Melissa Westemeier

Our publishing coach, Melissa Rosati, recommended a sum total of 90 hours–an hour a day for 90 days to pitch our book project:

My recommendation is one hour per day for each author. 15 minutes “listening” in chat rooms to writer discussions; 30 minutes                        formulating new content for one or more social media applications (writer forums, blogs, facebook, twitter); 15 minutes posting material/maintaining the website.

I confess, my jaw dropped when I read that.  Perhaps it’s because I’m skeptical of how useful this approach is for writers.  Maintaining my other blogs, I’m constantly badgered by people with requests to pitch their work/product/service/blog.  These people aren’t sincere, they’re predatory in their networking style and that does not inspire me to help them out.  I generally delete these requests.  I can tell when people are in the blogosphere for the networking at when they’re in it for the relationship.  I’m blogging relationally.  And of everyone in Screw Iowa! I’m online the most. I find social networking distasteful and for the rest of our group, it’s simply not their style.

So when I read this post by Rob Eager, it justified my position somewhat.  It strikes me that there are better ways to market a book than stockpiling “friends” online and tweeting about it–there’s a lot of chatter in cyberspace–is anyone really listening?

Spill it, reader:  have you used social networking to sell your book?  Has it worked out for you?  What do you think of Rob Eager’s piece?