Last week I came across a blog by Tony Eldridge the author of ‘The Samson Effect’ (link to blog given below). Through this blog Tony was trying something new, something I haven’t seen very often in book marketing – He was giving the book away for everyone to read. That doesn’t make sense, does it? An author would want people to buy his/her book, that’s the way to make money.

But what if you gave the book away slowly, chapter by chapter; just one chapter every week. Now that changes the game a bit…

People start to read the blog and follow it regularly; that’s you first benefit, you’ve got increased viewership. Now as people read the blog slowly the story gets gripping and they don’t want to wait another week to read what happens next, so they buy the book. And that increases sales.

Of course there are other benefits, media coverage, twitter exposure, people talking and telling other people about the book…

It will be interesting to see how Tony’s experiment works… In the meantime I have only one complaint; its Monday morning here in India much before the US and I have a long wait before I see that next chapter…

The Samson Effect Blog

Ok I know again I haven’t posted in a bit but am trying… ok ok… will try harder… Now onto today’s topic…

Let me tell you a little about this product or tool – BookBuzzr, I am marketing right now. (which will also explain why am so interested in Internet Marketing – this is fun! )

BookBuzzr can be found at www.freado.com and is targeted mainly for authors and readers. Authors can upload either their entire book or just an excerpt in PDF format for people to view. The excerpt or book can be viewed in a reader (BookBuzzr) that feels like a book as you can flip pages, zoom in and out and read on a full screen. (See below) But it isn’t just so simple and neither does it end here.

Authors can use the BookBuzzr widget on their sites which includes websites, blogs, social sites like facebook, myspace, bebo, etc.(60 different sites) and just about anywhere on the internet. They can even email it. Now that sounds cool right! Authors can paint the town red with their books and that’s a lot of marketing and publicity. But it doesn’t even end here…

What most authors don’t realise is that this tool can be used by anyone; hence fans, readers, friends, etc. can also help by posting the book widget on their sites. Now just think how much the book’s publicity and marketing has increased by just involving the people around you. This is the real key…

And to top it all – BookBuzzr is free… That just increases the reasons why it should be used to its maximum potential…

Oh and fReado and Phyllis Zimbler Miller are currently running a Memorial Day contest. Do check it out – http://www.freado.com/offer.php

A few Examples of the widget -

Mrs. Lieutenant – Phyllis Zimbler Miller

The Samson Effect – Tony Eldridge

Too Many Visitors For One Little House – Susan Chodakiewitz

Chenthil recommended Seesmic to me yesterday as I use twitter alot for work lately.
Hence I installed Seesmic to try it. Am already using Twirl and Tweetdeck. So let me tell u what I think of each. (***Disclaimer – This is being written by a non-techie )

Seesmic
This particular app seems nice. It lets you have multiple columns, a left bar that lets you select different types of tweets, accounts and searches. It also works with multiple accounts. However it lacks look and feel and even help prompts. It should be made more user friendly. One thing I noticed was it doesn’t let me mark tweets as read or clear select tweets. In Seesmic either I keep all tweets (and hence the list gets too long) or I have to remove all tweets. This is the biggest drawback I see. Hopefully it’ll get better and they’ll build in these tools. However its definitely better than Twirl and is a wanna be Tweetdeck.

Twirl
Now Twirl is nice for those who just use twitter to keep up with friends but there are better tools to do that too (read about Tweetdeck). The only plus I see is its stupidly simple, allows multiple accounts and feels like a chat window (but twitter is not chat). What it doesn’t have is multiple columns hence all tweets, replies, DM’s; everything just falls into one verrry long list. And if you follow someone who tweets regularly through the day your doomed with an exceptionally long list and you may lose out on some other important tweets. Its a pain to scroll. Here tweets can be marked as read but again I either clear all or nothing. Ok I definitely don’t recommend it.

TweetDeck
You can see I saved this for last coz I think its the best right now; and except for letting me schedule tweets for later and handle multiple accounts I can do everything else with this App. Whether personal or work this App is great. It has a great look and feel, has multiple columns for replies, DM’s & All Friends. You can also make groups of people from your friends and each group’s tweets will show in a different column. The same way different searches can also be set up.
Tweets can be marked as read and only read tweets cleared or all tweets can be marked as read and cleared. Filters can be set, columns moved about, and you can even make it show only one column and hence get the chat window feel.
It has a vast set of settings and gives you twitterscoop, stock twits and 12 seconds video post at the click of a mouse.
The only major draw back is that it is a bit bulky on the system.

So final summary use TweetDeck as your main twitter app and for other accounts use Seesmic. Avoid Twirl.

Happy Tweeting – Follow me on twitter

I know I have been away for a while… and I have a lot of blog posts to be made and travelogues to be written.

But for now am trying to get back to blogging again and you can catch me at http://musafirfreya.blogspot.com/

Cheers
Freya

*** Update 25th February 2010:- This was a while back and after that I have now got my own domain and blog page – http://blog.fatema.in

Ya, ya… I know I missed yesterday…

But my learning today is that the characters in Vodafone’s latest ads are called Zoozoo. So cool… And ofcourse the ads are neat… Short, sweet and with loads of variety… They keep you wondering whats going to come next…

So now, today am gonna put together info on them

BTW these ads are not animated but performed by ballet dancers. Way to go O&M – Good job…

Links –

Official site

ZooZoo Story

Official Wallpapers & Screensaver

A few Zoozoo ads in one

70,000 fans on Facebook