Tag: social networking

Braaaains

- Stacy

Totally AWESOME zombie movie on SciFi right now. As I watch them devour braaains on mute, because yeah, gross, and I’m too tired to change the channel, some thoughts on my day.

Drove up to Salt Lake with  in what we thought would be light snow, which turned out to be a small, gentle snowstorm and lots of slush and ice on the roads. Oh, it was beautiful. But it was also annoying to drive in. Was going to drop in on a friend up there, but she was snowed in up in Park City, so we’ll catch up later. We did make it to the King’s English bookstore for the first time, and what an awesome children’s room they have! I think every time I go to Salt Lake it’ll be a required stop. It was fun to see signed copies on display from so many of my friends who are local authors, and even a book edited by real life and blogfriend Cheryl (Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit, which I’ve been DVRing and have wanted to pick up the book). And the snow coming down lightly in front of the store all lit up in the early evening was quite pretty.

We were getting hungry so we ate at Mazza, a really great Middle Eastern restaurant that my friend Cindy introduced me to last spring when I was out here for World Horror. On to Whole Foods, the nearest one of which is up in that area, to get stuff I can’t find in Utah County (whither the good yogurt smoothies without high fructose corn syrup??) and then it was back on the road to hope we made it back to Happy Valley without incident. It had snowed even more, so I was gripping the wheel a little tight, not because I didn’t think my trusty little CRV couldn’t do it, but because I really need to replace all my tires and probably should have let yedijoda drive her even trustier Pilot.

We had anime night later this evening. We’ve been watching the fan-subbed version of Vampire Knight, the manga of which is out in English here in the States but is far ahead in Japan–and the anime hasn’t been licensed here. I’m hoping it will be, though, because it is GOOD,  and I want. The manga is published here by Viz, and if you want to check it out it’s in any bookstore. Similar vampire story to Twilight, but with a really interesting twist: the humans and vampires live in close proximity in a private school, with Day Class students being protected by Yuki Cross and Zero Kiryu, the academy’s guardians, because the Night Class is all vampires. Here’s where the superficial similarities with Twilight come up: those vampires, for some reason, think that Yuki’s blood smells *really* good. Great mystery, great storytelling, and a vampire story I can really get behind. Fascinating characters. Complex, deep storytelling.

I’ve been thinking about Twittering all day, and really, I prefer the long version. Blogging is pretty short when you compare it to a conversation in person, but it’s pretty deep when you compare it to a tweet. Right as I was heading out on my afternoon adventures in snow driving, I happened upon a conversation on NPR’s Science Friday talking about Twitter and other forms of social networking as marketing tools and policy influencers. I do agree that a conversation can begin through the medium, and it’s another way to keep in touch and share interesting ideas, but mostly I’m pretty meh about Twitter so far. Those of you who t
witter, why? What’s the appeal? I’ve had limited conversations with teens I know and it doesn’t seem to be a big thing with them (a very limited sample) the way FB is. What’s your reading on the teen barometer in your area?

It’s the little things

- Stacy
  • Got a package in the mail this morning. Two, actually. It’s always so fun to get a package. One from my sister, one from my Grandma, both Christmas presents. Dilemma: do I open them? It’s so tempting! But the temptation eases when I see that Grandma has also included my Girl Scout cookies, which I bought from my cousins’ daughters and planned to get from her when I went home for Christmas. Yum!
    Sadly, it’s looking like my car won’t get me home next week. I was looking forward to the trip, but I need new tires and driving from Utah to Illinois requires crossing Montana, and I just don’t like the idea of getting stranded in nowhere, Wyoming in the middle of winter, especially during the week that what few businesses would be open would probably be closed for the holidays.
  • Twitter is fun so far, but if you’re on there and I haven’t added you to follow, let me know, because the adding mechanism is weird and I’m having a hard time finding people.
  • Seattle has been slammed by a snowstorm/ice storm just when I needed to get a hold of some
    people there while they’re at work. Argh. But I did always like the random days off when the tiny bit of snow (and often massive amounts of ice) shuts everything down.
  • I’m driving to Salt Lake City this afternoon via Park City to see if I can make my car make that noise it’s been making, so I can show it to the mechanic and he can diagnose it. If you’re in PC or SLC and want to meet for hot chocolate, let me know.

Further back in the not-so-way-back machine…

- Stacy

This link is over a month old, and but Booksquare’s Kassia Krozser speaks directly to what we were discussing a couple weeks ago about reaching our readers through online efforts.

