How Social Sharing, E-samples, And Mobile Can Revitalize Book Publishing
The Promise & Peril of Social Selling
In the article, "The Social Publisher," published in the October 2013 issue of Book Business, I outlined the challenges of building an effective promotional platform using social media and social networking. For publishers and authors, the process can be daunting. Picking the right platform, populating it with compelling content, and knowing how and when to push, can produce remarkable results. However, this effort often can be at the cost of an author's time -- which could be better spent on writing books! The writing skill sets of authors and promoters are also not the same. Add to that the incompatibility of blatantly promotional content to social sharing's ostensible purpose: to share things with friends, not to pitch them to buy stuff.
John Parsons (john@intuideas.com), former Editorial Director of The Seybold Report, is an independent writer, ghostwriter, and editor. He is the co-author of the interactive printed textbook, Introduction to Graphic Communication, on the art, science and business of print, which has been adopted by Ryerson, Arizona State, the University of Houston, and many other schools and vocational training centers. Custom editions of the book are under consideration by major printing companies and franchises for internal training purposes.