[REPORT] Which book publishers are doing social media best?
Book publishers vary widely in their use of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest, according to research Blogads assembled in advance of its February 15 Social Media Week panel, “Innovative ways to build community around books.”
Many publishers have adopted Twitter and Facebook, with Randomhouse dominating the former and Scholastic big on the latter. Only a small handful of publishers have started using the other growing social platforms of the moment, with three publishers Pinterest, the photo curation service popular with women, and five using Tumblr.
UPDATE 2/6:
Since we originally published this post, we’ve heard from several publishers about social media efforts we hadn’t reported on in the initial blog post. We apologize for the oversight. We’ve added these great publisher tumblrs, and other new data, to our charts.
- A. A. Knopf: The intersection of books and borzoi.
- Harper Perennial: The most exciting Big Six imprint in the game right now.
- Farrar, Straus & Giroux: Welcome aboard, newcomers! Way to get off on the right foot.
- Scribner: Bookish miscellany from the Simon & Schuster imprint.
- Doubleday: One of the more stereotypically Tumblr-like publishing Tumblrs.
- Vintage & Anchor: Great stuff from Random House’s paperback wizards.
- Pantheon Books: Image-heavy in a great way.
- Classic Penguin: It’s about time the Penguin folks joined the Tumblr crowd.
- Viking Penguin: Updates from the Viking & Penguin publicity team.
- Riverhead Books: Penguin’s got the most imprints on Tumblr, bar-none.
- W. W. Norton & Co.: Plus ten points for their GZA post
- NYRB Classics: The inimitable publisher of overlooked classics.
- Fantagraphics: The premier publishers of alternative comics in the U.S.
- New Directions: Come back, guys! You were great while you lasted.
- OR Books: Small, politically-minded indie publisher.
- Ugly Duckling Presse: Photos from one of the best book designers in the U.S.
- Bloomsbury Publishing: The U.S. office of London’s reputable house.
- Verso Books: Very #OWS-heavy of late.
- Nouvella Books: The most Downton Abbey-obsessed publishers around.
Here’s the full report:
The State of Book Publishers’ Social Media (An overview from January 2012)
There is a noticeable correlation between the number of tweets per day or per month and the number of followers (correlation coefficient is about ~0.62). Publishers who tweet a lot have more followers than publishers who are less active which makes sense!
Please join us in NYC for our book panel: Innovative ways to build community around books! Sign up here.
Hosted by Blogads.com at The Gershwin Hotel Wednesday, February 15 at 12:30 PM – 2:00 PM
Publishers and authors are increasingly connecting to their audiences in innovative ways through new social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest and book-based social networks. Join four publishing industry marketers as they discuss specific ways social media is helping them promote books — and what the changes may mean for publishers, authors and readers.
Speakers:
Miriam Parker, Little, Brown, and Company
Emily Lyman, Crown Publishing
Ryan Chapman, FSG
Guinevere de la Mare, Chronicle Books
Henry Copeland, Blogads
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