Social Cataloging Web Applications as Marketing Tool?

I discover with ou the site www.librarything.com/about/publishers:

How Publishers Can Use LibraryThing

Publishers are a vital part of the LibraryThing community. Learn how you can contribute to the site and take advantage of what LibraryThing has to offer.
LibraryThing for Publishers

As a publisher, you can now create a profile page for each of your imprints on LibraryThing, offering a way to highlight current titles, link visitors back to your website, and see which LibraryThing members have your titles in their libraries. Here's the list of all the publishers who've signed up so far.

It's simple, and free, to set up your LibraryThing for Publishers page.

Check out the printed instructions or watch a short video introduction.
Early Reviewers

LibraryThing Early Reviewers helps publishers distribute advance copies of books to interested readers. The publisher provides books, LibraryThing members sign up to request them, LibraryThing plays matchmaker. Books find their way to readers who are likely to enjoy them!

Since June 2007, LibraryThing Early Reviewers has sent out more than 400,000 books, from over 500 different publishers and imprints, including Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, New York Review of Books, Tor, Bloomberg Press, Scholastic, DK, Oxford University Press and Algonquin.

How it works:

We do monthly batches of books, announcing the batch of books at the beginning of each month; our members sign up and request the books they're interested in.
You supply LibraryThing with a list of the titles that you'll be offering to the Early Reviewers.
We use an intelligent algorithm to find the members most likely to enjoy and create buzz for your titles. These aren't just random giveaways.
We send you a list of the winning members. You send out the books.
Early Reviewers read the books, and then post reviews to LibraryThing. They are encouraged to also cross-post to their blog, Amazon, etc. The publisher and author are granted perpetual non-exclusive permission to use the reviews.

LibraryThing Local

We want to help you promote your authors' events. The best way to do this is to make sure those events are included in LibraryThing Local, our gateway to tens of thousands of bookish venues and events around the world. If you have an events web page or feed, let us know and we may be able to integrate with that so your events are automatically added to LibraryThing Local. Contact Tim (tim@librarything.com) to get set up.
Author Interviews

Each month we feature a few exclusive interviews with authors in our "State of the Thing" newsletter. The interviews are then also posted on the author's page on LibraryThing. Choice of author is an editorial decision, and author interviews are typically conducted with authors who have a new book to promote.

See interviews with Yann Martel or Audrey Niffenegger, for example.
Author pages

Every author has an "author page" on LibraryThing—it's created by the system as soon as someone adds a book written by that author to their library. Members can add a photo, links and basic facts in "Common Knowledge."
Author Chats

Give readers a chance to chat with an author. The chat is fairly simple. It's not "real-time", but takes place in one of our forums, the Author Chat Group, over a two-week period. Members ask questions, and the author checks in about once a day and responds.

We promote author chats by sending profile comments to every member who has listed one of the author's books. We also put maintain a list of upcoming chats, so members can plan ahead.
LibraryThing Authors

Wouldn't you love to know what your favorite author has in their library, what books inspired them, or what they're reading now? That's the idea behind the LibraryThing Author program—giving readers a window into authors' tastes, and authors a great new way to connect with their readers.

If authors are also LibraryThing members, then they can be listed as an official LibraryThing Author, showcasing some personal books for interested readers.
Tread lightly ...

LibraryThing is a place to connect with readers, not a place to advertise. As we say in our Terms of Service, "Do not use LibraryThing as an advertising medium. Egregious commercial solicitation is forbidden. No matter how great your novel, this does apply to authors." It also applies to publishers and publicists.

With that, just a few things to keep in mind:

Do not send out friend requests to hundreds of people, even if all of them happen to have copies of books you published.
Do not post messages in Talk advertising your books (or advertising promotions, giveaways, etc.).
Please don't add ratings or reviews to your books. We already know you love them!

Contact us

Contact Kate (kate@librarything.com) with any questions.