This article first appeared in The Deal (the official magazine of the London Book Fair) in Spring 2008

Trade publishers should learn from their colleagues in the academic sector when it comes to online marketing, says social media expert Jon Reed.

Have you updated your status today? Has anyone written on your wall? Have you spent any Linden dollars? Do you have any idea what I’m talking about? You’re excused for not knowing about mobcasts, or microblogging, or avatars, but the rest? In the 21st Century podcasts, RSS feeds and blogs remain as opaque as String Theory to a frightening number of publishers. Many don’t even know if their authors have their own blogs. And social media? It’s a mystery to them.

While they are pimping their sales forecasts, their customers are pimping their MySpace and Facebook profiles. A savvy few trade publishers are investing in social media – Penguin, HarperCollins, Random House and Simon & Schuster – but many others remain on the fence. The same is not true of scientific, technical and medical (STM) publishers.

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