Emdashery Blog

How to build your brand (book) with young adults--

Myspace, piczo, friendster, orkut, bebo, facebook--we're all a twitter over the social networking options. QuickSprout lays out three ways to use them to build a brand: creating a profile, networking, and inviting stickiness. It's just one more way to network in your pajamas (at your computer where, you know, you actually might still be able to do some writing). The blog Mashable also adds some thoughts:

With all that’s going on with social networking these days, we’re seeing a lot of figures leverage the popularity of social networks to gain visibility for themselves. We’ve seen it a lot with musicians, films, and especially politicians, who recognize the potential of reaching out to the teen and young adult demographics that connect over social networks and are hoping to get the young vote for the 2008 Presidential elections.

Read both blogs here and here...

99 ways for the world to love you--

Do you want to spread the word about your work on the internet but don't know how to begin? Ron McDaniel at the Buzzoodle Buzz Marketing Blog offers a list of 99 free or low cost tools to spread your message online. His list includes social bookmarking/news sites, online communities and contact management, blogs and blog-related sites, photo sharing, advanced media, and web publishing sites.

Check it out here...

Browse Inside -- Random House Version--

Last week, I posted about the new Browse Inside widget from HarperCollins. Now, Random House has also gone live with it's own browse widget. The book distribution program called Insight has more than 5,000 titles available and can be coded into most Web sites (although they're not ready for MySpace quite yet).

I actually like Random House's version much better. It seems to load faster and some books are available in their entirety. The browse window also offers a Buy button to promote online purchases.

Here's the Random House press release.

And here's an example using James Michener's Centennial... (click on the image to open a larger reader)

Step inside Narnia--

Look under the HaperCollins covers--

HarperCollins has launched a "Browse Inside" widget for online book fans. A widget is an internet device that provides simple code that can be used on a Web site or blog. The Technorati search window in the lower right section of Emdashery is an example of a widget. The Browse Inside widget (similar to the Amazon.com Browse Inside function) will allow manages of Web sites, blogs, and social networking sites such as MySpace to post excerpts from HarperCollins titles.

From the HC press release:

HarperCollins Publishers today announces an innovative campaign to promote titles online through its digital warehouse. The Browse Inside widget enables fans and authors to embed sample pages of their favorite books directly onto social networking sites and blogs, marking the first time a syndicated reader for books has been available online...

"The Browse Inside widget - when spread through online communities - is today's equivalent of picking up a book off of a friend's coffee table and glancing through it," said Josh Kilmer-Purcell, New York Times bestselling author of I Am Not Myself These Days (Harper Perennial). "It's my electronic calling card to online communities."

Viewers will be able to read sample pages that include the covers, front matter, back matter and first three pages of chapters one and two.

From that store with the great name--

Borders bookstores, despite having the an incredibly powerful name, has struggled financially. As part of its effort to turn things around, it just announced a joint project with the social media Web site Gather.com.

Borders customers who sign up for informational e-mails will be offered links to the Borders.Gather.com chat room where users can share their thoughts on favorite books. The site will also include author info--such as interviews and author readings. And Borders.Gather.com users can also accumulate points for gift cards.

From this article:

"The power of social networking and social media is changing the way companies interact with their customers," Gather.com CEO Tom Gerace said Tuesday in a statement. "Borders is a brand that appeals to highly educated and highly informed adults who are the core of the Gather.com community."

I checked out the Gather site for the first time, and it looks like a nice, upscale, clean version of other anything-goes social media sites. Yet another way to build communities around books...

MySpace is AuthorSpace--

The social networking site, Myspace, is becoming an important arena for authors to build name recognition and to communicate direclty with readers. COS Productions, which produces book trailers, has a profile on the site and posts new trailers there. It is also compiling a list of authors who have a presence on MySpace. The list has over 500 authors and is growing.

Check it out to see if any of your favorites are there...

HT: Book Trailerpark

Are you leading a secret second life?--

Second Life is a web-based 3-D game where members or "residents" build their own life in the second "world." It was started in 2003 and now has over 1 million "residents."

People build homes there, start business, take classes, and seek out entertainment. Residents can buy, sell, or trade things in the marketplace by using Linden dollars that can be converted to US dollars at currency exchanges. As double lives tend to be, some of the stuff there seems seedy, but there are some churches. Here's a cathedral that was built there:

Copyright 2006, Linden Research, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.

Ah, but this is just a enormous and irrelevant distraction just waiting to suck me into a virtual reality neverland, you say?

Maybe not...

Many real worlds companies have set up shop in Second Life, and now the first publisher is checking it out. According to this article:

Penguin, however, is the first major publisher to dip its toe into the virtual world and, appropriately, it has chosen Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash as the book with which to test the waters. With its invention of the notion of a "metaverse" (a contraction of "metaphysical universe") it is acknowledged as the inspiration behind Second Life and other virtual worlds.

Penguin worked with the London-based virtual world design agency Rivers Run Red to create an in-world version of the book - this offers readers excerpts of the text, an audio clip and a link which clicks through to a dedicated Second Life page on the Penguin website, complete with the opportunity to buy the book at a discount. They are now developing a virtual bookshelf of other Penguin titles for the Second Life resident.

MySpace, YouTube, Second Life -- all parts of the brave new world of book promotion.