Crain’s, oh, how you torment me. All these interesting bits of stuff to link to but can I link? No. Your content is locked up tighter than a widow’s virginity. PAH!
In this week’s issue is a small item in the “New York, New York” section, edited by Valerie Block (gotta cite your sources, now) that discusses using MySpace to promote books and boost their popularity. Seems MySpace is trying to parlay it’s success as a “launching pad for recording artists” by “redesign[ing] its year-old MySpace Books section…with an eye toward doing the same with authors” according to an unnamed industry insider.
The article cites the success of the book Everybody Hurts: An Essential Guide to Emo Culture
With an obvious tie-in to the music industry and its success using MySpace as a promotional vehicle, the agent for the book hopes to use the community-building aspect of MySpace to craft a book tour that will combine readings by the authors with performances by “emo bands.”
(Man, what a whine-fest that will be.)
Personally speaking, I’m enough of a misanthrope that I have no interest in MySpace. I attempted to enjoy Friendster and it annoyed the hell out of me; the hot-pink sparkly squee OMGBFF mania of MySpace is too much for my hermit-like tendencies. And yes, I know this here site is hot pink. Our site is hot pink because it is ironic. This is ironic hot pink. There’s not the slightest little bit of irony on MySpace.
I’m curious about using MySpace as a book promotional tool, particularly when sites like Fresh Fiction are offering a Web 2.0 package that for $229 a month (or more) will “create and/or maintain up to three (3) profiles on up to three (3) social networking sites of your choice.”
What now? Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up – from the Fresh Fiction site:
Maintaining a virtual relationship with your fans takes hours, hours you need to create and write new characters and books. Because of the time involved, many authors contract individuals to create and manage web 2.0 profiles, and maintain an overall virtual community presence. Everything from filling out the basic information, to maximizing the number of views and friends connected directly to the profile. A media specialist creates a streamlined web 2.0 profile, updates it regularly, and keeps your name active within your network. The most successful users have thousands of friends, hundreds of comments, and an active following who visits his/her profile regularly for updates.
I’m not sure that hiring someone to create a profile for you at MySpace, del.icio.us, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, or Digg will guarantee book sales, but I have been on the wild wily internet enough lately to know that many an author keeps a MySpace page and updates it regularly. But those same authors who are on MySpace also have independent author websites and other online methods of presence aside from their networking space.
If your MySpace is kept by a publicist or by your own tappity fingers, what’s your take on MySpace as a promotional tool? Is this the best way to reach a readership? Does having a MySpace page increase book totals or are the statistics published in Crain’s somewhat unquantifiable or at the least impossible to attribute solely to MySpace?
Speaking solely for myself, MySpace does nothing for me, and knowing that an author has a page there wouldn’t influence my book buying by much, if at all. However, I realize that I’m a minority in my aversion to MySpace. What about you?
MySpace is a popularity tool and from what I’ve observed, the only authors who gets lots of hits and comments are the ones everyone already knows through websites/major blogs. If no one knows who you are or gives a shit, I’d think you’d just spend tons of time trolling the gazillion author myspace pages trying to get your name out there when you could be writing. I’m in that 18-24 age demographic and I don’t see the point in authors having myspace pages when their demographic—unless they are writing YA and paranormal fiction—leaves MySpace to their kids.
My opinion of MySpace is that it sucks galaxies through straws. I very occasionally look at it because people will link to stuff hosted there that sounds interesting. And every time I reel away with my eyes bleeding. Usually my ears bleeding as well, because apparently we can’t have Real Social Networking with being subjected to the owner’s taste in Muzak.
I’ve got an LJ and I’ve got my own website. I *use* those. My friends are on LJ, so it’s a place where I enjoy hanging out. MySpace would just be a deeply unpleasant chore taking up time I could be spending writing, or making a nuisance of myself on other people’s blogs.
poor35—well, I’m even older than that, so I’m *really* not the MySpace demographic. Where’s my cane, I want to shake it in the air and complain about young people today.
I resisted MySpace to begin with for all of the reasons stated above. I don’t really *get* the whole friend thing and I hate all the overblown, graphic intensive, music blaring, slow as molasses pages.
However, it is free.
So, I set up a MySpace page (with some help because it’s got to be to most unfriendly interface I’ve seen) I have no idea whether it’s selling books or not. I don’t spend much time there and I copy and paste content from my blog at Blogspot to my MySpace blog. One thing I have noticed is that the MySpace blog gets a lot more traffic. It doesn’t take me much additional time so I figure it can’t hurt.
