The Venture Edge

A couple days ago, the coauthor of my upcoming book Writing Fiction For Dummies -- Randy Ingermanson -- and I had a conference call with the marketing folks at our publisher, John Wiley & Sons. It was clear to all of us that the old ways of marketing books are mostly broken -- it no longer makes sense to send out 1,000 copies of a press release or 100 review copies of your new book and hope that the media picks up on your message. Ninety-nine percent of the time, they won't. What does make sense today is connecting one-on-one with people using Facebook and other social networking websites.

It's no secret that social networking websites and media -- Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. -- are all the rage today. People are making connections with one another in ways that were unimaginable just a few short years ago. However, some people are going beyond updating their friends on what they had for dinner or their big plans for the weekend. They are using social networks to start new businesses. Rodney Rumford and his business partner Sean Callahan -- cofounders of TweetPhoto -- are two such people.