Publishers encourage Authors to participate in social media

Liz Thompson declared on the London Book Fair website; 'The blunt fact now is that publishers expect authors to play an active part in their marketing campaigns and many may find (say) blogging easier to handle than an author event, and certainly less time-consuming. After all, it's an extension of the day job but with the opportunity to write about a wide range of subjects. Ally Glynn of S&S (Simon and Schuster) says: "We actively encourage all of our authors to sign up to social media sites and to interact with the consumer and we offer training on the sites. We suggest authors maintain these themselves - their fans and followers are much more receptive when they know the correspondence is genuine and coming directly from the author."'