We introduce our fifth guest blogger of our monthly series on the 25th of every month, in celebration of our 25th anniversary this year, Kathleen Kaufman, published author and educator.

Kathleen Kaufman is the author of environmental fiction and an inner city educator. She is well known in the social media community as a Facebook influencer and entertaining blogger. She can be found on her publisher’s website, The Way Things Are Publications, on Facebook and on her website.

Facebook marketing is a dirty word. No one wants to feel like they’re friends with a person who is trying to sell them a product, be it a book or a copyedit.  The most successful Facebookers, the ones who have converted their page into actualized business, are not marketing, rather they are participating.   It’s not as easy as it sounds; for one, you have to mean it.  The simple act of being genuine on Facebook is easier said than done.

I am certainly not an expert on how to juggle professionalism and sincerity in a virtual world, but I have learned a few lessons along the way as to what not to do.

1.  Mass Emails: I currently have approximately seventy-three messages waiting for me on my page.  I have no intention of reading them, for the most part, because they are all invites to ‘The Best Opening Night Of The Best Play Ever!’ or ‘Open Mic Night At The Improv!”   Thus, most of them are for events that are in Boston, Chicago, or New York.  It becomes painfully obvious that the sender has no idea that I live in Los Angeles, and even more painfully obvious that I am just a number, a member of their growing horde, an inadvertent member of a fan club.

When Amazon’s Kindle DX, a multi-purpose version of its digital eBook reader was unveiled in late Spring ‘09, I wrote in a blog dated May 7, that the debut of that device could very well be the “knight in shining armor” that would save the beleaguered newspaper industry.  It didn’t, as yet, but it certainly is on its way to boost the book publishing industry.  Most newspapers can still be had for free.

Now, just six months later, publishers are making big plans for another potential savior, one that has yet to hit the marketplace.

Rumor has it that the much speculated and anticipated Tablet due to be created by Apple (who has yet to confirm that it is even being worked on) has publishers salivating at the opportunity for salvation. Publishers are in the throes of making big plans and spending big money for a device that has yet to come to market.

First it was Condé Nast, who announced they are preparing a digital version of Wired magazine for the Apple Tablet by the middle of next year, followed by its other 18 titles. And now it’s Time Inc. that has just released a video demonstration of a “tabletized” Sports Illustrated.

Magazine reading will now be as much about watching and browsing and choosing video elements, as reading, in essence delivering information and the interactive experience that is already available on the Internet, but within a new portable format.

It’s not clear how the Apple Tablet would be publishers’ salvation as yet.  Just as newspapers’ continue their struggle to monetize their content when it can be had for free on the Web, why would a magazine thrive on a tablet, when it too can be had for free?

Digital magazines are not the same as books, read Amazon’s Kindle or music, read iTunes, — neither of which offers content that can be had for free elsewhere.  If digital magazines will not be totally supported by advertising, as I suspect they won’t, then clearly they will need to seek subscribers for their digital versions and charge, as Amazon does per book, per magazine.  And what would be the lure to spend for what can be had free?

The only answer that seems plausible today is that it becomes a lifestyle choice, as in convenience when traveling or on the go — a take-along choice, with 30 or so, favorite titles, on one tablet.  In that sense it would simulate Amazon’s Kindle, which is also a lifestyle choice, with the difference that lifestyle choice or not, the books are not free.

Still, Apple may have something else in mind helping publishers monetize as they did for music publishers and developers in the app store.

Watch them swoop in, as anticipated, and grab the publishing world by storm, much like they did the music world.

Google’s tug of war with the publishing industry plays out everyday. It’s familiar and goes like this… Google offers free search tools that allow people to find content that publishers publish, while publishers want to get paid for the content offered. It’s that simple. But once the cat is out of the bag, what’s there to do? Say no, no, you can’t read this for free anymore?

So somebody in that very smart organization figured out as to what remains attractive to readers in actually reading a newspaper offline, say over a morning cup of coffee or on a commuter ride to work. It turns out that it is not the rustling or feel of the pages as one might have thought, but rather the freedom to flip pages at will, that matters to readers.

The silliness of this boggles the mind, but apparently it is true that being able to read a paragraph or two of an article before flipping pages to read the rest of it, is what makes newspaper reading satisfying and efficient of a reader’s time.

So being a clever player, Google took this tidbit of information seriously enough to create the experimental news hub called Fast Flip in Google Labs, a visual search engine that lets readers flip through webpages of more than three dozen magazines and newspapers – of course, hosted on Google. In return for permission from publishers to show full pages, rather than short snippets, Google agrees to share advertising revenue with publishers.

Fast Flip is an outcome of what Google had considered a major problem with news sites: slow to load, and as such, potentially turn off many readers. They reasoned that browsing news on the web is slow and that when it is fast people will look at more news and more ads. Really?

The service is being initiated with the cooperation of about three dozen publishers, including major news outlets like BBC News, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Newsweek; magazines like Cosmopolitan, The Atlantic, Esquire and Good Housekeeping; and Web-only publications like TechCrunch, Salon.com and Slate.

Ok, they may have cleverly found a way to flip pages online, but no one can seriously think that this will present a new revenue model for publishers or replace newspapers’ plunging advertising revenues. It is a pittance and a nod to the publishing industry that Google wants to stay wedged in as publishers continue to search various models under which they would charge for content. Apparently Google wants to be a player in those plans, too.

With Fast Flip, Google aimed at getting closer to the experience of scanning through physical newspapers or magazines. What they have done in fact, and with much hullabaloo, is simulated online what we already have offline.

That’s the real tug of war…