, or at least is losing some prominence. So, the question is: How do we pull out of that, how do we make sure we’re still moving forward?

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Rebecca L. Fox is mediabistro.com’s managing editor. If you’re going to SXSW, join her to discuss, “Why Is Professional Blogging Bloodsport For Women?”, on Sunday, March 15 at 11:30 a.m.