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The impact of social media platforms on book marketing and advertising : a case of selected South African authors

Authors use social media platforms to reach out to potential readers. Social media play an important role in book marketing and advertising and is convenient for meeting authors' goals of finding a wide target market in a short space of time. In light of this, this paper assessed the impact of social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp) on marketing and advertising books: poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. The paper emanates from an empirical study undertaken to establish whether such platforms do guarantee optimum sales for authors. The paper is grounded on the Uses and Gratification Theory (UGT) that explains the different reasons that inspire social media users to choose certain media to satisfy their specific needs. These needs develop out of the social territory. The theory states that receivers select the types of media and media content to fulfil their needs. UGT links the need for gratification to a specific medium choice that rests with the audience member. As a result, a qualitative method was used with an unstructured questionnaire to collect primary data. The findings show that authors have a challenge in terms of identifying the right target market on their social media accounts. The findings further show that social media platforms do not necessarily guarantee sales; instead, they are crucial for creating awareness.