by Lon Safko and David Brake (published by John Wiley & Sons)

Phoenix, Arizona, May 5, 2009: The ultimate comprehensive social media reference book for any business looking to transform its marketing and operational strategies.

Realizing that social media is dramatically impacting businesses, customers, and everyone connected to them, the authors of The Social Media Bible have consulted with leading social media experts from companies and consulting firms, as well as New York Times bestselling authors nationwide, to assemble a content-rich social media bible that will help businesses increase revenues, improve profitability, and ensure relevance and competitiveness.

The book outlines just what social media is, and how to harness its power to achieve a measurable competitive advantage in rapidly changing markets. It allows readers to build a functional knowledge base, and tap into the collaborative power of such social media applications as Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, and YouTube.

The book is part reference, part how-to manual, and part business strategy. For corporate enterprises, small businesses, and nonprofits alike, the strategies in The Social Media Bible are practical, powerful, and effective ways to connect with customers, prospects, employees, stakeholders, and collaborators. Packed with contributions from top names in the field covering virtually every major topic in social media, this is the perfect social media resource for businesses big and small.

Lon Safko (Gilbert, AZ) is an innovator and professional speaker with over 20 years of experience in entrepreneurship, marketing, sales, strategic partnering, speaking, training, writing, and e-commerce. He is the founder of eight successful companies, including Paper Models, Inc.

David K. Brake (Mesa, AZ) is the CEO and founder of Content Connections, a company that uses social networking strategies to help clients build economically viable relationships around their content.

For more information visit thesocialmediabible.com.

For more information please contact Holly McAllister at 1-888-283-1092 or email her at info@authorbound.com

Phoenix, Arizona, May 5, 2009: David Brake, CEO and founder of Content Connections, will conduct a general session Saturday , June 27, 2:45-3:45, at the Text and Academic Authoring Conference to be held in San Antonio Texas, June 25-27 entitled Making Your Book a Bestseller in the Age of Social Media: Five Strategies for Creating a Community Around Your Content.  Content Connections specializes in social media-enabled market research, audience analysis, and feedback loops for publishers and authors.  In this session Brake will highlight how to increase your book’s visibility and sales potential. If you would like to learn how to tap into the collective wisdom of your market and establish economically viable relationships with potential buyers and adopters, you won’t want to miss this session.

Participants will learn:

    * Five strategies for creating an active community around your content
    * How to turn potential adopters and buyers in content evangelists for your book
    * Online tools you can use TODAY to increase your book’s “promotability”
    * How the social media ecosystem is changing the face of book publishing and what you can do to make social media work for you

Click here for information about attending the Text and Academic Authoring Conference 2009

For more information about Content Connections or to request a meeting with a representative from Content Connections please contact Holly McAllister at hmcallister@contentconnections.com.

About the Women and Books 2007 Study...

The genesis of our study has roots in two observations:

1. Women buy a lot of books, fiction and non-fiction.
2. Very few female authors make it to non-fiction best-seller lists. (Fiction is another story; they seem to be much better represented.)

We began by pondering if there is a cause-and-effect relationship between these two observations. Could it be that women who buy non-fiction, and thus influence the best-seller lists with their purchases, have a preference for the writing of men? Or do they have a subconscious bias against women authors? Or maybe there just aren’t enough women writing, or enough publishers signing and promoting women who write non-fiction?

Answers to some of these questions can be hypothecated by carefully reviewing book- industry statistics on books published and sold. But we also wanted to talk to women and explore their attitudes, preferences, intentions, and demonstrated behaviors. It’s not practical for us to conduct thousands of personal interviews, so we decided to create a comprehensive survey to serve as the foundation of the study.

We created a beta version of the survey in the Fall of 2006 to insure that our questions were clear and precise. At the close of the beta, we conducted two focus groups with 12 women who had completed the beta survey. The goal was to insure that we had the best survey instrument possible before going to a much larger audience.

The result is a four-part survey that runs from March 8, 2007 (International Women’s Day) through May 13, 2007 (Mother’s Day). We reached out to women’s groups and individual women in an effort to aggregate thousands of responses. The survey was administered to a non-random sample. (It would be prohibitively expensive to execute random sampling.) We also conducted virtual focus groups with small groups of women who completed our survey.

We announced the results at Book Expo America 2007 in New York City . We also published our results in the Women and Books 2007 Report, which was made available at the Book Expo 2007. Every woman who participated received a copy of this report.

Click here to access a copy of the Women and Books 2007 Study Report