Despite the buzz, personas are poorly understood. Not all personas have the same purpose. They can be used to develop user interfaces, plan marketing, model buyers, and so forth. But all bring abstract data to life to increase empathy. It’s much harder to do than it sounds, and it’s really simple to screw up. If you do personas right but don’t use them, they fail. And if you apply the wrong type of persona to an exercise, it will fail even if it was well-crafted.

In a “DM News” column, Andrew Frawley writes:

First introduced in 1991 by Alan Cooper, personas have evolved as a popular technique for marketers to attempt to segment customers better and more effectively address their needs and wants, giving them the background they need to create more targeted messages.

This drives me nuts: Alan Cooper popularized the term “persona” to create better user interfaces with his book The Inmates Are Running the Asylum. It was timely and necessary, but hardly new. The concept is much older than that. He continues, articulating why many personas fail:

While personas claim to provide a greater understanding of your customer, they can fall far short when two people have similar profile information but very different wants and needs. While the marketing program may be well thought out and attempts to speak directly to customers, it also needs to take into consideration how, where and when Joe and Fred consider and carry out their purchases.

Frawley implies all personas share this shortfall and therefore fail. Don’t blame the personas! They were created to help the marketer understand customer types. Attempting to stretch a simple two-dimensional persona over an entire purchasing process is like wearing flip-flops on a ski slope. If your personas were created with specific tasks and goals in mind or if they’re simply demographic sketches to plan marketing messages, their usefulness is limited to those purposes.

I’ve written about personas in this column for years. Our clients rave about their personas. But would our personas be useful in planning user interfaces? No!

The persona tools we’ve developed are to treat content and copy as the interface. The purpose of persuasion architecture personas is to plan and predict a dialogue that allows buyers to naturally navigate your content so they feel confident as they persuade themselves that yours is the solution to their problem. As far as we know, persuasion architecture personas are the only ones that get accounted for in Web analytics and have a scientific optimization process required.

In the persuasion architecture process, personas are created to account for the needs and motivations Frawley alludes to. Of course, the psychographic dimension is only part of the persona creation process; topography (the industry and competitive landscape) and demographics are also factored in.

Another measure of a successful persona is your team’s ability to dialogue and role-play with it about its ideal buying experience. Personas must be used to plan relevant content no matter where they are in the buying cycle. In the persuasion architecture process, personas are used to plan the content interface customers will engage in as they buy.

This is the only way to solve Frawley’s stated dilemma. Personalization is not the answer.

Tamara Adlin, author of The Persona Lifecycle, offers more insight into why personas fail:

Did you know that most persona efforts fail as soon as the personas are completed? Teams create wonderful personas, design fabulous posters to put on the walls, and say “ta-da! We have personas!” Creating personas is really just the beginning. A persona is not a document — it is a clear understanding of a target customer that exists in the minds of your team.

No matter how well their personas are created, companies lose interest in them when they’re unwilling to invest the resources and effort to fulfill their needs in the buying process. Other companies will focus on one or two and ignore the opportunities the others represent.

Again, this isn’t the persona’s fault. Many people invest significant money in a diet plan only to work the diet for an hour, a day, or a week, then resume their consumption of fries and Ho-Hos. If that’s your choice, that’s fine.But don’t blame the diet if you don’t lose weight.

What has your experience with personas been? Good? Bad? Indifferent? Let’s discuss it.

Few techniques in communication are as powerful – or as often overlooked – as personification: ascribing human characteristics to inanimate objects.

It turns dead corporate brands into living persons. Who are the Keebler Elves, the Jolly Green Giant, Mr. Clean, and Ronald McDonald if not personifications of the brands they represent?

This memo isn’t about clumsy corporate cartoon characters. Personification is much bigger and more elegant than mere mascots and logos. When conceived in words, lively words, personification summons the imagination and triggers the emotions.

Listen to how Robert Frost gives human characteristics to inanimate objects in his storm poem, Once by the Pacific:

The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God’s last ‘Put out the Light’ was spoken.

