Mark Blevis

Digital technology has forced many industries to rethink their business models. Unfortunately, many industries are steeped in tradition and find it hard to evolve. It takes bands like Radiohead and the The Barenaked Ladies to show that things can be done differently and successfully in the music industry. The book publishing industry has its visionaries as well.

Neil Gaiman has become a rock star not just because of his books, not just because of his movies, not just because he’s become an icon of science fiction culture, not just because he won the Newbery Award for The Graveyard Book two days ago. Neil is a rock star because he embraced social media long before most of us and he’s good at it. In fact, he’s changing an industry with it.

I had the privilege of speaking with Neil about some of the cool things he’s doing to connect with his fans and promote his books. Besides the fascinating writing on his amazingly popular blog (it’s actually more of an online journal since he doesn’t allow comments), Neil keeps his legions of fans up to date on Twitter. Yesterday afternoon he had 13,478 followers. At the time of this post he has 15,888 followers. According to Neil, he’s been gaining about 1,000 new Twitter followers each day for the last week.

It gets more amazing. Neil convinced his publishers to post videos of him reading The Graveyard Book online — for free. If watching him read the book doesn’t appeal to you, you can browse the book online.

Neil Gaiman is helping to redefine the publishing industry on the terms of the social web. Because they’re listening to him, Harper Collins is on the cutting edge.

You can hear my interview with Neil on the Just One More Book!! children’s book podcast. I’m hoping that we’ll have a chance to interview Neil, again, to discuss the overall impact of these initiatives.

Photo from Neil Gaiman’s Twitter feed.