Authors Take Social Media Route For Online Book Promotions!
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Books were one of the first success stories of the web of e-commerce with amazon.com building its fortunes selling books to the world. Though India never had a book ecommerce success story of its own but Indian authors have always been in the race as far as online sales of books are concerned through amazon.com.
Offlate I have been noticing a trend where book authors are using social media like blogs, social networks and communities to promote their books. Just a few days back I got an email and then a call from Yogesh Chabbria who is the author of the book Happionaire which he claims is being primarily promoted through his website/blog and bloggers whom he has contacted.
And Yogesh isn’t a standalone case. Even one of the VC’s Parmesh Shahani of Mahindra Ventures recently launched a book called Gay Bombay and also emailed me about the same. He also launched a facebook group for the same. Also he has been promoting the same from his blog as well.
And its not only first time writers like Yogesh and Parmesh even someone as seasoned as Shobha De has understood the importance of a personal connect with your prospective book readers through the use of social media. According to this afaqs article Shobha seems to have hired Hanmer MS&L (a unit of Publicis Group) to promote her book Superstar India, published by Penguin Books India. They seem to have used a similar strategy of launching a blog and using an orkut and facebook profile to connect with prospective readers. Hanmer seems to have also used youtube and got shobhaa speaking about the book.
Though the initiatives by Shobhaa/Hanmer seem innovative but if one looks closely at the facebook and orkut profile creations one will realise that Hanmer seems to be “Talking at” rather than “Talking to” the book enthusiasts. It seems like they have created a social media presence for the book but are not doing the required social media management that can have a major impact. More on social media presence vs management later in another post.
All in all I see this trend of authors using social media growing more and more in the days to come as India lacks an amazon and hence social media (the orkuts and facebooks are really popular) like social networks and blogs are great way to spread the word of mouth among local book enthusiasts which can place the initial buzz about a book in order.
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books are passe now its the world of e-books nd pdfs……..unless sum1 can create da vinci code like success…….so as far as novels or book market is concerned good content added with publicity and hype could easily sell…..there is a scope of indian version of amazon hope they notice it soon…….now-a-days lot of library portals are opening up just like dvd rentals…..
There is also our (social media) friend Gaurav’s “off consumption”
I will just wait for the movie. In fact I am coming out with a book aswell…i know i cant write so hopefully i will be stupid enough to get a Fatwa or two…. i am gonna give the book away for free…. the catch is i will have print ads in the book…
Check Abhijit Bhaduri’s blog for his book http://abhijitbhaduri.com/category/married-but-available/ and specially this post
http://abhijitbhaduri.com/2007/02/lets-write-the-sequel-together/
Thanks for sharing the link gautam. Will look it up!
The thing with books is this. There are those who believe that since its the age of the web, e books will rule, yet when it comes to novels, there are many who still prefer the good old fashioned hardback/paperback since for them the real thrill is in turning the pages and not sit glued to a screen.