I recently completed The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business by Tara Hunt as part of my first book challenge so I have decided to post a review of each book as I read them. So here goes.

I must confess that when I first saw this book I thought what the hell is “Whuffie” in fact I was so intrigued I went ahead and bought it.
So what is Whuffie?

Whuffie reputation-based currency of Cory Doctorow’s science fiction novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. This book describes an economy based on post-scarcity whereby most of lifes essential items and a large proportion of luxuries are free.

In this book Tara takes this concept and relates it social and business realities. In simplistic terms this book is essentially a guide to social media concepts for people in business. Tara draws on her experience of using Whuffie to highlight to the reader both the highs and lows of leveraging social media for the benefit of both your business and its customers. Numerous case studies are included covering such examples as the US Library of Congress using Flickr to open up their extensive photo archives and how Tara utilised social media to get her book cover designed. The whole book is written in a clear and concise manner, without overloading you with meaningless jargon or generalization tactics so often seen in books on this subject. All of the steps presented are simple to follow and she does a first class job of detailing the rationale behind them.
Who is this book for?

This book is ideal for anyone new to the whole social media scene as it is written in a language that is easy for novices to grasp, having said that this book is a useful reference for people that have been involved in the social media scene as it provides interesting case studies and a raft of hints and tips that will complement your social media activity. I for one certainly took a lot from the book and am now using some of the information in my social media work
Summary

All in all this was a thoroughly enjoyable book to read that is both articulate and easy to follow and I would say that it is a welcome addition to anyone using or looking to use social media in their business or even personally.

Simon’s Rating – 4 out of 5 – Highly Recommended Go Buy It

And to read more book reviews and other book related information please head on over to my site http://bloggingbookworm.com

Kevin Sivils is an experienced self-publishing author. He’s used both CreateSpace and other print on demand companies, so he has a basis for comparison. Primarily he uses his books to promote and support his main work as a basketball coach and trainer. There are many advantages to self-publishing for authors. The amount they make per book can be higher (and they set their own prices, so they can control this, though they also have to consider the constraint of how much the market is willing to pay).

Publishing is much faster. It can take commercial and university book publishers years to take a manuscript from contract to published. CreateSpace pays every month, so authors don’t have to wait for a royalty check every six months — paid out of uncertain cash flows only after everybody else in the publishing company including the janitor has already cashed their paycheck).

And that’s if and only if they actually receive royalties. Most books don’t earn out their advances, so the author gets nothing after that first exciting check. Of course, with CreateSpace there are no advances. You give up that advance in exchange for a stream of cash flow that, you hope, will continue for years.

Plus, you have to do all the publishing details yourself, from designing the look of the interior of the book to writing the cover copy. And with CreateSpace the marketing of your book is totally up to you — but that’s also true with mainstream publishing. They do not promote books except by A level authors such as J K Rowling and Stephen King.

When it comes to actual production of your book, the readying a PDF file for CreateSpace, this book is extremely weak. He does give some book design etiquette which may or may not be true, such as beginning new chapters one-third of the page down (he doesn’t do this himself). He does include information on marketing your book. This is a strength of the book because other books covering this focus on online marketing. He suggests ways to sell your books at very events.

I believe he could have expanded this further to including using your own CreateSpace book to leverage many other professional opportunities. Before you can sell book copies at the back of a room during a speech, you need to know how to getting speaking engagements. And having a book in print (even self-published) can help with that. After all, many people are impressed by books as physical objects and don’t understand the difference. Or may understand the difference but still be impressed by the ambition and effort that self-publishing required.

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