BS, Lazy

March 31st, 2008 · 4 Comments
by Kassia Krozser

It is rare that I hear something on the radio that makes me go “Yeah, tell it like it is, sister” (okay, brother), but there was a great story on the Marketplace Morning Report last Friday about social networks and mailing lists and who owns your list. If I were a better person (I’m not), I’d write a nice publishing specific post about this. Instead, I’m just going to be lazy and link to the larger rant I wrote at Medialoper.

Basically, if you don’t own your fans, you don’t own Jack.

File Under: Marketing For Introverts

4 responses so far ↓

  • Yen // Apr 1, 2008 at 6:39 am

    Thanks for pointing this out. In publishing, we sometimes suggest that authors establish social networking profiles. It’s a good idea (for the right author), but I at least hadn’t considered the possibility of an author building up a huge fan base and then potentially losing those contacts if the site went bust.

  • Morning Brief — April 1, 2008 « The Book Publicity Blog // Apr 1, 2008 at 6:51 am

    […] Krozser of Booksquare pointed out an interesting piece on Medialoper that talked about maintaining contact lists.  More […]

  • Kassia Krozser // Apr 1, 2008 at 7:58 pm

    Yen — I’m glad I struck a chord. This is a topic that we talk about quite often at BS headquarters (or, rather BS temporary headquarters as HQ is being remodeled to fit the 21st century). Social media isn’t an end — creating a profile should be part of an overall strategy. And that strategy needs to include pushing the fan base to the author’s/artist’s real estate.

    Another reason for this is that users of social networks tend to come and go. Lots of people create accounts, “friend” like crazy, and then move on to the next big thing. If you don’t have some sort of way to contact them outside that social networking site, then you’re losing out on potential readers.

  • Lewis // Apr 2, 2008 at 7:26 am

    Take a look at what Echo Music has done for the music industry. They built an entire business helping manage musicians fan bases at a time when the record labels (publishers) didn’t want to touch either that or their web site. Read the copy on their front page and tell me you couldn’t just plug “author” in there instead: http://www.helloecho.com/