Hayim Oshky looks at the recent launch of Litsy, a Social Media App for book lovers which allows users to air their views concerning an author’s work via reviews.
Marketing on social media
If you want to become a successful author, it is advisable to market your book on Social Media. With this approach, you can utilise the social networking platforms preferred by your target reader to promote your work to a receptive audience. Your followers may even post positive reviews of your work on book review platforms such as Goodreads, ensuring that your book develops a reputation among enthusiasts of the written word as a good read.
Todd Lawton and Jeff LeBlanc, the men who previously created book-themed clothing firm Out of Print, have recently launched a social Media App for booker lovers called Litsy. The app, which at present is only available for IOS, provides readers with a comprehensive book review platform so they can find out what other people think of certain works.
How does Litsy work?
Speaking to Tech Crunch, Lawton explained that when he and LeBlanc created Litsy what they wanted to do was “take the best, the most fun aspects of other social media platforms and back it with an amazing book database.” When they designed the app, Lawton and LeBlanc made it so that users can post content in a variety of different forms including blurbs, quotes and reviews, although all content it limited to 300 words. Users can also include images e.g. a photo of a particular book.
Users can browse Litsy content by following particular accounts. However, all of the updates posed to Litsy are tied to a particular book, so by bringing up a particular work’s profile, users can peruse all content posted concerning the volume in question. Users can also mark content listed in a Litsy post as a “spoiler,” so it’s hidden from other users until they “opt in” to see said content. Litsy assigns users a “litfluence” score, helping them identify the app’s most influential people.
Building a following
LeBlanc noted to Tech Crunch that right now, the team behind Litsy is focused more on developing a community for the app rather than using it to make money. However, he did note that “we do know we eventually need a business model,” to promote the service to a wider audience. Yet the Litsy team has already managed to enlist some high-profile users to the app, including authors like Joe Hill and publishers such as Harper Perennial and Penguin Random House.
The 2015 Mobility Report from Ericsson, a global communication technology company, suggests that there are 2.6 billion (bn) smartphones in circulation worldwide. This is predicted to rise to a staggering 6.1bn by 2020. With smartphones fast becoming a vital technology, aspiring authors could really benefit from utilising services like Litsy. By promoting themselves on this innovative social media app, writers can potentially market their book to a huge audience and ensure that they become successful.
Thank you for reading… Hayim Oshky.
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