Book Marketing & Social Networking

One of the latest Internet trends we've been following closely at Wheatmark is the use of social networking sites to market books.

Sites like MySpace, Facebook, and numerous others have been touted everywhere as The Next Big Thing for selling books.

The problem, in my opinion, is that nobody's ever figured out how to generate sales on these sites—not even the companies themselves (Facebook, which is currently valued at something like 15 billion dollars [according to a segment on 60 Minutes a couple of weeks ago] has never made much in the way of revenue, and every time they try, their audience revolts).

This phenomenon (social networking sites not delivering sales) reminds me a little of attending a writer's conference last year. Many independent authors purchase booths at writer's conferences and try to sell their books to conference attendees.

The problem with this approach is that pretty much all the attendees of the conference are other writers—each who's selling his/her own book and/or attending seminars about how to write and/or market books.

So if I were trying to sell a book about how to market books, a conference would be a great place to have a booth. However, if I were selling a book about tulips, a writer's conference would not be the best place for me to go. I'd be better off at a garden show, probably.

Of course, I'd love nothing more than to be proven wrong. Have you been successful using social networking sites to market a book? Please leave us a comment below telling us about your experience.

To read about the latest self-publishing service/social networking partnership in the industry, click here.