I stumbled upon a post over at Booksquare today via my trusty Google Reader entitled Why Publishers Should Blog.
Just as authors need to better market themselves and their books, so do publishers. While the audience for a publisher website is diverse – authors, booksellers, journalists, agents, readers, and more – talking about books on your website the same way you talk about books in your catalog simply isn’t cutting it. In printed material, you have various constraints. On the web, you have the ability to do something special: tell the world what excites you, the publisher, about a particular book.
Bravo, well said. While I agree that publishers do need to get with the program, I don’t think that blogging is the only way to do it. The last thing the world needs is another blog, no kidding. There are way too many as it is. And I say that lovingly… I have at least 40 RSS feeds on my Google Reader.
That’s not to say that a publisher shouldn’t have a blog. It’s just my plea for great content. Not yet another place to post the same cover and blurb that appears in their catalog.
A couple of publishers do have great blogs and I think they add to the publisher’s community as a whole.
But what I really think is important is the interaction. The enthusiasm.
Enthusiasm needs to return to the book industry. People talk about their favorite TV shows at the water cooler. They don’t talk about the books they’re reading. Most people don’t read. I read the statistics recently, I’ll have to find them.
Publishers have the money to get into the social networking scene, to contribute to existing communities, to support their authors, to show their enthusiasm for the books they publish. The best part is, most of that only costs time.
Readers and fans alike are developing communities all over the web. Blogs, group blogs, groups, then there’s places like Goodreads and Shelfari, not to mention Bebo and Myspace.I think at the core readers want to connect. They want to know what’s new. They want to know what new characters they’re going to meet. And I think they’d appreciate a publisher’s enthusiasm for their product.
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