Social Media
Social media strategy must align with business goals, and for publishers, that's selling books.
Waitsfield, Vt.-based Chooseco, publisher of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" book series, has formed a digital partnership with Wattpad, an e-book community and social networking platform for readers and writers. Featuring Chooseco's first title aimed at teen girls, "Fabulous Terrible: The Adventures of You," which originally was released in 2008, the publisher will work with Wattpad to connect with the website's young-adult demographic.
Book Business' latest whitepaper is available to download for free. Offering strategic tips and advice on effectively and efficiently utilizing social media to build brand awareness and market books, "21 Tips for Book Publishers to Build an Effective Social Media Strategy " includes expert information compiled from Book Business magazine articles and Publishing Business Conference & Expo sessions.
Through partnerships with religious book publishers, the recently launched FreeBookPreview.com allows readers to access full-text previews of upcoming and newly released Christian books on mobile devices for a limited time. A service of Bellingham, Wash.-based electronic publisher Logos Bible Software, the new website is the first book promotion tool to maximize mobile technology and social networking for e-books and print books, according to the company.
Contained in this whitepaper are 21 tips that will assist publishers in creating and implementing a social media strategy to potentially attract and engage readers - and ultimately sell more books.
Hello, my name is Janet. And I am addicted to Twitter contests.
I swear I haven't always been this way. Sure, I'd entered a contest here and there if the prize was particularly enticing (I really wanted that all-expenses-paid trip to the Super Bowl that one year), but I always was the stereotypical “I never win anything” type. I equated entry forms with lost causes, and therefore, generally avoided them. Why waste my time?
Opening his presentation with an image of a woman sitting on a beach with an e-reader, Kelly Gallagher told the crowd of book publishing professionals gathered at the seventh-annual Book Industry Study Group's "Making Information Pay" event last week, "She doesn't care about this meeting today," making the point that the issues and challenges now facing the industry are publishers' responsibilities to solve for the consumer. Gallagher, vice president of publishing services for bibliographic information provider RR Bowker, was one of about a dozen speakers to address the audience at the McGraw-Hill Auditorium in New York City.
It was another meeting of book publishing industry minds, as members of the Bookbinders' Guild of New York gathered at Random House's Manhattan headquarters May 11 to discuss the rapidly transforming business of producing books. "Digital Horizons: The Evolving Book" featured presentations from Ken Brooks, senior vice president, global production and manufacturing services, Cengage Learning; Bob Stein, founder and co-director of the Institute for the Future of the Book; and Michael Cader, founder of PublishersMarketplace.com and Publishers Lunch.
Amazon has started rolling out a software upgrade for its popular Kindle electronic readers, adding the ability for users to share e-book passages with friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter.
The new social networking feature in version 2.5 adds another Web link to the standard Kindle and the larger Kindle DX, as Amazon finds itself in an increasingly competitive market, particularly with the introduction of the iPad. Apple's slate computer is designed for reading digital books, as well as watching online video, listening to music and Web browsing.
Check out the video highlights from the 2010 Publishing Business Conference & Expo, featuring comments from conference chairs Chris Foster, President & COO, GIE Media; Samir Husni, aka "Mr. Magazine" and founder and director of the Magazine Innovation Center; and Clint Greenleaf, president and CEO, Greenleaf Book Group, as well as from other attendees.