Waves looked over others and thought of doing something to the shore, which was lucky in being backed by cliff?

Personification. Can you do it? Can you speak a person into existence?

Herman Melville did it 156 years ago in 3 short words, “Call me Ishmael.”
I did it 12 years ago in 5 words for Rolex and Everest, “…the world’s most angry mountain.”
Apple has been doing it in 7 words—“I’m a Mac.” “And I’m a PC.” (Did it ever occur to you that the audio track from these ads would work even better on radio than it does on TV? Evidently, it’s never occurred to anyone who sells radio airtime, either.)

We gaze longer at pictures that have people in them than at pictures that have no people. I believe the same is true of words. We pay more attention to words that tell us of people than to words that don’t.

That’s enough rambling for one morning. Now go look Today in the eyes, smile sweetly and say, “I own you. You’re mine. You’re happy and warm and comforting and good and if you think for one second that I’m going to let you be otherwise, you’re sadly mistaken.”

Be firm. Days can become unruly if you let them.

* Last fall, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo emerged as one of 2008’s breakout novels, peaking at No. 32 in hardcover on USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list. The novel came with a tragic back story: The author — Swedish investigative journalist Stieg Larsson — died of a heart attack in 2004 at age 50 after handing in the manuscript to a trilogy that began with Tattoo. This week Girl returns to the list in paperback, at No. 11. The trilogy stars an emotionally damaged Swedish hacker, Lisbeth Salander, and a disgraced journalist, Mikael Blomkvist.

* Author Alice Hoffman is getting media attention— not so much because of her 21st novel, The Story Sisters, but because of her behavior. Hoffman, incensed by a review of her novel that ran in The Boston Globe on Sunday, sent out Twitter posts calling reviewer Roberta Silman “a moron” and even posted Silman’s email address and phone number. She also lashed out at a blogger who was moderating a Barnes & Noble discussion of the book. Hoffman apologized in both cases. Published June 2, The Story Sisters, about three sisters scarred by a terrible crime, has not cracked USA TODAY’s Top 150 and has received mixed reviews. In 1997, Hoffman had the No. 1 book on the list with Here on Earth.

For all the news from this week’s Best-Selling Books list, see Thursday’s editions of USA TODAY for the top 50 books or log onto www.top150.usatoday.com for the complete list of 150 best-selling books from last week.

USA TODAY’s list differs from other lists because the rankings are based solely on retail sales data from major chain and independent bookstores across the USA. Included are more than one million volumes from approximately 3,000 large-inventory, diverse-content bookstores. USA TODAY’s list shows readers what is selling across the whole range of books, not just what is selling by category. Hardcover, paperback, fiction and non-fiction are pooled together. USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list has been published each Thursday in the newspaper’s Life section since October 28, 1993.

USA TODAY was founded in 1982 with a mission to serve as a forum for better understanding and unity to help make the USA truly one nation. Through its flagship newspaper and popular Web site, USA TODAY engages the national conversation and connects readers online through social media applications. USA TODAY, the nation’s top-selling newspaper with a total average daily circulation of more than 2.1 million, and USATODAY.com, an award-winning newspaper Web site which launched in 1995, reach a combined 5.8 million readers daily. The USA TODAY news and information brand also includes: USA TODAY Education, USA TODAY LIVE, USA TODAY Mobile, Open Air magazine and USA TODAY Sports Weekly. USATODAY is owned by Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI).

Even experienced Random House professionals Susan Kamil, SVP, Editor-in-Chief, and Jane Von Mehren, VP, Publisher, Trade Paperbacks, can’t guarantee the success of a manuscript, though they’re skilled at advanced marketing. Under their tutelage, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society earned recognition and a coveted place on the New York Times Bestseller List, where it still resides at the time of this publication.

