Joe Pickering is a Publicity Director at Random House UK, in charge of the Jonathan Cape and Bodley Head imprints. With a mega Twitter following (@Joethepublicist) and an enviable list of esteemed writers under his wing, we pick Joe’s brains for industry know-how and find out about the road to publicity stardom…

We’re really chuffed that we’ve been invited to speak at the Galley Club this Wednesday. The Galley club is a social organisation for all involved in publishing and book production.

So what are we going to talk about? Well, there’s so much more to your online presence than simply running a Twitter account, setting up a Linkedin page and building a Website.

Last week there was a bit of a furore in the publishing world after a Guardian journalist Ewan Morrison slated social media promotion by self published authors, basically saying that as a promotional tool Twitter and Facebook etc were overrated and authors should focus on writing books, probably. I know that was a rabid paraphrase, but do go read the article if you want specifics because it’s interesting and incendiary, which are two of the best things an article can be.

Can’t say there’s been much news this week – no big mergers to report, and no-one has invented the Next Big Thing to save/destroy publishing, which leaves me discussing something rather close to my own heart. Something I see all too often when I’m trawling Twitter, or browsing pins, or trying unsuccessfully to suppress a rage-induced hernia while posting on Facebook.  Something more horrifying than a Justin Beiber fan and more plentiful than 50 Shades of Grey knockoffs.

Following the success of our inaugural #BMHour on Twitter a couple of weeks ago, we decided to do it again. And lo, like Icarus, our wings did melt, so near the sun did we fly. By which I mean not as many people logged onto Twitter around  6.30pm last night as did last time, which I’m sure is a fairly accurate translation from the original Greek. Anyway, there was still some degree of conversation, and this time the topic to kick it all off was ‘How can we add value to digital editions of books and still sell printed material?’ As before, a digest of the main talking points follows.

It’s already reaching the point where I feel like every other word I use writing these articles is either ‘Amazon’ or ‘Kindle’. Obviously, however, that kind of total market saturation isn’t enough for the hyper-multi-national, because yesterday saw the announcement of the next generation of Kindle, one aimed not just at taking down traditional bookshops, but taking down the taker-down of traditional record shops: Apple.

How do we organize our bi-monthly BookMachine tweetups alongside full time jobs? Well, doing this has only become possible in the last few years, and all thanks to social media. We spend just two to three hours a week on promoting our events. Here are the top five free tools that help us out: (this post was originally published on www.publishingtalk.eu on August 10, 2011)

The mainstream media seems to be of the impression that publishing is awash with fear: “The printed book is doomed: here’s why” says The Telegraph, “Facebook acquires ebook design firm, but should publishers worry?” says The Guardian. In fact, it’s Time for book publishers to fight dirty says the Chicago Tribune.