Reading books has always been one of the greatest pleasures life has to offer… Amazon is one the the best success stories of e commerce on the internet…. What do these 2 have to do with the use of social media?
Reading is about enjoying a story, when you enjoy a story you want to share it, rave about it, tell your friends how good it is. Amazon did that, based on user’s ratings, they recommend you similar books read by people who read that same title you’re looking for. They rate the title you are looking for too, just brining an age old tradition of sharing to the internet… That’s just being social.. Using social media…
While Amazon is great, I’ll like to point you to the other direction where the books are coming from. Not the publishers, but the authors themselves. They are, after all, sharing a story, and what better way to not only read the story from them in a nicely packaged form, but see and hear what they have to say about it through a video interview or podcast! This article recognizes the increasing use of authors and their social media usage. In India where he claims there’s a lack of an Amazon system, hence the direction of using social media to engage their audience.
I guess this trend is developing. Let me point you to Marley and Me’s author, John Grogan’s blog. We also have famous fantasy writer Terry Goodkind
There are many others reaching out to their readers this way… If you think about it, you can actually cut out the publishers and the brick and mortar stores… Sure we could use Amazon for the hard copies, but to download a soft copy for a fee? Best of all we’re hearing the sales pitch straight from the guy!
Will there come a day when authors take back the control of how their books are gonna be sold thanks to social media? If i was Barnes and Nobles or Boarders, I’ll seriously start taking a look into this….
Or do we still like the ambiance of a brick and mortar store, having a cup of coffee then walking through and finding books based on the store’s recommendations? I hope it’s a convergence of both… What do you guys think? I sure hate to see the bookstores up and vanish…
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