Prof's book launched on Facebook

Books don't sell themselves. That's the mantra of Mount Saint Vincent University professor Patricia Parsons, whose previous eight books have been in the areas of health or business. Now she's turned to Facebook to publicize her new novel.

"Unless your name is Oprah, these days it should be clear to most authors that they have to make an effort to sell their books," Parsons says. And she should know - she's been teaching undergraduate students about strategic approaches to public-relations challenges at MSVU for the past two decades.

Her current work involves researching how the new social media can be used strategically and to test that out, she's taking advantage of the tools of the so-called Web 2.0 and the networks that it can create to publicize In the Shadow of the Raven - she has invited her Facebook "friends" to a virtual book launch.

In the Shadow of the Raven is a departure form her previous works, such as Ethics in Public Relations and Life Without End: The Transplant Story.

This new effort is a historical novel about the mystery that surrounds the final days of the writer Edgar Allan Poe's life.

The book is initially narrated by an American ex-pat English professor at Dalhousie University who stumbles upon the diary of a woman called Bridget Ryan, a long-time friend of Poe's.

Parsons is using a variety of social-media tools including the Facebook event as well as a YouTube reading. - Submitted

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAr9hk-3n4