Teh Internetz: social booking networks

Hello writers and other assorted lovers of the written word,

You may look at the heading of my humble blog post and say, "Internet! P'towie!" ("P'towie" being the sound cartoon characters make when they spit; if you can actually spit while making this noise, please record it and e-mail it to me. I would be most delighted.)

Anyway. I understand your spitting anger.

The internet represents to many of us the fast-paced tide of time, a death march whose tempo is meted out by that annoying hamster song, a flurry of hyperlinks and hyperactivity. This new future we find ourselves in appears to be devoid of art, love, beauty, and most distressingly, well-written novels published to deserving nationwide acclaim. Children don't read anymore, you might cry. No one cares about books, you might groan. They only care about cats with captions and the myriad ways failure can be captured on camera and then blogged about.

To you I say: don't despair, Negative Nancy. The internet is content, and content is your product! Writers and teh series of tubes go together like lions and the circus (minus the cruel abuse in most cases).

I may be biased because I'm an online/interactive book marketer (which is a fancy way of saying: a synapse between the nerves of publishers, authors, and bloggers) but I truly believe that books and the internet are the greatest technological advances of their respective ages, and they can help each other in ways that we haven't quite gotten around to dreaming up yet.

But we're already on the right track! So my tiny contribution to this blog will be regular updates on the online world and how it can help inform your writing, your career, your understanding of the publishing industry, and your life's general betterment.

No need to thank me. It's my job.

So as a gentle way of guiding you into the online book world, please feel free to dip your cautious toes into the following pools. These are social networking sites, like Facebook and MySpace, but for books and book lovers. Many of these sites allow authors to create special profiles and connect to their readers. Check them out.

Good Reads

LibraryThing

Shelfari (Owned by Amazon)

Book Jetty

Anobii