Why online campaigns are a powerful tool

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Visibility of writers and books gets more challenging in the times of social media wherein attention spans have reduced and reading has been one of the lesser favourite aspects of one’s chosen interest.

And yet social media despite its imminent threat to reading has also been a vehicle to reach out to millions across the world.
A campaign on the biography of superstar Rajinikanth, which was released on 12/12/12 is already creating a buzz on Facebook, Twitter with a Facebook game called Find Rajini. In the game an evil Joker Ravanan has kidnapped the superstar and only Rajinikanths legion of fans can save him. A digital campaign for Shobhaa De’s latest novel Sethji was also launched on YouTube and Facebook.
Authors agree that social media is handy when it comes to spreading a word about a book. Vikrant Dutta, author of The Dark Rainbow says, “If used sensibly it is a huge platform for any writer to create awareness of his work and the books which are published. I have personally promoted my books on Facebook and it has helped tremendously to reach out to many readers whom I would otherwise haven’t known. Similarly publishers too cannot ignore the power of social media. A minor negative could be fake reviews by unprofessionals which could hype an average book beyond its true worth.”
The popularity of a publisher is gauged by the number of fans and likes on their page. “Considering people now spend more time in the virtual world than with the family, it was quite inevitable that marketing gurus caught on this trend and fully capitalised on it to build their brands and boost sales. The positive is that you get your publicity and market for free. When my first book, The Newsroom Mafia was published, I had barely 200 friends on Facebook. Now my friends have risen more than six-fold,” says Oswald Pareira.
“We’ve got some great results from social media to our posts on the books as well as sharing the film promo for Graveyard Shift. But I do think its a space that is still evolving, there is a clutter of information out there and a lot of advertising is attention seeking and is also often misleading or deceptive. I still do believe with books as with cinema you need to reach out to the audience where they are — in cinemas, bookstores, driving to work/taking a metro, at the airport,” adds Ahmed Faiyaz of Grey Oak Publishers.