Officials at the Frankfurt Book Fair commissioned a survey of publishing industry profressionals about their use of social networking tools, and according to the results announced last week, two-thirds of the industry is networking online, but 40 percent still think social media "[isn't] very important to the book industry right now."

The main reasons for getting started on social media? 16 percent take the plunge in order to make new business contacts, while 13 percent are looking to stay on top of what their colleagues are doing. (Only two percent, however, say they feel "peer pressure" to do it because everybody else is.) As for how effective these tools have been, "21 per cent of responses showed that the respondents felt they certainly had more contacts now," according to the published results, "but they were not sure how useful many of them were."