Fiction is a hard genre in which to succeed, especially when penned by unknown authors and an admittedly odd title. These circumstances, along with the state of the economy and the complicated market, make the success of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society even more astounding and inspirational. The success of this title emphasizes two important things:

• Even in this down-trodden economy, people are still buying books in print
• Quality content is recognized

It’s easy to look at the astronomical sales figures for this title (already in its 8th printing for paperback alone) and forget the difficulties that arose. Sadly, author Mary Ann Shaffer became ill before editing was complete and turned the project over to her niece, children’s book author Annie Barrows. While the contract was with Shaffer, Kamil decided to stick with the project she’d grown to love, and was rewarded in kind.

Though Shaffer didn’t live to see her work published, Barrows did a wonderful job of conveying the dedication and passion that went into the weaving of the tale. The novel is communicated strictly through letters during the difficult setting of Europe post World War II, when people were still becoming reacquainted with peace and the after effects of war’s turmoil. Kamil was dedicated to the project and championed the work to her contacts. With this dedication, the first sign of future success came with a glowing blurb from bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert, of Eat, Pray, Love fame.

After selling upwards of 550,000 in hard cover, Von Mehren’s team made the controversial decision to publish the trade paperback before the standard 12 months was up. It was a strategic move that put the new edition in stores before Mother’s Day and was yet another gamble that paid off. Since the paperback arrived on shelves in May, Barrows has done her first author tour and never had an event with fewer than 200 attendees!

This is a good example of when a publishing powerhouse (Random House is the world’s largest English language trade publisher) supports a solid book and their editorial, marketing, sales, and publicity forces align—that the public reacts overwhelmingly positively in return. The novel comes alive through its website, videos on YouTube, author events, Guernsey cruises, the included Reader’s Guide, numerous reviews and—in my hopes—a future movie filled with the same love and quirkiness the novel provides!

The success of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a salve to book lovers everywhere and a band-aid over some of fiction’s disappointments. It proves that publishing can still thrive and traditional business models are adapting—–and with monetary as well as literary success.

Rule #1: Draw a crowd. Mays didn’t start his career in the public spotlight. It began on the boardwalk of Atlantic City, hawking products to passersby. “So I’d just start talking, even if there wasn’t a crowd. ‘You there, what are you doing? You want to help me?’” That same, penetrating bass voice that made millions either pay attention or change the channel could always draw a crowd. “It might be just a little girl with her mom. And I’d say, ‘You don’t have to buy anything. You just have to help me get a crowd together.’”

If nobody’s listening, you can’t be selling, whether it’s OxiClean or your book. If you want to have any success getting your writing out there, you’ve got to have an audience. Publishers know this. It’s one of the first questions out of their mouth when a manuscript makes its way into their hands. “How big is your platform?” “What’s your readership?” If you can’t draw a crowd, you’ve got no chance to move those well-written books off the shelves.

Rule #2: “Get them to agree or at least sympathize with you.” Whatever hand motions, thumbs up signals, or never-ending smile Mays used, enough people genuinely liked him to ring up billions of over the phone sales. Arm & Hammer, Taco Bell, ESPN, even iCan Insurance believed in his results enough to sign him up to add to their bottom line. He increased Discovery Channel’s ratings by 42% in the time slot his co-starred series, Pitchmen, occupied. Mays said that for every product he sold he turned down 100 or 150 offers to sell other products. That translated to a seeming bulletproof belief that whatever he demonstrated actually worked and was worth $19.99, even before the, “But wait, there’s more!” offer.

True selling of a product or an idea occurs not once or twice, but days, months and years on end. It’s the understanding of the crowd. What moves them? What do they really care about? The only way to get people to come around to your point of view, to agree that your book, your philosophy is worth incorporating into their bookshelf or mental space is if you genuinely believe it yourself. Repetition is the proving ground of your vision. Figuring out how to deliver your message in your audience language of heart occurs before ever attempting to make one sale. Until you get them to take the journey to your perspective, you’re just another annoying, loud-mouthed mover of air.

Rule #3: Sell to one person and then line up the other buyers. Billy Mays knew how to get a bunch of people’s attention at once, to make them feel like they were all in it together. But he also understood that the actual sale is a personal decision. It doesn’t involve just mental assent. People have to feel like the offer is specifically for them. After he had the audience eating out of the palm of his hand, he’d take his pitch and point it at one single person: “Now what about you? Wouldn’t you like to put the power of the WashMatik to work cleaning your car?”

