a community of readers

I wasn’t fortunate enough to get to the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference in New York this year. But I have been looking at their new blog, a couple of posts from Sara Lloyd over at the digitalist, and Kassia Krozser’s take on it all over at Booksquare – all of which I’d recommend to you.
But the thing that really caught my eye was Gavin Bell’s presentation: From buyers of books to a community of readers. It nicely illustrates, for me, the divide between where most publishers are and where most readers are.
Gavin makes several points that I keep banging on about, yet which very many publishers are still not doing:

• if your author has a blog, link to it
• focus on your readers, not your internal company structure or catalogue
• author-led blogs are more effective than publisher-led ones
• the author is the brand
• facilitate your authors’ use of social media

And, as Kassia says:

Tomorrow’s publisher (for those wondering, tomorrow started about ten years ago) needs to be positioned to make the process of reaching and maintaining the social aspects of the book business as effortless as possible for authors.

It’s about tapping into, discovering and building communities of readers. Books are social objects. Create a space for authors and readers to have a conversation, and you’re on your way to social media marketing.