Social Networking: It's not just Facebook

Isn't it interesting how the seemingly random threads of fate twist themselves through our lives and lead us to the next event, experience, lesson that impacts us?  Follow me on this thread that has drawn me through the last two months:  A fellow author from Black Rose Writing contacts me by commenting on my blog, and I email her with a question.  She replies to the question, and then mentions she is doing a Member Giveaway on a site called sswww.LibraryThing.com.  I've never heard of the site, so I go there and poke around and find out it is a social networking site for people who read, authors, and people who love books in general.  I sign up, am granted author status there due to Flesh Wound, and conduct a Member Giveaway of my own.  Flesh Wound is now available for viewing to over 1,000,000 members of LibraryThing, and in the hands of 15 people I never would have met otherwise, two of them in the UK.

Next, one of the winners on the Member Giveaway on LibraryThing emails me after reading her copy of Flesh Wound and tells me how much she likes it.  (See previous blog entry).  She mentions she is going to post a 5-star review on the site http://www.Goodreads.com.  I'd never heard of this site either, so I go there today and discover it is another social networking site for readers, authors, and people who love books in general.  I sign up, am granted authors status there due to Flesh Wound (is any of this sounding familiar?), and lo and behold discover they also host Member Giveaways.  So, starting in a day or two, I will be giving away 10 more copies of Flesh Wound to interested members of Goodreads.com, in return for (hopefully) more reviews of the book.  And Flesh Wound is now available for viewing to over 3,000,000 members of Goodreads.

Both of these sites now include links to JonSay.com, and both include links to purchase Flesh Wound.  They also include reviews and summaries of the book.

Goodreads seems to be a bit more robust from an author's point of view.  I will be able to start discussion groups about my novels (LibraryThing also allows this), upload videos from my personal YouTube channel (currently in development), provide excerpts from any of my writings, and add friends (fellow users of the site, a feature also available on LibraryThing).  Essentially, these are social networking sites a la Facebook and Twitter, but focused more on people who love to read.  Millions of them, in fact.

So from one comment on my blog, this thread of fate has drawn me into contact with over 4,000,000 potential readers of Flesh Wound within two months.  How many of those readers actually notice Flesh Wound will depend in large part on the reviews it receives and how involved I get as an author on the two sites.   I plan on becoming as involved as I can to maximize that exposure.

All of this also leads me to understand a bit more why the traditional publishing industry is quaking a bit in its traditional infrastructure boots.  Sites like LibraryThing and Goodreads (and there are more of them, I'm sure, I just haven't discovered them yet) serve as great marketing channels for the traditional publishers, but they do not have sole domain over the books marketed there.  So a book like Flesh Wound, published by a small independent publisher in Texas, has the same possibility of reaching readers on these sites as any of the titles published by Viking, Random House, Penguin, and all the others.  I am able to compete head-to-head, therefore, with all of the publishing houses who passed on Flesh Wound, and I have spent $0 for the privilege.  Granted, the titles produced by the big houses wind up in the big bookstores – Barnes & Noble, Borders, etc. – but how many people walk into a bookstore each day compared with the millions that log in to these social networking sites?  These sites even the playing field a bit for small authors and publishers.

The real winners are the readers, of course.  They have a far greater selection of books to choose from, more reviews to read, and more recommendations from friends to follow when choosing what they are going to read next.  All of which increases the chance that a book like Flesh Wound, and the others that follow it, will get to be enjoyed by many more people than if I had to wait for a big publishing house to accept it.  (Another outcome of all of this is that the publishing houses become highly reluctant to agree to publish anything that won't be an automatic bestseller, for the very real fear that they will not recapture their up front publishing costs, much less make a profit.  The existence of sites like LibraryThing and Goodreads work in favor of smaller publishers who have lower fixed costs, i.e., can produce a physical book in much lower quantities at a lower cost than the big boys.)

But I digress.  If you get the chance to check out Goodreads, my author link is to the right.  It's a cool site!  I'll be posting more content to it over the next month or so.  Happy October!  I hope you have a terrific weekend and read something that transports you to a new world for a while!  Thanks for reading!  -Jon