3 S.R. Johannes: How to Plug Your Book

Thursday, November 06, 2008

How to Plug Your Book

Plug Your Book - Online Book Marketing for Authors by Steve Weber

I just finished reading this book. It had great tips on how to market your book online!

A few tips I took:
  • Amazon has programs to help authors market their books - Connect (blogs to Amazon customers), adding Amazon friends to reach Top Reviewers, BXGY program - pairs your book with like books for a fee), Better together (free pairings based on sales)
  • Google Alerts - helps you find top keywords you specificy and alerts you of when somethign containing your key words appears in peridoicals. Also can tell you when someone mentions your blog.
  • Blogging - Create an angle/niche to blog about. Create a community. YOU can also do blog tours/interviews with other bloggers to promote your book
  • Book Trailers - vitlit.com, creates trailers, interviews. Or you can do it yourself and upload to Youtube.com
  • Titlez.com - you can see how your book sales compare to others
  • GoogleAdsense - best known web ad market
  • Public discussion groups - you can post information about our book in target markets/audiences
  • create great web sites - track your stats (statcounter or google analytics), Search engine optimization, keyword density
  • Press Releases - post on prweb.com or prnewswire.com
Here are a few posts about marketing and even querying I saw today:

http://pubrants.blogspot.com/ Nelson Agency intern gives some insight into business

http://acrowesnest.blogspot.com/ making media your BFF. Getting reviews

http://acrowesnest.blogspot.com/ the query wars

http://bookendslitagency.blogspot.com/ advice from Bookends authors on marketing


Tell me - what other suggestions do you have for marketing? Let me know and I will combine all the posts.

8 comments:

Casey Something said...

Marketing scares the crud out of me.

:p

This is a great post though. I've been paying more attention to marketing techniques for writers lately. I certainly want to be prepared if/when the times comes for it.

Thanks for stopping by my blog! I'm going to add you to my blog roll, if you don't mind. : )

Shelli (srjohannes) said...

Thanks - I think as writers we forget the marketing side of things. WE start marketing the minute we try create a hook in our books. I love your blog too! :)

Anonymous said...

This is a great post and a very informative site. I would like to link our sites if you are interested.

My site is http://the-new-author.blogspot.com

Come by and let me know what you think.

Corey Schwartz said...

Oh, funny. I am in the middle of reading this book. That's why I started a blog on Thursday. I'm going to try to add you to my blog roll (if I can figure out what that is)

Shelli (srjohannes) said...

Brian - nice to see another freelancer. Good luck to you :)

Corey - wierd you read the same book. Ill check out your blog too. :) PS Bog roll is a list of your fav blogs.

Anonymous said...

I'm absolutely loving learning about these new sites. Never before heard of A Crow's Nest or Bookends. Once again, I ask: When do you sleep?

Carrie Harris said...

Oooh! Ooooh! I think I'm going to have to pick up this book. If I think positively about a future sale, I start wondering how in the heck I'm going to manage a lot of in-person marketing with three young children. So I'm thinking (tentatively, of course) that I'll need to focus a lot of energy on the online stuff and pick and choose my in-person marketing. So this is right up my alley; thanks for the recommendation!

Sadly enough, I have no suggestions on marketing topics, at least right now. That's kind of why I'm here, after all.

Anonymous said...

I'm embarassed to say that I have this book but haven't put it to good use. Okay, haven't even cracked it open. Yet. So hard to work on the marketing when all I want to do is work on my 'story.'