Once one person agreed, the rest of the crowd started lining up to buy. When a group of people witness a personal conversation between the salesman and one single person, it stops being a performance. Mentally, everyone in the crowd puts themselves in the shoes of the person getting the one-on-one conversation. It adds the emotional, vulnerable element that not only does this product make sense, but it feels right coming from a person who’s willing to sell it only to me. If you can do that in your writing, in your platform building, in your book hawking, you don’t just have an audience, you have a group of committed followers who will sell you and your ideas to everyone they meet.

Not everyone loved Billy Mays.

His everlasting smile and over-the-top sincerity turned off just as many people as it attracted. Passion always does that. It sets you up to be called foolish. They’ll use all sorts of words and justifications to prove that you’re unintelligent, lowbrow, or just a snake-oil huckster taking advantage of late-night mouth breathers. Who’s the fool if you find yourself avoiding something that simply works to try to find a method that makes you look intelligent and cool?

I may not ever have a voice or a fully-formed beard like his, but I’m not ashamed to take notes from the simply resounding success of a guy named Billy Mays.

“We designed the B&N Bookstore app based on the tremendous growth we’ve seen over the past 12 months in our mobile traffic and customer adoption,” said William Lynch, President of Barnes & Noble.com. “Now, with the Barnes & Noble app, iPhone and iPod touch users can interact with America’s #1 bookstore anywhere and anytime, providing them access to exclusive content and customer reviews, as well as information about the more than 50,000 events in our stores.”

Barnes & Noble has partnered with LinkMe Mobile from Evryx Technologies, Inc. (www.evryx.com) and Spotlight Mobile, Inc. (www.spotlightmobile.com) so that users can simply snap a photo to search millions of products. Using the iPhone or iPod touch camera, just snap a photo of the front cover and within seconds get product details, editorial reviews, and customer ratings - even find and reserve a copy in the store closest to you. The store locator will help you find the Barnes & Noble store nearest you, see upcoming events, and get directions. Plus, explore amazing, exclusive Barnes & Noble content from your iPhone including bookseller recommendations, the Barnes & Noble Review, and Barnes & Noble Studio’s Emmy-winning video clips and interviews.

The Barnes & Noble Bookstore app also allows customers to:

• Discover their next great read by browsing bestsellers, B&N Recommends lists, new releases or watching video interviews with authors.
• Check the events calendar for celebrity book signings, readings, musical performances and children’s Storytimes.
• Find the closest Barnes & Noble, get maps and directions, and see which stores offer cafés and AT&T Wi-Fi access.

Making purchases on-the-go with the B&N Bookstore app is easy. Users who already have an account with BN.com can simply enter their email address and password to sign in and access their account information and address book. And, those who do not already have a BN.com account, can quickly and easily create one on the website or checkout as a guest.

The Barnes & Noble Bookstore app is available for free from Apple’s App Store on iPhone and iPod touch or at www.itunes.com/appstore/.

About Barnes & Noble, Inc.
Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller and a Fortune 500 company, operates 777 bookstores in 50 states. Barnes & Noble is the nation’s top bookseller brand for the sixth year in a row, as determined by a combination of the brand’s performance on familiarity, quality, and purchase intent; the top bookseller in quality for the second year in a row and the number two retailer in trust, according to the EquiTrend® Brand Study by Harris Interactive®. Barnes & Noble conducts its online business through Barnes & Noble.com one of the Web’s largest e-commerce sites.

General information on Barnes & Noble, Inc. can be obtained via the Internet by visiting the company’s corporate website: www.barnesandnobleinc.com.

Social Media Links:
Follow B&N on Twitter: http://twitter.com/BNBuzz
Become a fan of our Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/barnesandnoble
Subscribe to our channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/BNStudio

While I have no hard statistics available, I would love to know how many of these sweaty athlete wannabes left their new Nikes in the closet, giving up before the shiny white leather had a chance to get broken in.

