Book Marketing

Have you recently self-published an eBook and now find yourself wondering what you should do next…?

If you’re doing your research and reading the right blogs, you’ve probably already heard that the next task at hand is marketing your eBook and building your author platform.

But what does that actually involve, and how do you get started?

The following list of tips should give you a few ideas to try out as soon as you are finished reading this article. Ignore the ones you have already tried or are currently using. Choose at least one or two new methods and make a point of trying them out in the near future. Track your progress and note your success with each of them.

Create social media profiles. This almost goes without saying in this day and age. Social media is all the rage and it’s not going to disappear any time soon. Even if you are already using popular sites like Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, you should consider creating separate accounts for your author branding. For example, if you have a personal profile on Facebook, then you should consider creating a Facebook Page for yourself (as an author) or a fan page for your eBook. Keep all the content on your author page relevant to your writing and your eBooks. Use your personal profile for other things.

Pitch blogs, radio shows and podcasts for interviews. Do some research and try to find a few blogs or even podcasts within your niche or genre, then see if they feature any video/audio interviews. If they have interviewed others in the past (particularly authors) then find out who the appropriate contact is for requesting an author interview (oftentimes the producer). Just remember that when you are a guest for an interview, you should always try to keep the conversation broad and relevant to everyone in the audience, rather than focus mostly on yourself and your book.

Get book reviews. As a self-published author, this one is easier said than done. Not to mention, if you only have an eBook version available then it becomes even more of a challenge. However, there are some review blogs and websites that specialize in independently published works. Do a bit more research and make a list of potential sites to pitch your eBook to. Just be sure that you always carefully review the submission guidelines for each site or blog, to be sure that the reviewer accepts your genre.

Give copies of your book away. If an enthusiastic fan on a social media site mentions your book and expresses interest in checking it out, offer to send them a free copy. Don’t forget to encourage them to post a review when they are finished, to share their thoughts. Hold a book giveaway contest on your blog or through your email newsletter. Consider choosing a print-on-demand service like CreateSpace or Lulu to order a few print copies, to carry on you and give away to interested people.

Create a Google Alert for your name and book title. Setup a Google Alert for your full name (if this is the name you use as an author) and also one for the title of your eBook. Be sure to place both within “quote marks.” Choose “all results” and “as-it-happens” for the frequency and type. This is a great way to receive instant email notifications anytime someone mentions you or your book on the web. Use it as a tool to engage with your fans, readers and overall audience. Respond to blog comments, thank reviewers and answer questions.

Create a Squidoo Lens for your eBook. Squidoo has a special template for book reviews called SquidLit. Use it to create a media hub for your eBook by gathering reviews from around the web and adding the links to your lens. Be sure you always request an mp3 copy of your interviews, so that you can upload them to Dropbox and link to them too. Embed any YouTube videos related to your book as well. Put all of your media and press coverage in one convenient spot.

Submit favorite quotes from your book to GoodReads. If your Kindle product page lists any “popular highlights” from Kindle users, copy/paste them and submit them to GoodReads quote database. Tons of quote sites pull content from GR’s massive collection of author quotes, which means they will appear on those sites as well. You may also soon notice that you are being quoted in Tweets!

Create a quiz or presentation about your book. This one is for when you’re feeling a bit creative. Quizzes work especially well for non-fiction authors. Make a short list of questions that are answered in your book, and create a promotional quiz to test readers and spike their interest in learning more about your topic. For fiction, you could create presentation slides or even record a book trailer to achieve a similar effect.

Write and distribute a press release. You may not have considered this one, but it worked quite well for me and I highly recommend sending out a press release to announce the publication of your eBook. Just do your homework and make sure you know how to properly craft and format a press release, or else you will come across as unprofessional and amateur. While there are many free press release submission sites out there, I suggest making a small investment on this one and paying for a distribution service like PRWeb (my personal choice).

Register your own domain, start a blog or newsletter. This one is really important. You need to register your own custom domain to start building a successful author brand, and it should be professionally designed. Include all the relevant information about you as a writer and your books. Make it easy for your visitors to click through to sites where your book can be purchased (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.) and add social sharing buttons as well. Start a blog where you write about your professional life, and only self-promote subtly and on occasion!

Well here we are, and it is 2012 as of this article’s publication date – it seems book marketing has changed so much in the last five years, heck in the last two years, that any book previously written on the topic may be of little use to you, at least unless it’s been updated as of this month. Consider if you will the explosion of the eBook market thanks to Amazon’s Kindle sales, and their ever-trailing competitor Barnes & Noble’s Nook, and in the textbook industry we have the new Apple iPad for electronic textbooks which is sure to change that segment of the book market.

As the publishing industry scrambles to even stay afloat the game-changers are accelerating and taking the entire league and all the stadiums and making it all virtual. So, what’s an author to do, how should they market, and what will yield them the most bang for their marketing dollar? Yes, good question, but I would submit to you that in all this chaos are nothing short of abundant opportunities. In fact, I’ve been selling quite a few eBooks each month at the Kindle eStore, and I am adding more and more titles to my bookshelf each week. Why, simple, I want in on the new paradigm of book selling, where the author now holds the cards – what a wonder time to have full-control.

Indeed, with many eBooks for sale now, and several online articles – I have finally found a home. In producing all this content, I’ve learned a few things, and made some mistakes, recovered from those mistakes, and now have some experience and real world observations to share with you. Best of all, I can safely say that if you are going to market an eBook, this could be your year. No, it’s not going to be so easy you see, you are going to have to really work at it, and you are going to have to play it smart, and ethically too.

Book marketing ain’t what it used to be, the game has changed and it’s time that you changed with it my friend, and fellow author. Think about social networks, about video trailers, about interviews, and even online articles, or guest columns on popular blogs, websites, and yes, even in the print media – it works, and it will bring more people to your online eBooks, and hopefully if you have something compelling to say, you might just sell a few book too. Please consider all this and think on it.

You have mastered your craft and are ready to go. You have even written down notes. Now, you have to figure out how publishing your information is going to actually happen.

Without any info marketing know-how, you may be preoccupied with some ideas such as ‘how to create a CD’ about it, or ‘how to create an MP3′ so viewers or listeners would acquire the ideas direct from these materials. You may even wonder if you can really sell your ideas.

So how do you possibly hand down all that knowledge to others without feeling overwhelmed?

Perhaps what is needed is to produce information marketing products that would contain all knowledge vital to the end user.

These information marketing products may come in the form of any digital media that could be downloaded or bought online to serve as the channels of information.

The biggest concern would be to come up with the right information marketing product that contains all that is needed to for the end user to put into action.

There are simple steps to follow:

First, start out with something simple that you can develop later. This is something which you have mastered and have kept on doing over and over again. It can be translated into an eBook, put into PDF format capitalizing on the SmashWords.com.

How to write an eBook is not really something that is very difficult to do.

Secondly, publish your first eBook, learn the process and then market it over and over again. Never upload it onto WordPress; but upload your document to a password protected section on your own server or hosting account.

Use some banner ads to advertise it; test some copy; and do some refining of the eBook when necessary. When feedback, questions and comments come in use those as the foundation of your next info publishing product. You will be surprised at those who read your first e-book crave your further ideas on the subject.

This next information marketing product could be in the form of an audio product. You can use instant Teleseminar dot com or produce a short video tutorial and upload to Vimeo.