Over the last few weeks, the social networking site Quora has earned thousands of new fans. The site is “a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it.”
The site links to your Twitter or Facebook accounts, letting you interact with your friends while asking and answering questions. We recommend new users start with the Books, Bookstores, Libraries, Publishing, Self-Publishing or Creative Writing topics as they explore the rapidly growing site. Below, we’ve linked to five simple ways authors and publishers are using Quora.
Here’s more from the site: “One way you can think of it is as a cache for the research that people do looking things up on the web and asking other people. Eventually, when you see a link to a question page on Quora, your feeling should be: ‘Oh, great! That’s going to have all the information I want about that.’ It’s also a place where new stuff–that no one has written about yet–can get pulled onto the web.”
This question was viewed 155 times by users and 13 people are still following responses: “Why was Tim Ferriss’ Four Hour Work Week so much more successful than other books that contain similar ideas?”
This question was viewed 78 times and generated a number of honest responses: “How much does an author get paid for a first book?”
This question sparked a debate about a particular book, earning a response from the author himself: “How accurate is the reporting in David Kirkpatrick’s book The Facebook Effect?”
The site is also very handy for exploring new genres and trends in an interactive way. “What is transmedia storytelling?” asked one reader, receiving answers from professionals and some useful links.
Finally, the site helps writers answer process questions like this simple request: “Should you put one or two spaces after a period?“