I just came back from a writer’s conference and every editor I talked to said the same thing: include social networking on your book site. One thing that has bothered me about keeping up the social networking is I found it hard to believe someone would go from a blog to a website to a facebook account and follow an author’s twitter.
For The Doha Blues website the blog is part of the website. Facebook and twitter links are found on the home page and on the “What People are Saying” page.
Another way to incorporate social networking is to include updates from Facebook and Twitter right on the sidebar of a book or author website. In this author site the code for Facebook came from the “make a badge”code provided by Facebook (go to the Profile page and look at the bottom left for the link) and the Twitter code came from Twitter Profile widget.
Why is social networking so important for an author or book site? Word of mouth sells a lot of books and online word of mouth can sell a lot of books over a wide geographic area.