Allison Furse - ENG 3450

 In terms of revising my Research Proposal, most of it seems very straightforward. I am still working on revising the final draft of my lit review which will involve a little more development of some points and adding an additional source. For the rest of the proposal, I intend to take the concepts and points we've discussed in class and apply them to my research plans. I will detail the work I want to do, how I plan to do it, why it's important, and what I hope to find from it. I'm really excited to continue working on this proposal and to eventually conduct this research as well. 

      Essentially, my entire research topic is a giant research gap. My research project is on the impact of Instagram book reviews on the sales of indie-published books. There is zero research that currently exists that addresses that question. Thus far, all of my research has been peripheral to this topic. I have focused on the importance of book reviews on sales, the use of social media as a marketing tool, and the particular challenges of publishing a book independently. All of these topics together will help to inform my research, but it is hard going into it with no foundation in this topic. 

 The topic of my research is the efficacy of the app Instagram as a vehicle for book reviews on the sales and successes of books, particularly those independently published. There is not much research on this specific topic that has already been done, so I have focused the majority of my research on the importance of book reviews in book sales, and on social media as a marketing tool. Here are my tentative 10 sources:  Batra, R., & Keller, K. L. (2016). Integrating Marketing Communications: New Findings, New Lessons, and New Ideas. Journal of Marketing, 80(6), 122–145. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44134976 Biały, B. (2017). Social Media—From Social Exchange to Battlefield. The Cyber Defense Review, 2(2), 69–90. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26267344 Bourne, M. (2012). Glass-slipper economics: Cinderella stories in indie publishing. Poets & Writers Magazine, 40(1), 85+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A277106932/GLS?u=dixiesta&sid=bookmark-GLS&xid=ffcd9f13 Bourne, ...

       A topic of interest that I think would make very interesting research would be book reviews and their effectiveness, specifically through the medium of Instagram. There is a whole community of individuals who build their entire social media platforms around the review and promotion of books, and I have been involved in this for almost two years now. Instagram has become a place for both readers and authors to come together and engage with one another, and for many people, to discuss what they are reading with others and potentially find new books. I would be very interested in connecting with the authors who send their books to reviewers and promote them online, the reviewers that post about them, and the readers who may or may not be influenced to but/read them, to gauge the effectiveness of this tool in increasing book sales and helping readers find new books they might not have come across otherwise. 

 This is my test post