What Oliverez did wasn't new. He took a page from the thousands of unsigned rock bands that have tapped MySpace to build their audiences. It's a simple yet wonderfully effective strategy: The bands put samples of their music on their MySpace profile, and friends forward the songs to an ever-enlarging circle of friends. Bands that "go viral" on MySpace sell lots more concert tickets and CDs, and some have snagged major recording contracts. Even the journeymen are raking it in by hawking their disks, T-shirts and other goodies right on MySpace.
Authors are quickly realizing they can do the same thing the bands are doing: use MySpace to go directly to their audience, without needing a big fat marketing campaign or the muscle of a big publisher.
Barely two years after its launch, MySpace became the most popular U.S. Web site based on number of visits during 2006. Each member has his or her own circle of like-minded friends. After you become someone's MySpace friend, you have access to his or her friends. And each of your new friends has more friends.
While there are hundreds of social-networking sites--Facebook, Friendster, Orkut and Tribe.net to name just a few--MySpace has captured more than 80 percent of the traffic. If you want to see what all the fuss is about, you can open a MySpace account here:
#www.Signup.Myspace.com/ index.cfm?fuseaction=join#
If you wish, you can make your MySpace account private until you're ready to use it. Go to #Account Settings # and then #Privacy Settings#.
MySpace? You might be thinking, "Isn't that for high-school kids?" Sure, that's the stereotype; MySpace is popular with kids. But with nearly 100 million members and the No. 1 traffic rank on the entire Internet, clearly there's more to it than loitering schoolkids.
Authors of every genre are jumping on the MySpace bandwagon. Horror novelist Michael Laimo says he got more than a dozen big media interviews after reporters noticed his MySpace page. He inked his first movie deal through MySpace after an independent director sent him a MySpace message asking about film rights. Hundreds of fans have told him they bought his books after seeing his MySpace profile:
#www.MySpace.com/MichaelLaimo#
MySpace is the Internet's answer to a promotional tactic used by new authors for decades--selling books from the trunk of your car. Both tactics are tedious, time-consuming, and usually don't produce results for a while. But if you keep plugging away and you're sincere, people notice. Your snowball starts barreling downhill purely from its own momentum.
Here are some of the friends you can network with on MySpace: