Did you know that Facebook users spend a collective 5 billion minutes per day on the site? The Facebook community has surpassed 250 million users, making it the third largest site  on the web, right behind Yahoo! and Google.

Those are some stats quoted by author Paul Dunay in this week’s Beyond the Book podcast, “BTB #120: Get To Work On Facebook.” It’s the most recent in a series of podcasts that FiledBy is co-presenting.

Dunay, co-author of the book Facebook Marketing for Dummies, prepared a slideshow about Five Ways Facebook Can Get You Fired. That presentation caught the eye of Chris Kenneally, host and producer of the Beyond the Book podcasts, and he invited Dunay to be interviewed on the show.

Rate and Review 10 of your favorite books on FiledBy and get a $10 gift certificate.  New to FiledBy?  Click here and Sign-up today for a free reader account, rate and review ten of your favorite books and learn about FiledBy.  Already a FiledBy reader? Log-in to your account today and follow the steps below!

Here’s how “Ten for $10″ works:

• Rate & Review ten of your favorite books on the FiledBy site
• Send email with contact info (name, phone number, email) with subject line “Ten for $10″ to reader@filedby.com. Prizes will be sent to the email address you provide.
• Deadline for August entry submission is August 31, 2009.
• Contest winners will be announced in the next Reader Newsletter.

Happy Reading,

The FiledBy Team

FiledBy has added new and enhanced features and functionality to help authors better promote themselves and connect with readers.

Pre-publication website: Add a new book to your author site before it’s published or set up a pre-publication website!  The work appears under a “Coming Soon” heading on your page and includes links to retail sites for pre-order. [sample]

Add your resume: Easily post your resume to expand upon your biography and include details of your career and affiliations. [sample]

Blog tool: Start a daily blog from your FiledBy site or have your existing blog automatically appear on your FiledBy site with each new blog entry. [sample]

Better event management: Add and update book signings, speaking engagements and interviews to your event listings. Enter the location information so readers can view an online Google map. [sample]

Customizable header graphic: Upload a custom banner to personalize your website. [sample]

Electronic press kits: Create comprehensive press kits for each of your books, including a contact form for people to email you if they want to schedule a signing or interview. [sample]

We also made the following improvements:

• Enhanced search capabilities provide suggested names during author searches.
• Improved document display shows first page art for PDF attachments.
• Easier author registration.
• Keep up with favorite authors by subcribing to RSS feeds – includes Top Author Searches, Most Viewed Authors, Recently Joined Authors and Today’s Top Books.
• Readers can now add friends and share information about their favorite authors and books.
• Upload cover images.
• Sort the order in which your books appear.
• Add or edit descriptions on your book pages.

FiledBy’s co-founders, Mike Shatzkin and Peter Clifton, will be participating in a panel at BookExpo America next weekend. Shatzkin will moderate the panel, which is called “D2T2: Digital Debut Tool Time.” Clifton, FiledBy’s President and CEO, will be a speaker on the panel along with other executives from companies providing innovative digital services and tools to authors, publishers, and readers. Appearing with Clifton will be Mark Coker from Smashwords, Hugh McGuire from Book Oven, and Neil Jones from Coolreaders.

Smashwords is a self-publishing platform and online bookstore for independent ebook authors, publishers and readers. Coker, who founded the company a year ago and is its CEO, is a strong proponent of digital publishing. Recently, Smashwords introduced a new facet to the company which enables other book publishers to take advantage of its services.

The Book Oven blog is written by a group of book lovers, including McGuire. It’s about books, writing, publishing, and “our relationship with text in the digital age.” They give a lot of coverage to digital publishing and print-on-demand (POD) as well as fun tech tools for other book lovers.

Coolreaders is releasing their e-book reader next month. The device, called the COOL-ER, is 45% lighter than other devices currently on the market and is relatively low priced at $249 USD. It can read any JPEG, PDF, or TXT document, or any e-book in the EPUB format. It uses an E-Ink VizplexTM screen that mimics a book, readable at any angle and in direct sunlight. It also comes in eight different colors. CrunchGear has a full walk-through of the device, including a video.

The D2T2 panel meets on Friday, May 29, from 9:30-10:30 am in Room 1E15 of the Javits Center.
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Today is the Beta launch of the filedbyauthor online directory. We are the first large-scale, author-centric promotional platform to provide every author that’s been published in the U.S. or Canada a free, hosted, ecommerce enabled web page ready to be claimed and enhanced. With more than 1.8 million pre-assembled author web pages and over 7 million book titles, filedbyauthor is the most complete and specific site for finding and engaging with authors and their work.

“All authors, regardless of publishing category are encouraged to visit the site, claim their page, make corrections, and enrich them in a variety of ways,” says our President & C.E.O. Peter Clifton, who co-founded the company with Mike Shatzkin.

Any published author or co-author can easily and immediately update their author page which is linked to individual work pages. In addition to the free level, we have two new membership levels designed to make additional web marketing tools available at low cost. These additional levels include blog tools, additional linking and media postings, event listings, online press kits and banner customization.

Any reader can join the filedbyauthor community and start connecting with authors. Readers can fill in their own pages, collect favorite authors and books, write reviews, rate works and authors, and comment through wall postings.

“We hope to level the web marketing playing field for all authors, eliminate some of the challenges authors face when designing their online presence, and help every author become more easily discoverable through a single search tool,” added Clifton.