Why? Because while “Just do it!” is a great motivational motto, ACTUALLY just doing it IS DIFFICULT! And boy, do we ever have intimate knowledge of that concept in the book industry!

A recent article I wrote for Beneath the Cover titled, “What Would You Attempt To Do If…?“, resonated with numerous writers, from aspiring authors who have yet to be published on up to published authors wanting to kick it up a notch. Frankly, I was surprised at the nerves touched. The messages and e-mails I received overwhelmingly expressed the theme of, “Thanks for the motivation; I now know I need to ‘Just Do It!’”

Nike’s campaign combined desire, determination, and passion—–sound familiar as a writer? Do you sometimes feel as if “Just Do It!” should be tattooed on your forehead, or perhaps less drastically, on a permanent Post-It note on your computer?

To help give you a double-espresso shot of motivation this week, here are some tips which I have personally found helpful:

1. Carolyn See, author of Making a Literary Life: Advice for Writers and Other Dreamers recommends a strategy that you write a thousand words a day – or do two hours of revision - five days a week “for the rest of your life.” This habit will get you in the mindset that your writing is a job. In this book, which I keep close at hand, Carolyn has other great tips and presents them in a witty and engaging way.

2. Get excited about your future in the book industry: It is the springboard for making it happen. On your bathroom mirror, post a list of motivational quotations that are meaningful to you. Here are a few that bring a smile to my face:

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. —–William Wordsworth

When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing. —–Enrique Jardiel Poncela

Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. —–Gene Fowler

3. For self-motivation, a great strategy is to type up a list titled “I am an author and it’s great because…”

— “I see my name in print on my weekly column.”

— “I have proved my high school English teacher wrong when she said I should stick to woodshop.”

— “My mom bought 47 copies of my first book & gave them to all her friends and neighbors.”

— “I finally got rid of the minivan with the juice box stains on the seats and bought the Maserati GranTurismo S I always wanted.” (If you’re gonna dream, dream big!)

4. Subscribe to a service that provides motivational quotations for instant motivation in your inbox every day. I love QuoteActions because they offer not only a quotation, but also an action item for you to take every day. An example:

“It’s easy to get people’s attention; what counts is getting their interest.” -Civil Rights Activist, Philip Randolph

Your action for today is to see if you can capture someone’s interest.

For the record, Nike’s name, from the Greek Νίκη, comes from the Greek goddess of Victory. I suggest you tap into your inner author goddess – don’t delay any longer. Picture yourself atop the acropolis in flowing white robe with gold braid, olive branch of victory on your head, holding—not a staff, but—your first published book!

Just do it!

No, really, I mean right now…

What are you doing still sitting here reading, thinking about it?

Seriously! Go! And let your next e-mail to susan@bni.com or comment posted at Beneath the Cover be a success story about what you got published!
______________________________________________________________________________________
Susan M. Goodsell is a referral marketing professional, trainer, and author, based in Southern California. She is Executive Director and owner of BNI Riverside & San Bernardino Counties, CA. Her focus is helping entrepreneurs and business owners reach higher levels of success through word-of-mouth marketing.

• Random House announced an expense-driven reorganization that included the resignation of their Bantam Dell and Doubleday Publishing Group heads. In addition, Rick Richter, President of the Children’s Publishing Division, resigned to “explore other opportunities in publishing”.
• Simon and Schuster let go of 35 people while stating it represented “an unavoidable acknowledgement of the current bookselling marketplace.”
• Thomas Nelson cut staff by 10%.
• Houghton Mifflin announced more layoffs.
• HarperCollins’ delayed planned pay increases.
• The Penguin Group initiated a ‘raise freeze.’

Read the full NY Times article: Publishers Announce Staff Cuts.

