ilovebooks.com e-Bookstore Goes Social

Love books? Then maybe you will love this e-bookstore, ilovebooks.com. With recent accomplishment of a story writing campaign on Facebook, it has resulted in an 800% increase in the number of fans. Now, in November, it is slated to participant in the Singapore Writers Festival. More information after the break.

You can check out their Facebook page.

Click Here to ilovebooks Facebook page

Here is the Press Release

Singapore’s leading e-bookstore goes social!

Opting for organically viral promotion, ilovebooks.com engages fans
in a fun and creative game on Facebook

SINGAPORE, 23 October 2012 – Singapore’s leading e-bookstore ilovebooks.com recently completed a successful story-writing campaign on Facebook which set the local social community buzzing and resulted in an 800% increase in the number of fans.

Titled Story Buddy, the game utilised the highly-popular social media tool to bring together aspiring wordsmiths, in groups of threes, to showcase their creative writing capabilities by contributing a paragraph each to their story entry, in a bid to win a new iPad each. Participants then had to rally their Facebook friends to vote for their stories.

The 5 most-voted stories that met the entry criteria were shortlisted for a round of judging by a panel, comprising Mr Phil Tatham, publisher of Monsoon Books; Ms Adeline Foo, author of The Diary of Amos Lee series and Thomas Titans: Men Among Boys; and Ms Lim Kwee Lan, assistant vice president, Convergent Media, MediaCorp.

The contest, which ran for 4 weeks, received a total of 108 entries and saw a 30-fold increase in engagement on ilovebooks.com’s Facebook page when the game ended on 21 September 2012.

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According to Ms Ethel Tan, Vice President (eCommerce), Interactive Media Division, MediaCorp, Story Buddy has succeeded in bringing together the online community to participate in a social story-writing experience that has never been executed locally before.

“The traction gained was due largely to the highly-viral nature of social media sharing and organic conversations sparked on Facebook. This is a clear testimony to the success of such a socially-engaging contest,” said Ms Tan.

The winning entry, titled Carnations, by students Jean Law, Chan Qiu Qing and Jenna Tan is a poignant tale of an overseas student learning about his or her mother’s death in Singapore. Touching on the theme of a parent’s selfless love for her child, the story “displays all the elements of a good story pattern: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution,” said Mr Tatham.

The team was inspired by a newspaper article about the love between a columnist and his grandmother. Jean explained: “We wanted to create a story with that sort of impact on readers, as it was truly touching.”

Team mate Qiu Qing added: “I did not expect that we would win. Then I finally realised our efforts had not been futile after all and I was overjoyed.”

On the overall quality of entries, Ms Foo said: “It was obvious the writers were having fun while they were writing; all the top submissions were well put together.”

“Supporting local literature and writing is a key goal of ilovebooks.com, and Story Buddy is the first of many things we will do to promote the love of writing and reading among Singaporeans,” said Ms. Tan.

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In November, ilovebooks.com is slated to be a key participant at the Singapore Writers Festival from 2 to 11 November. Various talks, panel discussions and book launches will be taking place in the ilovebooks.com Pavilion during this festival.

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