 |
 |
|
 |
 |
Plug Your Book!
109
At Memoirists Collective, authors hold contests offering readers the
chance to get their own memoirs sold to a major trade publisher. See
www.myspace.com/thememoiristscollective. The group has more
than 1,000 members, or “friends.” It was founded in 2006 by author
Josh Kilmer-Purcell and four other newly published memoirists who met
by networking on MySpace. Periodically the group holds contests, with
winning memoir manuscripts passed on to the authors’ editors at trade
publishers.
The group serves as a sounding board for members and a place for
authors and readers to meet and chat about their craft.
Here are examples of other authors who have applied their creativity
to MySpace to generate their own book publicity:
Elisha Miranda uses MySpace for grass-roots marketing of her
debut teenlit novel The Sista Hood. She has a MySpace page for each
character in the story, allowing readers to follow the lives of characters
beyond the book’s ending. She also sells a CD with music based on the
novel.
Kathy Cano Murillo, author of five craft books, calls herself the
“Crafty Chica.” She specializes in Chicano and Mexican pop art, and is
also a syndicated craft columnist for Gannett News Service. On her
MySpace page, she advertises her books and promotes a three-day
Carnival Cruise where readers can meet her and take classes on making
the hip Latino-themed art featured in her latest title, Crafty Chica’s Art
de la Soul. Murillo is also finishing up her first novel.
More social-networking sites
MySpace is just one of a growing number of social-networking sites.
Amazon is an investor in www.43Things.com, which was founded by
some ex-Amazon employees. On 43Things, members list goals, things
they want to accomplish, and assign tags to help put them in touch with
like-minded members.
Google owns another of these sites, www.Orkut.com. Others are
|
 |
|
