Social Media

We spoke with publishing experts whose social media strategies have yielded loyal followings. They share 25 ways to make your social efforts more effective in 2014.

New York, NY, (November 14, 2013)-Today, Random House LLC, a U.S. division of Penguin Random House, announced a partnership with Pinterest to use the service's first set of APIs (application programming interface) to help people discover popular content. Random House is among a select group of multi-industry companies to work with the Pinterest community to power a new type of discovery experience. 

DALLAS, Texas, Nov. 13, 2013 - Responding to growing interest from people on Facebook to share reading experiences, BookShout! today announced new integration that allows Facebook members to see all the books their friendslike and to preview them with one simple click.

It's a new era for bookworms. With e-readers and audiobooks gaining popularity, many brick-and-mortar bookstores are unable to survive the competition: Just four years after the introduction of the Kindle, 40-year-old bookstore giant Borders filed for bankruptcy. Strand Books is the sole survivor of "book row," a section of New York City's 4th Avenue that once housed nearly 50 bookstores. So how has Strand (founded in 1927) managed to stay afloat - and thrive - in a world of podcasts and ebooks? The answer is simple: By embracing social.

We asked some of our favorite thinkers in the publishing world: "What trends will shape the industry in 2014?" Here's what they had to say.

Scholastic's social media accounts looked a little spooky today. R.L. Stine, the "Stephen King of children's literature" and the author of the iconic Goosebumps series, took over the publishing company's Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google+ pages on Wednesday to answer fans' questions and put them in the Halloween spirit a day before the holiday.

With an unusually heavy spring for Young Adult débuts ahead in 2014, publishers are increasingly reliant on social media to deliver YA sales.

Platforms including Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest and BookTubers are now "the best opportunity to build loyal readers, which then leads to sales," said Sarah Benton, head of marketing at Hot Key Books.

When it comes to referral traffic from social networks, there's Facebook and Pinterest - and then there's everyone else. Facebook accounted for more than 10% of overall traffic to publishers in September, by far the most of any social network, according to data released Tuesday from Shareaholic, a social plugin service that collects data from 200,000 publishers reaching 250 million monthly unique visitors collectively. 

Alyssa DelPrete is a junior at Hanover College in Indiana. She is currently an intern for Book Business and Publishing Executive. This is a look into her first Publishing Business Conference experience.

There are thousands of eBooks released every single week by indie authors and sometimes they feel a need to stand out in the crowd. Most turn to social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or participate in the Goodreads community. Some people think that authors are spending too much time on social self-promotion at the expense of honing their craft.