Last week, we gave Amazon’s Kindle a good going-over - and we’re not finished with the subject yet – well take another look at it quite soon, when we can assess what kind of initial impact it’s made.

This week, it’s the turn of another “saviour of the publishing industry” to get the high-octane attention of our panel of writers – the rise of the social network. Are you on FaceBook? Would you even admit to being on MySpace? And how can publishers use sites like these to sell books?

All this plus Harry Potter in the dock and Philip Pullman goes to hell! Plus our picks of the week, and sleepers of the week.

This episode’s guests are Donna Ballman, Dave Bartram, Brian Clegg, Beverly Gray and Richard Howse.

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Insights / lessons Learned

Here are some of the key points made by our panellists this week:

The Facebook Face-Off!

Publishers are being drawn to social networking sites like these partly because they delivery enormous numbers of punters, but mainly because social networking could be a powerful way to get people talking to their friends about books… and that’s the main way in which books have traditionally been sold – word of mouth. But can FaceBook really sell Your Book? Or is it just fool’s gold – Lots of effort for no return?

• Once a book already has some momentum in the marketplace, a FaceBook group may accelerate the pace (Brian)
• Authors own websites are more valuable in the longer run (Donna)
• “Friendship” simply means being on someone else’s list: it’s a low quality substitute for real human interaction (Dave)
• Monetizing social networks is the great unmet challenge – cf the FaceBook/Beacon fiasco (Peter/Richard)
• Publishers own websites are mostly web 1.0 – or less! (Peter)
• But they’re useful for potential authors to research the publisher concerned and their markets (Donna)
• Why would any reader choose to go to a publisher’s site, as opposed to genre or author-related sites? Important Foyles lesson (Brian)
• There is a massive difference between a social network (flimsy, transient membership) and a community (far more durable) (Peter)
• Rise of blogs and social networks reveals a huge thirst for contextual narrative and social story (Dave)

Pearls of Culture

This week, our panellists make the following recommendations for your enhanced cultural pleasure:

• Brian: The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials) by Philip Pullman; Print Is Dead: Books in our Digital Age by Jeff Gomez and Fragile Thingsby Neil Gaiman.
• Beverly: Carbonelby Barbara Sleigh – 10-year-old Rosemary Brown buys a twiggy broom and a cat from a strange old woman at Fairfax Market. Turns out the broom is a witch’s broom and the cat is the exiled King of the Cats. Rosemary and her friend, John, have many adventures while they try to help Carbonel regain his kingdom. One of the very special books from the last century for middle grade readers. Should appeal to Harry Potter fans.
• Donna: How I Write: Secrets of a Bestselling Author by Janet Evanovich ; The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing: A 16-Step Program Guaranteed to Take You from Idea to Completed Manuscript by Evan Marshall and Inkspell (Inkheart Trilogy) (Inkheart Trilogy) by Cornelia Funke.
• Richard: The Princess Bride by William Goldman.
• Dave: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Penguin Modern Classics) by Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn.
• Peter: It’s Superman! by Tom de Haven.

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Photo by wonderfully complex

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