I have recently started to use Pinterest after reading a brief e-book about using it to help promote your business. It’s especially good if you make a product, but it can still be useful for others–including writers.
I started out by adding pictures of writers’ retreats, offices, and bookcases of awesomeness. I highlighted a few of my favorite pics in a post, but it’s easier to put all of them on Pinterest. Now I can keep all of them in one spot for inspiration, plus easily share them with others.
(BTW, if you find yourself sucked into using Pinterest (as I’ve been!), do a Google search for “Pinterest browser add ons.” I added one to Firefox and now I just right-click on a pic and send it to the board of my choice. Much faster and easier than going into Pinterest and copying and pasting the URL.)
Research
Joel Comm points out that it’s also a great way to organize research. What did I do with that map of Prague? I have no idea. Did I save a link somewhere? No idea. Now, no more of that: pin that bad boy to a board just for my Flames of Prague novel. Much easier than copying and pasting pictures into a Word document (which is what I was doing for some of my stuff!).
Inspiration
I was just looking at old book covers from the 40’s and 50’s and getting inspired to write a story to fit such a cover. I can pin those pictures to a board to serve as a starting point for that idea.
Have trouble coming up with character descriptions? Whenever you run across a picture of a real person that interests you, pin it. It’s a lot easier to describe someone while you’re looking at them rather than making them up in your head. Likewise with buildings and landscapes.
Ideas and Creative Collaboration
When it comes to creating a book cover, I compile a number of pictures before I decide which one I want. Again, Pinterest becomes the place where I can do that because it’s accessible from everywhere. (I can also take comments from my readers on which picture(s) they like better). And I can pin book covers by other authors that I might want to emulate (i.e. Photoshop inspiration).
Fan Fun
If I was anything like an artist (alas, drawing is not my forte… as you might have guessed by my stick-figure drawings), I could put up drawings of all of my characters from Acceptance. But, barring that, I can pin up fan art (um… when I have some).
I can also pin pictures which might be of interest to my fans, such as pictures from the cities where my characters travel, real-life buildings that served as the inspiration for the fictional buildings, area maps, etc. For my historical novels, I can also share tidbits of history that relate to the time and place where the book is set.
Keri M. Peardon 
I must give Pinterest a go. Thanks for the tip.
My friend keeps telling me to use Pinterest. But now that you’ve given me some actual, concrete reasons for why it’s useful, I think I’ll give it a shot 😀
Another use is to pin the covers of your favorite books–especially in the genre you write. It not only tells your fans something about you, but it helps people who like a certain kind of book find yours. It’s kind of like putting your book on a shelf at the bookstore with other books in the same theme.
Great idea! I’ll let you know how it goes 😀
I haven’t made a book list for myself, but you can see what I’ve done for my books so far (plus a little for myself).
I’ve been meaning to comment since I first read this post (I can’t comment when I read on my phone as it gets all confused…)
I, too ,recently discovered Pinterest and thought it was the best thing ever… then I read a blog post by Kristen Lamb: http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/writers-why-its-time-to-renew-your-love-affair-with-pinterest/ and, more importantly, some of the comments, and I immediately deleted all the images on my boards that I hadn’t uploaded myself.
One of the comments (#76) on Kristen’s blog is from someone who is currently being sued for $8000 for using a copyright image on her Pinterest boards. Kristen has created a great thing called WanaCommons where photographers are uploading images they are happy can be used on blogs, pinterest etc, because of this issue around people being sued.
I thought it only right to add a word of caution about using Pinterest – when I wrote my own blog post on it I thought one of the main appeals was that copyright wasn’t an issue because the original link is there. Turns out that’s not true at all!
Yeah, that can be a problem, and is one of the reasons why I was reluctant to use Pinterest earlier. I have tried to be very careful about what I pin, going for images that are old or are in the public domain (some of the ones I’ve pinned are from WikiCommons, for instance). Flikr also has a lot of photos which the photographers have put in the public domain (a couple of the ones in my book trailer are from Creative Commons Flikr photos).
Definitely stay away from pinning professional photographers’ photos (photos from 1x.com, for instance), anything with a watermark on it (Shutterstock, et al), and original art (DeviantArt, etc.).
There is actually code that Pinterest provides for webmasters who want to block pinning of their images. (And there are other ways of encoding photos so that they can’t be copied or can only be copied with a link back to the original website.) Given the way the internet is evolving, and how people transmit information, that is probably going to be a necessary defense for people who want to protect the copyright of their artwork. Because, once your image is out there on the internet, there really is no getting it back. You can try to sue everyone who has a copy of it on their Pinterest board or website, but at the rate an image can spread, you could very quickly be fighting a losing battle. (As the Crown has no doubt recently discovered with the photos of Prince Harry in the nip.)
As someone who now has a copyright on my future source of income, I try to be considerate of other people’s copyrights/livelihoods, but at the same time, I’m trying to figure out a way to harness social media for my own gain. The way people interact with art is changing. I look at things like Steampunk and this obsession with everything Dr. Who and Cuthulu and I see that interactive participation/cultism is the future of marketing and sales. J. K. Rowling and probably Stephanie Meyers, as well, have made more money off the branding of their books than they made off actual sales of their books. Now, it’s not enough to make art; you have to turn it into a brand. You have to be a personality.
And you need to cough up some things for free. Fans will happily give you money for your stuff, but non-fans want something for free first.