A new way to review or promote books?

Cloudscome introduced me to VoiceThread, and I can't stop thinking about ways authors could use it to reach out to their readers. It's like an interactive booktalk.

Here's a VoiceThread where a class reviews The Landry News by Andrew Clements:



And one more, where fifth graders talk about their favorite books:



Couldn't an author record a reading from her own book, and post it as a public VoiceThread? Then readers could record their responses. The only hitch is that you have to give an email address to register, which I would never ask a child to do. (Although there's an option for a family or educator account, so a child could use an identity under the main account without giving out his email.)

Check it out and if you don't start immediately playing around with your own VoiceThreads, well...you're a stronger person than I was. (You can also search the public threads under the term "review" to pull up more booktalks.)