We’ve just started using Pinterest at Nosy Crow. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Pinterest, it’s a new social media platform that allows you to share things – artwork, photographs, posters, book jackets – on a “pinboard”. If someone sees, for instance, the cover for Zac and Zeb and the Make-Believe Birthday Party and likes it, they can re-pin it on their own page. It’s a bit like Tumblr.
At least, I think that’s how it works.
It’s still quite a new thing and we’re finding our feet. But we thought we’d give it a try and see how we get on. After all, we’re not afraid of other sorts of social media – Kate blogged on the subject last week. As well as this page, we also use Twitter a lot, as @nosycrow and @nosycrowapps, YouTube (here), and Facebook (here). We’ve also recently started using issuu to post preview chapters and spreads of our upcoming titles.
Pinterest (and you can find us here) seemed appealing because it’s a lot more visual than those other platforms (apart from issuu, I suppose, but that’s a different sort of thing) and makes a great deal of sense as a place where we can post everything from character sketches to finished artwork, as well as sharing some of things we’re enjoying and being inspired by.
At the moment, though, it’s not entirely clear whether there’s much of a children’s book “community” using the site. Pinterest provides a list of categories to choose from and they’re mostly lifestyle-focused – food and drink, fashion, gardening, DIY and crafts, etc. And as with any similar exercise, you can get much more out of social media by interacting rather than just projecting.
So please, let us know if you’re on Pinterest! What have your experiences been of using it? Can you recommend some great illustrators, designers, or other publishing-related users?