You know what? I don’t feel sorry for you. Maybe the pain you are feeling is payback for the pain your authors have been experiencing for the last 30 years. Once upon a time, you were able to not only lay out, edit, print and distribute books, but also market them. Then in 1977, Apple released the Apple II and the world had its first personal computer. Book publishing implications were not immediately obvious, but as the adoption of the PC became mainstream, new authors started springing up by the thousands. What had been a 100-year average of 40,000 published books started steadily climbing, culminating with an all-out explosion in recent years——-

Year                    1976           1987           1996           2002           2008
Books
Published         *35,141      *56,057      *68,175      *147,127   **275,232
*Swivel.com, Data Summary table; **Bowker.com, May 19, 2009 article

As more and more books have flooded the marketplace, you have been forced to meet increased publishing and distribution demands while leaving authors responsible for their own marketing. That is understandable. But what is not is your blatant neglect for educating these authors about the realities of the book industry. Instead, you continued to perpetuate the mystique and romance of the publishing process, and in doing so, sold them a dream you knew had the real potential to turn into a nightmare.

I have interacted with hundreds, if not thousands, of published authors over the years and their biggest complaint is that they did not understand the world they were walking into. Most of them were never told their time and money investment would be far greater than the money generated through book sales. The truth is, with the exception of a select few, there has never been a lot of money to be made on books. And you knew this. So why didn’t you explain these realities to your authors? Is it because you are really media conglomerates posing as publishers. Is it Simon and Schuster or CBS Corporation? Is it Random House or Bertelsmann? HarperCollins or News Corporation? Because I know venture capitalists don’t care about authors. They are too focused on revenues.

Had you been astute enough to invest in your authors all along — educating them, helping them build their ‘businesses’, providing infrastructure along the way — you might not be bleeding like you are today. See, authors are flexible. They can interact and communicate with consumers across many platforms – online and off. Books sitting on shelves can’t do that.

Are you finally ready to trash your archaic publishing model and replace it with a new and improved model of communication? Because communication is easier today than it ever has been. Can you say the same about selling your beloved books? How many more ‘Black Wednesdays’ can you withstand?

Questions about how to prepare for the changes pervading the book industry may be directed to Michael R. Drew at the Austin, Texas, headquarters of Promote A Book: 512-858-0040. You can also contact Michael via email at michael@promoteabook.com.

The promotion kicks off in the U.S., Canada, and Australia, with L.A. Candy, by Lauren Conrad, on sale June 16, 2009. To access the content, users simply download a free application (http://m.harpercollins.com) to their smart phone and take a picture of the 2D barcode. Whether standing in line at her upcoming signings, or viewing the jacket at a bookstore, fans can access a video of Lauren, a Q&A with her, or share the new site with their friends via SMS. The site can also be accessed directly at http://lacandy.mobi.

“We are excited about the potential of 2D barcodes for the teen market. Teens use their mobile phones for everything from texting to updating their Facebook pages; this is one more way we can offer them content to share with their friends,” said Susan Katz, President and Publisher of HarperCollins Children’s Books. “HarperCollins is committed to reaching readers where they are, regardless of the device or platform, and a mobile marketing platform is a natural next step.”

Powered by QMCodes, a mobile-marketing company, HarperCollins will create a unique Web site for each book in the pilot program. The code for the paperback version of Freakonomics, on sale August 25, will include exclusive content related to the book and to the fall publication of Superfreakonomics. Additionally, HarperTeen’s The Amanda Project, a collaborative, interactive series that is both printed book and online adventure, will incorporate the codes to further extend the experience.

“It is early days for 2D barcodes in the U.S., so there will be an education process. But, there’s no doubt that mobile entertainment is growing by leaps and bounds, and book content should be part of that shift,” added Katz.

