Have you started Facebooking yet? If not, now might be a good time to start. This week Facebook announced the launch of a groundbreaking new social advertising system.

A key feature of the system is that it allows Facebook users to notify their network of friends whenever they make purchases and recommendations on other participating websites. According to Advertising Age, users will be able to let their network know when they post an item on eBay, rent a movie on Blockbuster.com, or, most importantly, rate a book on Amazon.com.

Another new feature lets businesses and artists build pages on Facebook to connect with their audiences. As I’ve mentioned before, social networks are great for spreading word of mouth and creating online buzz for your book. Go here to set up a book or author page and start networking with fans and friends. Then you can encourage your network to post an Amazon review of your book and broadcast it to their own Facebook friends with the Amazon Book Reviews application.

With this revolutionary social advertising system and its existing partnership with Shelfari (the largest social media site for book lovers), Facebook may soon become the social network of choice for authors.

There isn’t much to say about YouTube that hasn’t already been said, but it would be careless to exclude this mammoth of social media from our series. And “mammoth” is no exaggeration: YouTube is big, hairy, and, er, tusk-wielding. Well, at least it’s the first of those three, unless we were to explore some extended metaphor. Get this: YouTube has the eighth largest audience on the Internet, pulling in 55 million unique visitors each month, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings. Read: YouTube’s no fad. Google doesn’t pay $1.65 billion for fads. And fads don’t hold this much book marketing and publicity potential.

Looking to speak directly to readers? Look no further than BookwrapCentral.com.

Bookwrap Central features interview clips called Bookwraps, in which authors talk about their books, themselves, and other relevant and entertaining topics. Each Bookwrap feature may also include supporting information such as a sample chapter, a synopsis, review quotes, an author biography, and a link to purchase the book. You can also host a Bookwrap on your own website and email it to everyone you know. A Bookwrap may be just the tool you need to let readers get to know you.

Ever wonder what happens to the unsold books sitting in the major publishers’ warehouses across the country once that publisher decides to call it quits on a title? In short, they get the hook. This hook isn’t the one that a roomful of people spend weeks devising to convince the media and public to pay attention to the title in the first place; it’s the one that unceremoniously pulls our featured performer offstage.

Whether you are managing your website by yourself or with the help of a professional web designer, it is important to make sure that your site is optimized to increase its page ranking and overall visibility on search engines.

For you do-it-yourselfers, search engine optimization is tricky, but it can certainly be done. You’ve probably heard about the importance of including keywords in your site–the key is location and frequency. The most important and relevant keywords should appear in your site’s HTML “title” tag. You should also incorporate as many keywords as you can within the content of your pages, preferably in the headline and first or second paragraphs. Another essential component of SEO is inbound linking. While you should get as many links pointing to your site as possible, the quality of the links is just as important. You want to be linked to high-ranked sites that are also relevant to the content of your own site. To get an idea of a page’s ranking, download the free Google Toolbar and use its PageRank feature.

For more detailed information about optimizing your website’s search engine ranking, check out this article from TheSiteWizard.com.

In reaction to the floweriness of Romanticism, Ezra Pound aimed for clarity and precision in language use in the Imagism movement in poetry he helped originate in 1912. His intention is spelled out clearly in the first tenet of the Imagist manifesto: “To use the language of common speech, but to employ always the exact word, not the nearly exact, nor the merely decorative word.”

Looking for potential readers? Internet groups (aka forums, communities, or clubs) can connect you with people who are already discussing topics relevant to your book or area of expertise. Some groups even allow you to post audio, video, photos, polls, links, and calendar events. All you need to do is find them . . . and join them. Here is a list of some of the most popular group sites:

• Yahoo! Groups
• Google Groups
• MSN Groups
• YouTube Groups
• Flickr Groups
• MySpace Groups

All of these sites have communities dedicated to books and literature, but don’t stop there. Browse through the various categories and find more specific groups. There are millions of groups out there, so you’re bound to find some that fit your interests and needs. To narrow your search, look for groups with more members, but remember that smaller niche groups can be beneficial too.

Join the groups and join in on discussions. Just don’t be too invasive and salesy. Let your knowledge and winning personality sell the book for you!

If you’ve found a specific image that you’d like to use in your book, make sure it’s usable before you get too attached. Keep the following things in mind for clear (and legal) images.

http://www.thebookstandard.com/bookstandard/news/hollywood/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003659283

:: The Times (UK): Rank Outsider Anne Enright Takes Man Booker Prize
Enright, 45, a little-known Irish author who began her career as a television producer, was considered the rank outsider but she saw off competition from the two favourites, Ian McEwan, for On Chesil Beach, and Lloyd Jones, for Mister Pip, as well as the […]