You've written that book and now you're looking to make it into a bestseller. Your friends and experts have suggested that marketing the book on the Internet is one of the best ways to promote your book. Where do you start? What's the best use of your time?
I'd like to answer these questions by creating a list of all the Internet marketing activities that come to my mind. My hope is that this community will jump in and add to this list or comment on the efficacy of the activities on the list. It's also possible that some of the activities have alternative resources (for example, using Wordpress instead of Blogger for your blog.) Please note that I don't claim to be an expert on book-marketing and some of the ideas that are on this list can be improved. I really want this to be a collaborative effort at list building and would appreciate your input. (Disclosure: I'm the founder of
fReado.com - a site that can help you distribute your book-extract across 60 different social networks and book-marking sites. I will however refrain from giving additional attention to my product in this forum post and attempt to be impartial and objective.)
I'll keep adding to this list as I discover additional activities. After sometime I hope to create a neat, printable document that will serve as a resource for future authors.
Thanks in advance for your participation.
Let's get started:
- Setup a blog (
www.blogger.com)
- Write out a press-release and distribute the press-release (
www.prweb.com)
- Become active on Amazon.com (create a full profile and link to your blog-feed)
- Create a book-extract (be generous with the number of pages you share - at least 30 pages)
- Make a book-widget out of your book-extract and use it instead of your book image
- Make and post a YouTube video about your book
- Get yourself interviewed by a prominent podcaster in your field
- Post your book-extract to your Facebook profile
- Post your book-extract to your MySpace profile
- Post your book-extract to your Orkut profile
- Tell all your Yahoo email contacts about your book
- Tell all your Hotmail email contacts about your book
- Tell all your Gmail email contacts about your book
- Get your book book-marked on Delicious
- Get your book book-marked on Digg
- Get your book book-marked on Reddit
Any other ideas? Please contribute your thoughts. Add to this list. Tell us what works and what doesn't. Elaborate on the points mentioned. I really want this to become the ultimate resource for authors looking to market their books online.