About HarperCollins Publishers
HarperCollins, one of the largest English-language publishers in the world, is a subsidiary of News Corporation (NYSE: NWS, NWS.A; ASX: NWS, NWSLV). Headquartered in New York, HarperCollins has publishing groups around the world including the HarperCollins General Books Group, HarperCollins Children’s Books Group, Zondervan, HarperCollins UK, HarperCollins Canada, HarperCollins Australia/New Zealand and HarperCollins India. HarperCollins is a broad-based publisher with strengths in literary and commercial fiction, business books, children’s books, cookbooks, mystery, romance, reference, religious and spiritual books. With nearly 200 years of history HarperCollins has published some of the world’s foremost authors and has won numerous awards including the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, the Newbery Medal and the Caldecott. Consistently at the forefront of innovation and technological advancement, HarperCollins is the first publisher to digitize its content and create a global digital warehouse to protect the rights of its authors, meet consumer demand and generate additional business opportunities. You can visit HarperCollins Publishers on the Internet at http://www.harpercollins.com.

About QMOCDES
Founded in 2007, QMCODES is a mobile marketing & technology company specializing in 2D barcodes and mobile services for print media publishers 2D barcodes have the power to turn print into direct response, revolutionizing the way advertisers think about integrated campaigns and converged media. Backed by leading technology entrepreneurs, QMCODES is pioneering new ways for media companies to connect with their audience on the most personal of channels — the mobile phone, whilst gaining a greater understanding of the performance of their offline media.

It’s a first for best-selling conservative commentator Glenn Beck: the No. 1 spot on USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list. His new book Glenn Beck’s Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine has 1.1 million copies in print. Beck’s novel The Christmas Sweater entered the list at No. 6 last November and remained in the top 50 for seven weeks. His 2007 best seller, An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World’s Biggest Problems which also peaked at No. 6 in hardcover, is out in paperback and moves up to No. 44. “What I think I’m tapping into is honesty. There’s a feeling Americans have that something is not right,” says Beck of his recent success. “Both (political) parties are taking us to a place that is absolutely unsustainable. Common sense has not gone out of style except in Washington.”

Young adult novels continue their hot ride on the list, with two new titles — one by The Hills’ star Lauren Conrad — making their debut in the top 20. Sarah Dessen’s ninth, Along for the Ride, about a teen spending the summer with her father, his new wife and baby, is No. 11, while Conrad’s first novel,L.A. Candy, about a teen starring on a TV reality show, is No. 17. “There’s definitely room for both of us,” says Dessen of sharing shelf space with the 23-year-old celebrity author. “Anything that brings people into bookstores is wonderful.” Despite the current obsession with cell phones and the Internet, “people still have a need for actual stories,” says Dessen, 39, who has sold 4 million copies of her books and is enjoying her highest debut on the list. “especially teen girls who like to find themselves in a story.” She credits J.K. Rowling for the rising popularity of YA novels. “Everyone — children, teens and adults — was reading Harry Potter. She made it OK to read outside of what was being marketed to you. YA benefited from that.”

For all the news from this week’s Best-Selling Books list, see Thursday’s editions of USA TODAY for the top 50 books or log onto www.top150.usatoday.com for the complete list of 150 best-selling books from last week.

USA TODAY’s list differs from other lists because the rankings are based solely on retail sales data from major chain and independent bookstores across the USA. Included are more than one million volumes from approximately 3,000 large-inventory, diverse-content bookstores. USA TODAY’s list shows readers what is selling across the whole range of books, not just what is selling by category. Hardcover, paperback, fiction and non-fiction are pooled together. USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list has been published each Thursday in the newspaper’s Life section since October 28, 1993.

USA TODAY was founded in 1982 with a mission to serve as a forum for better understanding and unity to help make the USA truly one nation. Through its flagship newspaper and popular Web site, USA TODAY engages the national conversation and connects readers online through social media applications. USA TODAY, the nation’s top-selling newspaper with a total average daily circulation of more than 2.1 million, and USATODAY.com, an award-winning newspaper Web site which launched in 1995, reach a combined 5.8 million readers daily. The USA TODAY news and information brand also includes: USA TODAY Education, USA TODAY LIVE, USA TODAY Mobile, Open Air magazine and USATODAY Sports Weekly. USA TODAY is owned by Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI).

Alexandra Nicholson
Communications Manager
USA TODAY
(703) 854-5872
(703) 906-0697 mobile
anicholson_at_usatoday_dot_com
Twitter: @USATMediaLounge