I’ve signed up for a MySpace account twice and both times un-signed up within an hour because there is no way to make the page look less cheap. (No, flashing lights and obnoxious music do not actually help.) Even the most boring Blogger template is better looking.
As the constant “be my friend” crap makes me want to break out the pepper spray, I don’t think MySpace would be a terribly effective marketing tool for me. But that’s obviously my negative energy talking…
*increase55* Pleasegodno. An extra 55 puts us into bariatric surgery territory.
I have two MySpace accounts…one for my “non-author” life and all the friends I actually know who live scattered about this lovely planet, and one for my “writing” life where I will allow just about anyone to be my friend simply knowing that it will get my name out there.
I have a few people on the author site that have become “web-friends” and we write, edit and critique for each other.
The good thing about MySpace, is that it is FREE advertising. I set up my author page after a couple of hours of searching for backgrounds that I liked, and since then I check it once a day. Any writing I do I simply copy and paste over. I can post bulletins about my short stories that are available online.
The best part is, you can track how many people are hitting your page and decide if it’s worth the time you spend on it or not.
The demographic is admittedly young, but I see more and more people in their 30s, 40s and 50s every week. A lot of parents are online just to spy on their kids, but that doesn’t mean you can’t convince them to read your book as well.
I think MySpace is worth it simply due to the fact that there are a gajillion people on it, and it’s free. I love free stuff.
And I’m not sure if I’m being proprositioned or questioned “about69”
I only use MySpace when I need to check out AI contestants’ music.
I can’t imagine how authors are going to use MySpace but then again, I don’t see the point of “book trailers” either, which is what most authors seem to use MySpace for.
I am a young adult author and MySpace has proved a fabulous tool for me to promote to my target audience.
I put my MySpace address at the back of my books and get friended by readers constantly – don’t have to go look for them at all.
The kids love the interactivity of MySpace and get so excited when I “comment” back on their page. They often say things like they feel like they “know” me. I encourage this by posting video blogs on the site where I talk directly to them. And I always take time to answer their emailed questions.
I had a fancy, beautiful website set up for my YA books originally but no one ever visits it. However, I have over 3,000 MySpace friends (and no, the majority are NOT other authors!) and I get emails and comments on a daily basis from my readers. I also get lots of kids who write in and say they bought my book BECAUSE they heard about me from MySpace.
I experimented a bit with my adult books, but did not find that I had the same success in finding an audience. But for YA it’s been a brilliant marketing tool.
MARI
Well I use myspace in a very limited way. I have two sisters who live on another coast from me who are 18 and 21, so it is just another way for me to stay in touch with what is going on in their lives.
Anyway, my experience with authors and myspace; I friended one, I don’t remember why, several months ago. Since then I have gotten like 50 random friend requests from other authors I have never heard of. I deleted the original friend, but I am now on some kind of list for this and still get the requests every day. I would never add someone again unless *I* actively sought to promote them.
I have to agree with Sarah, the whole OMGBFF nauseating attitude of MySpace makes me cringe. I escaped from that attitude when I graduated from HS and I have no desire to repeat the experience.
Perhaps because it seems to overrun with teenagers angsting about their life that I can’t take any MySpace page seriously. I always feel like the pages should open to the sound of Cher and Dionne (of Clueless) SQUEEing in the background.
As a reader, I’m much happier with an author having an independent page where I can check up on the latest news.
I’m at MySpace for the same reasons that Anya and others cited so I won’t repeat.
I went for a very simple profile for myself. And I hate when it takes five minutes to load a profile because of all the pictures and when it finally loads, music is blaring at me. And I’m not even on dialup.
However, the only reason I had to post on this thread was the line from the Princess Bride LOL. Gosh, I love that movie.
I’m at MySpace for the same reasons that Anya and others cited so I won’t repeat.
I went for a very simple profile for myself. And I hate when it takes five minutes to load a profile because of all the pictures and when it finally loads, music is blaring at me. And I’m not even on dialup.
However, the only reason I had to post on this thread was the line from the Princess Bride LOL. Gosh, I love that movie.
I’m at MySpace for the same reasons that Anya and others cited so I won’t repeat.
I went for a very simple profile for myself. And I hate when it takes five minutes to load a profile because of all the pictures and when it finally loads, music is blaring at me. And I’m not even on dialup.
