Pinterest?

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MysteryRiter

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I've been seeing a lot of writers start to use Pinterest recently. Does anyone here have experience with using it to promote your work/build a web presence? Any good or bad?
 

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It's not suited for building a presence; it is however an interesting ancillary. It looks to me like it has more utility as a research tool, and memory aid.
 

lizbeth dylan

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I use it for ideas. I have a inspiration board set up and pin pics of people who look like certain characters, houses and locations, quotes and photographs that stir emotions.
 

Old Hack

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A link might be nice.
 

Deleted member 42

A link might be nice.

OK FINE! Ms. Hack

I write about blogging systems and CMSs, so I started looking at Pinterest earlier this month.

Pinterest is image-driven; the image is scraped or uploaded, re-sized, and the metadata including the original URL come with the link.

You have an option to enter a comment--the comment seems to be limited to about 300 characters or so.

There are a lot of people using it to track recipes, items to buy as a sort of visual wish list, images for buildings, locations, furnishings and clothing to use in writing.

Culinary arts-recipes I'm trying.

Its May Images of May from Books of Hours--this is research for an essay I've been asked to write about medieval games.

I can see some potential issues wrt copyright on images--I suspect that Pinterest is relying a bit forcefully on safe harbor clauses, and the fact that what users are doing with scraped images is pretty much what search engines do with scraped images.

But I'm speculating.
 

OohLaLaura

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I'm a very visual person, so Pinterest is addictive to me.

For my last novel, I used it to brainstorm characters. I have a very large cast, and it helped me create a board of characters to help me keep everyone straight.

I also made board of potential settings. It helped me think about other directions to take scenes that weren't working. Sometimes, I like writing exercises that have you use an image as a springboard. Pinterest is great for things like that.
 

Polenth

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I signed up to this recently. I'm not convinced it'll do much in terms of networking, but I do see potential in the sense of making it easy for people to pin. For book covers I like, I've tried to find them on the author's website... but often the cover images are a little small and the books don't have a dedicated page each. It'd be a relatively small thing for an author to put in a page with a nice cover image to pin.
 

amblack

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I enjoy Pinterest as a visual bookmarker. I have so many bookmarks that they get lost easily, but Pinterest helps me organize and jot my memory for why I put it there in the first place.
 

twiharder

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Oh I hope people don't use pintrest to promote their work. I hate going on FB now because of how commercial it's become. I love Pintrest and I will start ot hate it if it becomes just another place where people slog their products.
 

James D. Macdonald

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The only place I've seen Pinterest mentioned is in comment spam. It's so bad that I have the word "Pinterest" filtered to kick any post containing it to automatic moderation at a blog I help run.
 

VanessaNorth

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I use Pinterest for inspiration for both writing and for my photography business, and for bookmarking other stuff too. I have much better pin discipline as Vanessa. ;)

My real name account has about 900 followers. There is a link from that account to my pen name account, and I can post to Vanessa's boards under either account. Anything I post to Vanessa's boards gets seen by both sets of followers.

It's not really marketing, but it is a presence on the web and it's fun and I've met a lot of really great people through Pinterest. If someone sees my posts there and thinks they might like to read my books, cool, but that's not why I use it.
 

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I'm still far too worried by the copyright issues to use Pinterest myself, but I'm glad that some of you seem to be finding it useful or interesting.
 

VanessaNorth

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I'm still far too worried by the copyright issues to use Pinterest myself, but I'm glad that some of you seem to be finding it useful or interesting.

I understand the worry there. My understanding, after Pinterest recently changed their TOS and spoke with some concerned bloggers (I will try and hunt down the links), is that if you UPLOAD a pin to the pinterest server, you must have copyright of the image.

If you pin to pinterest from the web, the pin must link back to the source of the image, but essentially, it's just a public bookmark, you aren't claiming ownership of the image.

When you upload a pin to which you own copyright, you are granting pinterest the right to use your image, and you are granting other pinners the right to repin your image.

There was a HUGE blowup over this about six months ago, and Pinterest ended up changing their TOS to make it more clear.
 

merrihiatt

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I enjoy Pinterest and have a section on my page "Books by Merri Hiatt." When I release a new book, I go to Amazon or B&N and add the image to that section of my page. I only do it once. My friends usually pin it to their boards, as well. But I pin a ton of stuff not related to my books. I don't think it would be helpful if all you did was pin and repin your own books over and over again. That would feel very much like spam.
 

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I've been advised by a literary agent friend (who is very good at reading contracts) that one should own copyright of whatever one posts there, or have direct written permission from the copyright holder, otherwise one is at risk of infringement.

It doesn't matter what Pinterest's terms and conditions are: they cannot override copyright law.

At least, that's how I understand it. And I'm not a lawyer either.
 

Filigree

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My legal counsel (who used to do rights management for a Very Famous Museum) said "Don't upload anything to it, and don't take anything off it. In fact, just stay off Pinterest." He said he thought the lawsuits would start hitting within the year, no matter what cosmetic changes they made to the TOS.
 

JustJas

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Oh I hope people don't use pintrest to promote their work. I hate going on FB now because of how commercial it's become. I love Pintrest and I will start ot hate it if it becomes just another place where people slog their products.

I'm new to Pinterest and I've created boards for each of my books, not as a promotional tool but just because it was great fun to do. I wouldn't dream of repinning images over & over to plug my books and it seems this is the only way you can really use the site to promote. I've noticed though that not many authors seem to have dedicated boards for each book, so I'm hoping mine don't come across as shameless self-promotion.

If you are visually inclined, it's a fantastic source of inspiration and ideas. I'm well and truly hooked, but the copyright issues are of some concern.
 
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