Morning Thoughts, Thumbnail, Social Networks

This is the new thumbnail I am using for websites like Technorati, Blogcatalog, and Fuelmyblog.

I started reading John Ghazvinian, Untapped, The Scramble for Africa's Oil. I found the listing fo this book when I was looking at the blog, The Thin Red Line. I am past the first fifty pages already, so I will definitely finish reading this book and review it.

I even sent an email to him requesting he put up a Youtube video. There are a lot of authors who use Youtube to promote their books.

Hello, John Ghazvinian,
I am reading your book Untapped The Scramble For Africa's Oil. I was hoping there was a Youtube video of you talking about the book, about two minutes would be fine. It is a short way to promote your book. There are actually a lot of interviews of authors on Youtube. I know it sounds like an odd idea, but it makes it easier for me to review a book on my website. I am blogging anonymously, well sort of anonymously.

Regards,

Book Calendar
http://www.bookcalendar.blogspot.com/

I am beginning to think that in the not too distant future every author, editor, and publisher will have to have a social media kit for the web. It will consist of an image representing the author in multiple sizes, 125 pixel by 125 pixel, 50 pixel by 50 pixel, and 400 pixel by 400 pixel. I think most authors have this. This image will be used to post on sites like Technorati

In addition to this the author or editor will be expected to create either a short talk of about two minutes on the book they are editing or writing, or a brief reading which they did at a store or other venue. Usually, this will be posted as a video on Youtube. It can't be can too long because then the author would be giving away too much. It would be nice if every recent book I read had a short video clip about it.

One of the things I did tonight is go on Technorati and add some blogs to my favorites. Many of these blogs were already in my blogroll on the side of the page. I Technorati favorited Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 Blog and The OUP (Oxford University Press) Blog. Now I have both of these blogs linked in more than one place. This creates a kind of network of shared places.

I have done this with some other blogs, I have The Thin Red Line as one of my Entrecard favorites, in my Blogroll, and as a "friend" in Blogcatalog. I think this has helped turn some blogs that share social networking sites into regular readers. There is a web of linkages between the different social network sites where you begin to recognize and read blogs which belong to more than one social networking site.

Some blogs purposefully join you in belonging to more than one social networking community because they like the content of your blog. While I was using Entrecard, the Inkweaver Review asked me to do a link exchange with their site. I did this and now we share use of Entrecard and links between our sites. I hope this helps to build regular readers.