Social Networking Sites For Promotion

There seem to be lots of Social Networking sites springing up. I’ve started looking at them recently. Because my first book, The Magic Knot, will be out next February, I now have a reason to promote myself

I’ve signed up for a Myspace and Facebook, which I’m sure everyone has heard of. So far, Myspace has proved valuable in networking and making contacts. I’ve already had a magazine I ‘friended’ request an interview with me and they’re interested in reviewing my book. I’ve also had a request from an Internet review site for copies of my book to review. These sites are great to get your name out and make contacts with other writers, industry professional, and if you have a published book, your readers.

I’ve also recently heard about something called Twitter. I’ve signed up to find out what it’s like. This group seems to be a network of people who send short ‘tweets’ of one sentence out regularly to their ‘followers’ to keep them updated. I’m not sure how useful this will be. I’m having difficulty accessing the site. It seems to be overloaded with traffic.

The networking site Bebo is popular with younger teenagers. My son, who’s fourteen, and his friends use Bebo. If you write YA or middle grade books, this would be a good networking community to join.

There are also communities set up to cater for readers. Goodreads and Shelfari are two I know of. These give you the opportunity to make friends and share with them the books you’ve read and enjoyed and get tips on new books you might enjoy reading. These are also useful sites for authors to promote themselves. I’ve also heard of Library Thing, which I believe is set up in a similar way, although I’m not a member of this group.