Specifically, Kassia is talking about social networking vs. viral marketing. Our teen readers and their little siblings are as much naturals at the social networking thing as my generation of kids was at picking up Pong and the Apple IIe. It makes sense to them, having these kinds of conversations about whatever strikes their fancy–including books. And they’re savvy enough to know their spam from their real conversations. As she notes, readers don’t want to rehash the cover copy. Despite the seeming shallowness of online communication–it’s rather short and swift, after all–the depth that can come from these short conversations goes far beyond a sound bite.

So how does a publisher or an author start a conversation with teens via
social networking?

One thing I’ve found is that as I network on Facebook and Livejournal, this very blog, with adults who are social-networking savvy, the word of mouth of something that is of genuine interest to those I talk to gets passed on. We all know how fast a meme can spread, how linkage gets passed from one blog to the next. Right now there’s a list of science fiction and fantasy reviewers that’s being passed from blog to blog so one blogger can index all the reviewers out there, and it spread like wildfire–I’ve seen it on Wands and Worlds (I think?), Gwenda Bond (maybe? aw, it was somebody on my friends’ list feeds!), and several other blogs, who saw it on blogs I’ve probably never seen, etc.

Those adults will be read by the teens they know, who, if they find the conversation interesting, will share with their friends. Obvious, I know, but my point being that I think it starts there–friending libraries on MySpace and making sure they know about local booksignings through social networking, friending libraries on Facebook if they’ve gotten that far (I haven’t started looking for libraries on Facebook, so if you know if they’ve gotten into that the way they have MySpace, let me know; personally, I find MySpace annoying and rarely check in on it). Teen librarians are great at passing the word on to their teens about events and information that is interesting and useful to their particular community.

Also, I find that often authors themselves have more interesting conversation starters than publishers do, because they have a personal connection to the material that the on-message publishers don’t. This isn’t a bad thing! It’s just that it demonstrates the importance of the author’s efforts in reaching readers via social networking, because they can do what a publisher or even individual editor often can’t: offer that personal perspective, the behind-the-scenes look into the head of the creator that readers will find fascinating. It’s like seeing the making-of video, all those extras on the Lord of the Rings DVDs.

Anyway, just go read the post, because she has a lot more to say on it than I do. Go!
 

Let’s talk about marketing your book online

- Stacy

I was at an SCBWI conference a couple weeks ago at which they had a panel of newly published authors do a panel chat about how they got published, and the subject came up of websites and blogs. This is something that I’ve heard a lot of people talk about in the children’s book blogosphere, and the discussion that day brought up the same question for me with these authors.

After all of the authors answered the question about marketing their books online with some version of "I have a web page," and perhaps an "I have a Facebook," I raised my hand and asked, "I’ve heard it said that the children’s book online community can be a little . . . in-bred. That is, authors friend authors on LJ and Facebook, comment on each other’s blogs and do blog tours, do interviews with reviewer bloggers, but who is the audience that these blogs reach? How do your directly reach your readers online?"

(I admit, it was a loaded question, because I’ve seen authors use the web in some very innovative ways to reach their teen readers, especially, and part of the answer to that for younger readers isn’t a direct answer because gatekeepers are involved.)

But I’d like to open up the question to you guys. Let’s brainstorm and really think about how to use these new technologies in a way that reaches teens. And how do you go beyond the message of "buy, buy, buy" (which is good for paying your bills, but there is something very commercial about that which I don’t think we really aspire to openly in the book world), and make it a more general message, yet still reach them about your book?

There are already some great examples of authors doing things that reach their readers directly–I’ll name a few off the top of my head: Readergirlz, Scott Westerfeld’s blog, Shannon Hale’s blog, several communities on Facebook. How do these accomplish what they do, and is there a way of extending their reach or following their example? How did Scott and Shannon attract so many readers–do teens look up their favorite author and see if he or she has a blog, or did the blog attract the teen first and then they became a reader of the books?

And what’s up with Twitter? I haven’t really had a chance to check it out yet. How might Twitter be used to reach teen readers?

Those are just a few questions I have, and I’m hoping to open up a discussion here and on Facebook, where this blog is imported as a note. I’ve seen these questions asked again and again on listservs I’ve been on, but usually in the context of librarianship, and I’m wondering how authors specifically can use these tools to reach readers.