Redroom.com & Booktour.com Roll Out the Red Carpet for Authors

The San Francisco Chronicle reported today that Redroom.com is in full public beta.  It aims to connect readers with writers by providing an author a blog that can include a variety of content.  According to the website information page:

Through original, author-generated content, we offer a trustworthy and creative social network unlike any other. Here, you can connect with your favorite authors, access current industry news, and comment on engaging features. By fostering true community between authors and readers, Red Room showcases esteemed writers and inspires the next generation. We also give back to the community we aim to nurture with our commitment to the Causes We Support.

Booktour.com is another site that caters to authors that is also in public beta.  With Booktour.com authors create their own page (biography, books, tour dates and availability) and any group looking for speakers can find them and contact them directly to arrange for an appearance.  Booktour.com also allows readers to connect with authors by allowing them to search for authors who will be appearing in their area.  Among the site's founders is Chris Anderson, the author of The Long Tail.  According to Booktour's information page:

For authors, BookTour.com serves as a one-stop tool for book promotion, allowing authors at all levels of their careers to locate receptive live audiences. For readers and audiences, BookTour.com makes finding when a favorite author is coming to your town as easy as checking the weather.

The goal of both sites is to involve authors more in the promotion of their own works and to connect readers with writers in ways that writers, publishers, and supply-chain partners alone might not be able to.  Statistics continue to reveal that greater and greater numbers of us are spending more and more time online, and there's a definitely a niche to be filled in connecting avid readers with books and authors.

A definite advantage to such sites is that as long as they remain inclusive they have the potential to provide "one stop shopping" for readers who are looking to connect with books or authors.  They also can exploit the power of easy-to-use, self-service Web 2.0 interfaces that allow authors and publishers to disseminate information about authors as personalities that previously might have been unavailable to readers.   Such efforts to create communities of readers by publishers themselves can often be hampered by the fact that many readers don't necessarily connect a book to its publisher.

Recent statistics indicate that about 20-25% of consumers buy nearly 80% of the books in the United States, so look for more similarly ambitious efforts to connect these avid readers with the book and authors they love in the near future.