However, the only reason I had to post on this thread was the line from the Princess Bride LOL. Gosh, I love that movie.
I’m at MySpace for the same reasons that Anya and others cited so I won’t repeat.
I went for a very simple profile for myself. And I hate when it takes five minutes to load a profile because of all the pictures and when it finally loads, music is blaring at me. And I’m not even on dialup.
However, the only reason I had to post on this thread was the line from the Princess Bride LOL. Gosh, I love that movie.
OMG how can u diss Myspace, yo? It is tewtally kewl. lol lol lol
(Note to self: Remove tongue from cheek, THEN post.)
What I find interesting is the sheer number of people who seem to feel they *have* to have a presence on MySpace, but don’t necessarily *want* to have a presence on MySpace. It reminds me (brace yourself – old person reference coming up) of the old Beta vs. VHS thing where everyone agreed that Beta was the better format, yet thanks to marketing VHS became more popular and eventually the default style.
Mari Mancusi seems to have related the only positive experience there, which I suspect is tied to the fact that her target audience is MySpace’s (original) target audience. Which says something about marketing and target audiences, I’m sure, but not something I’d care to articulate. Mari, I’m also curious to know: on books before you set up a MySpace page, did you list your web address yet not get reader feedback/website visits like you do now?
My current level of interaction with MySpace is to have blogs located there that I want to read fed into LiveJournal so that I can catch postings when they’re made, but not have to check in directly to see when things are updated. It’s the ADHD, party-line phone call version of blogging, which isn’t appealing to me, though I can see how it could be appealing to a certain kind of person.
the sheer commerciality and enormousness of myspace irritates me. i rarely willingly violate itsspace, but will go over there sometimes (read: almost never) to visit Sherrilyn Kenyon – it’s cute, she put up a page for Acheron.
i’d link for you, but my work computer restricts the whole domain for “explicit content”. you can jump from her Dark Hunter site, if you want.
One of my favourite authors, Lois McMaster Bujold, recently started a MySpace page, and I was frankly shocked. She certainly seems to be well up on the social networking side of things as a promotional tool, and those of us on sites like L/J are encouraged to pimp her upcoming stuff on the comms there and in our own blogs.
But I don’t know what kind of marketing spiel people are being fed regarding MySpace, because to me it’s pretty much directed at the under-25 group who like garish crap to look at. They may look at the raw numbers and be bowled over by that, but don’t seem to consider the signal to noise ratio. It’s certainly not the natural home of LMB or any other author I can think of.
I was pleased that LMB got a blog – I love author blogs – but I wish it were hosted on her own domain, or somewhere decent like WordPress. What I like to see is a bit of chat about an author’s work, info on upcoming author events/publications, and an RSS feed so I don’t miss anything. Laurie R King has recently migrated from Blogger to a WP blog on her own domain, and it’s great. Blogger was fine too, because it provided what I like to see as a reader.
With LMB, I can’t even get a proper RSS feed from her Myspace – it’s one of those annoying doohickeys that give you the first X characters and then you have to click through. Myspace certainly doesn’t provide any special tools for locating authors you might be interested in, so really, there’s nothing useful to balance out the annoyance factor of going there.
Trix, LMB may have gone to MySpace at the behest of one of her publishers. I know several science fiction authors who say they’ve been told by their publishers that they have to get a MySpace page, and the reaction amongst the ones who didn’t already have one has been almost universally “Oh well, if you insist, I’ll cross-post from my existing blog”, when it isn’t outright refusal. They don’t want to do it for all the reasons people have talked about in this thread, but the marketing departments have seized upon it as the new Holy Grail of publicity.
I was really skeptical about MySpace at first. Now, even though most of the layouts make my eyes bleed, I’m a convert.
MySpace offers extremely targeted marketing. People on MySpace list their interests, some of which might coincide with the content of an author’s books.
I can search for and friend people who, for instance, dig crows (or the movie The Crow), or are into shamanism or vampires—anything that would indicate a potential for interest in my books.
It does takes time to carefully search out people who I genuinely believe would enjoy my books. I don’t randomly add people just for the sake of upping my friend count.
To me it makes a lot more sense to do MySpace than taking out a several hundred dollar ad, 99% of whose viewers won’t even be likely readers in the first place. For someone like me with more time than money (which isn’t saying much), I believe it’s a great opportunity.
But maybe it’s because it wasn’t too long ago (well, half a lifetime) that I was a mopey Goth/emo kid myself.