Stay in touch with me 24/7: Ashok Banker now on Facebook, MySpace, Shelfari, Goodreads, Twitter…

As many of you know already, I’m online round the clock. My work requires me to sit in front of a computer most of the day, and I actually enjoy taking tiny breaks throughout the day to respond to work-related email, Reader mail, or just keep in touch with friends and colleagues online.

I’ve always believed that the mass media is increasingly irrelevant in a connected world. Why use a newspaper, magazine, or TV interview to communicate with my readers when I can just stay in touch directly? This way, there’s no ‘filter’ or middleman between us, and we can both speak directly, individually, and as much or as little as we please.

I reply to every single reader email, over 15,000 to date, and some of my most insightful feedback has come from individual readers, rather than professional literary critics. I’ve learned, changed, improved, and have even revised parts of my books thanks to the excellent, supportive, and constructive advice and suggestions of my readers.

At times, I often think that my books are largely edited by my readers–especially those readers with whom I share early drafts of my manuscripts. It beats having over-worked editors in publishing houses who are often more concerned about sales, marketing and promotion than actual editing–particularly in the US, where an editor spends more time liaising with those departments than actual hands-on editing work.

India, of course, is the sole exception, with editors actually caring about the books they edit, and treating the authors as human beings, rather than fiction factories as they are in the US. That also probably has something to do with the fact that the kind of books I write largely make sense only to Indian readers, and Indian editors.

So it’s only natural that I should increase my communication front with my readers.

I’m now on these social networking sites:

PLEASE NOTE THAT I WILL ONLY ADD EXISTING READERS AS ‘FRIENDS’.

Facebook: Where you can keep in touch with me, share my links to interesting sites, and otherwise interact with me. Click here to keep in touch with me on Facebook.

Shelfari: Where you can share your favourite books, see what I’ve read, am reading, or am planning to read. Click here to share your book choices with me on Shelfari.

Goodreads: The same as Shelfari. Click here to share your book choices with me on Shelfari.

Twitter: A micro-blogging site where you can keep in touch with what I’m upto throughout the day through short, pithy updates by me (140 characters or less, a couple of sentences) which you can choose to receive via sms on your cellphone or online. And yes, I update often, about half a dozen times a day at least. You can always find my last 20 Tweets in the right-hand sidebar on this page. Click here to follow me 24/7 on Twitter.

There will be more added as time goes by.

And of course, this blogsite will always remain up and accessible to you, especially the Readerswrite Page.

So keep in touch with me, follow my Twitters, share my reading pleasures, or just network with me.

It doesn’t make me any more or less of a writer, just more of a person than you knew, and after all, a writer is a person too! I have a life! And most of it happens to be online, so I’m happy to include you in it as well.