I really thought the conversation would die. Evidently no, so I’m sticking my big toe into the SXSW pool and taking a dip with everybody else.
A millinium ago in the blogsophere, which would be Sunday evening, The South by Southwest Conference hosted the now infamous New Think for Old Publishers panel.
I was reading tweets on my twitter stream and knew something was up, but I miss calculated the ripple effect. I’m not going to rehash what happened since I wasn’t at the event in question and this is the best account I’ve found so far on The Book Publicity Blog.
I guess what I find astonishing is that there is even a question of whether bloggers and on-line literary sites are important to marketing new books. There is no question. Absolutely.
For me, that’s like asking if itunes is relevant in the music industry.
Some of the books we publicize get huge bumps in sales with one mention on some sites. Our virtual book tours are wonderfully successful and fun for the author. It’s even better when books fly off of the bookshelves of independent book shops (especially close to my heart), bookstores and on-line booksellers. And that’s what happens when you engage new media.
The new media can be staunch advocates for books and authors and will continue to remind their followers about books they especially enjoy. One excellent example of promotion is when an on-line reviewer posts a review of the book, a Q&A with the author another day and perhaps offers a contest to win the book on yet another day. Traditional media doesn’t remind their readers of special books — the real estate on printed paper has been at too high a premium…and now seems to be disappearing altogether with the demise of so many newspapers and truncated magazines.
I’m here to cheer on the new media and the on-line reviewers and bloggers that have been so important to the success of many of our books and hundreds of others.
If you’ve been living under a rock and need a little nudge to see what’s out there in the world of new media, check some of my favorites out. There are scores more that are wonderful as well:
The Voracious Reader
Omnivoracious (Amazon’s blog)
These are but a few of the books that have benefited from the new media buzz:
