Last week I attended a seminar during Social Media Week titled Social Books: How Social Media is Changing the Writing, Reading and Promotion of Books.

How is social media affecting authors and the publishing industry? Books are everything social media is not – it’s a solitary endeavor by both reader and author.

Until now.

Authors are doing everything to promote their books socially from YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, videos…some author’s even conceptualize their books socially. Reader’s reading habits are changing too, with “services like GoodReads, Kindle, Fanfiction and Librarything to socialize their reading.”

The publishing industry is at the brink of the tipping point for change.

Check out link and video of Seth Godin’s new project with Amazon: The Domino Project.

For those of you who keep up with Latino literature, Julio Varella has a great summary post on Valdes-Rodriguez’s discord with the NBC  TV script adaptation of her book, The Dirty Girls Social Club and her use of social media to pursue the matter.

After stating two days ago that she had made all the statements she needed to make and would now focus on legal action, author Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, who claims that the TV script adaptation of her book, The Dirty Girls Social Club, is racist, sexist, and promotes Latina stereotypes, continues to tweet and post updates on her public Twitter and Facebook sites.

Speculation on progress is made as Valdes-Rodriguez has said in a recent blog post to “Please, respect NBC” and “What I do know is that people are listening, and that there is, indeed, compassion and empathy and intelligence to be found in Hollywood, if you know where to look.”

Read below for an exclusive Q&A.

What is your book about?

First of all, thank you for hosting me on your blog for this Q&A.

Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content discusses the growth of the Hispanic audience in the U.S. and the growth of digital, social and mobile media. It looks at how will these two growth trends converge and what marketers are doing about it. Readers will find case studies from Ford, Best Buy, H&R Block, Monster, and other leading marketers, documenting the process through which they identified online as a key CRM (customer relationship management) platform for reaching Hispanics, how they translated their websites into Spanish and adapted their marketing communications for this audience.  More specifically, as the subtitle indicates, the book documents how marketers can attract Hispanic audiences online by developing content for their own websites, distributing that content on social media platforms and integrate digital into their overall marketing strategy.

Your readers can download a sample chapter from my book about social media here: http://joekutchera.com/latinolink

Why is it important?

This book is the first of its kind. Many companies today want to figure out how to effectively reach Hispanics and/or tap into niche audiences via social media. This book outlines how marketers can do that. Some of the pioneers in marketing to Hispanics online share their viewpoints and expertise about what they set out to do and how they accomplished their goals.

What can professionals in the industry gain from it?

While writing the book, I interviewed a select group of Hispanic marketing professionals. While getting insights for the book, I asked them what they would want in my book or what would they want to show their colleagues and clients. They told me that they wanted three things: case studies, specific advice about reaching Hispanics online, and recommendations about how to localize content for U.S. Hispanics. So, that is exactly what I did.

Digital media and Hispanic/multicultural marketing will only become more important in the years ahead as American becomes a majority minority. This book will help marketers look around corners to plan for the intersection of those two trends.

What prompted you to write a book?

That’s actually a funny story. In 2008, I started writing a column for MediaPost Engage:Hispanics, while I was working at ContextWeb starting their Spanish-language ad network in the U.S. Hispanic and Mexican marketplaces. I loved writing and at the end of that year, I included “write a book” on my list of 5-year goals. In March of 2009, I attended a session at SXSW Interactive called, “So, you want to write a book?” which included a roundtable of authors, book publishes and agents.

After the session, I approached one of the book publishers about the initial idea of Latino Link. He said, “That’s a great idea! Let me send you my book proposal template.” I wrote the proposal in the evenings and over the weekends. In late May 2009, I sent the publisher my proposal. He liked it and agreed to send it to his editorial team. I thought to myself, “It would be great to have some time off to write the book.” Two weeks after that, ContextWeb laid off 10% of its workforce, including me, because of the bad economy. I thought to myself, “well, I guess I’m going to write that book.”

As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for! So, that’s how I found the time to write this book. I ended up not working with the publisher I first spoke to. Instead, Paramount Books signed me to write Latino Link. They specialize in publishing books about Hispanic and multicultural marketing as well as market research. Thanks to their support, we brought the book to marketplace nine months after we agreed to work together.

How do Hispanic marketing professionals differ in other parts of the world, to those in US?

Great question. Each country across the Spanish-language world has its unique qualities: culture, food, traditions, ways of doing business, and variations of the Spanish language. The same can be said of different cities even. But even with all of the differences, it all boils down to basics. Good marketing is good marketing no matter where you go and no matter what language you do it in: understanding your audience and what motivates them, developing a strategy that engages an audience based upon audience research, and executing that strategy. And of course, the marketing needs to lead customers to the appropriate sales channels.

Media companies from Spain and Mexico have entered the U.S. market thinking that just because they speak Spanish that they will understand the U.S. Hispanic market. The same is true of U.S. companies that have entered Mexico and retreated later. No way José!  It takes knowing the right business people, understanding your market, and having patience to execute the right strategy over time. Once you have the basics covered, I’ve learned that you need to adapt ideas to your local market, hire local people, and dedicate yourself to that market even though many digital platforms can scale around the world.

Social media has many great potentials.  I’m constantly amazed by the innovation that individuals display.

Again and again, I see come across very unique ways individuals are using social media to engage the market.

A while back, we saw how one individual came up with how to learn a different language, with social media.  For this entry, here’s a mention of a virtual book tour promoting Latino authors.

The purpose here is to promote authors in the Latino market, and get other blogs on board to promote the same.

I have to mention that Jo Ann, is steadfast in promoting this – I get an email daily from her concerning this.  That’s commitment!

Her name is Jo Ann Hernández and when she’s not reviewing books for Latina Lista or writing her own novels or blogging on her own site, she has always been advising other Latina/o authors how to promote themselves. Now, she’s created a special site just to help those same authors launch their careers — starting in cyberspace.

BronzeWord Latino Virtual Book Tours is a one-stop shop for authors who want to reach the Latino market. The way the virtual book tours work is Jo Ann and her staff contact various Latino bloggers about hosting a virtual book tour on their site with a particular author. The author makes a commitment to visit those blogs during the scheduled times and interact with the blogger and their readers.