Book publicity, Facebook, and ELVIS

Yesterday, our friends at Overlook Press had a genius idea for book publicity: hold a Facebook giveaway! While the contest has closed already - it fell, appropriately enough, on Elvis' 74th birthday yesterday - you can follow this link to see how they did it.

The innovative idea even caught the eye of the folks over at GalleyCat, who wrote up a nice post about it. Last I heard, the folks at West Coast Live contacted Overlook about the contest as well!

Book publicists, I think this is a pretty awesome idea for book buzz. Sometimes authors (and even we publicists) don't realize the value of social media when it comes to informing the masses about new books, but clearly, it can have quite an effect...even spilling over into traditional media opportunities.

What are your thoughts?