Social Network Marketing

It seems that social network marketing is finally starting to catch on in the world of books. Even major publishing companies are jumping on board. The problem is that these companies are approaching things wrong. They are hiring 30-somethings that are fabulous in their respective field of marketing but lack the "young" factor. I started out on MySpace as a personal user and after mastering the different ways to exchange and communicate via the site I saw a real potential for promotion.

After quite a bit of success marketing bands and music on MySpace I wrote a book detailing the process of social network marketing. It was shortly after that that I was hired by Mill City Press to develop and run social networking sites for their authors. At first, I wasn't certain how the transition would work. Would people REALLY want to buy books from people they met on MySpace? I actually found that people were more than enthusiastic to have writers contact them. There was such a saturation of music that books were almost refreshing change.

Later I started playing with different networks such as Friendster, Xanga, Face book, Gather, Yahoo 360 and Live Journal. I came to find that each network had a unique stength and target audience. For example Friendster tends to interest our older audience while Facebook is dominated by the college network. Since Facebook opened its network there have been age and demographic shifts but it still remains a super power for targeting the college aged user.

I have read several books and articles on social network marketing(a good marketer knows what they are up against) and I have found the information to be rather generalized and some of it outdated. To make a long story short if you have any questions regarding social networking, you are in the right place.

BookExpo America and the Digital Age

It seems that the dawning of the digital age has authors and book publishers looking at a new way to store, send, and exhibit their work.

The BookExpo America is an annual four-day convention for the publishing industry. This year around 35,000 publishers, booksellers, authors, agents and librarians perused vendors and attended parties and luncheons at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City. Among the topics of discussion were literary blogs and the digitization of books for online proliferation.

Many in the businesses of writing and publishing are reconciling their views on the stalwart Gutenberg tradition of printing and selling books as technology moves with ever-increasing speed and begins to dominate as the source for news and information.

The availability of books on the internet stirs up many questions: Will digitization enhance or replace the book retail business (think of the giant Amazon.com)? Will book sales increase because of its availability or decrease due to pirating (a la Napster and the music sharing fiasco)? Will online reading eventually replace printed material altogether?

The big publishing houses interviewed in the article expressed a mixture of wariness and slight indignation at the threat of technological advancement on the internet. It is the view of Mill City Press that authors are afforded an advantage in this technology, a free, far-reaching means of selling and offering their books online at little cost or not cost while maximizing personal profit in book sales. To learn more about smart online book marketing, please visit http://www.millcitypress.net or click on the title of this entry to be taken directly to the Mill City Press website.

Taken from the article "Waxing Philosophical, Booksellers Face the Digital" published in the New York Times June, 4 2007 by Motoko Rich.
To view the article go to http://www.nytimes.com.