Launching a Book Yet to be Published

Will "preloading" on the social networks pay off?

Unless you are Sarah Palin and make it to the top of the New York Times Bestleller List before your book hits the streets, you have to look at ways to become established at some level to at least gain a leg up on promoting your book.

If you are lucky enough to have a literary agent or traditional publisher working on your behalf to ensure you get noticed, then your talents as a writer have already been proven to someone in the traditional book publishing community, and the impedus is on them to take care of promotion. But what if you are like me and working on your first book?

As my book, 'Wealth Virtues' is not due out until early 2010, I started in the Spring of 2009 of establishing myself more prominantly within the social networking community, specifically under the title of the book. For example, my twitter address is http://twitter.com/WealthVirtues. I have started a discussion group on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=45900532926, and began a Ning discussion group (similar to this one) at http://wealthvirtues.ning.com. I do not expect much traffic on the latter two, but I have been building a followership on the Twitter account. And finally, have just designed and launched a website with blog at http://wealthvirtues.com.

The big question is, will all of these systems actually help? Yes I plan to do some "live" marketing after the book is published, but I am cureious to know if the veteran authors here have had successes doing the same things. In essence, has a lot of your pre-marketing paid off?

I will actually be able to measure this myself after book publication and availability. I believe the content is good, useful, readable, and understandable - but will it be acceptable for a mass market? These, I am sure, are questions every author (especially new authors) ask.

I will report back on my findings and hopefully pass on some success stories. Any hints or suggestions you may have on the sites listed above would be appreciated.

Jim Ward
Poor Richard Web Press
www.PRWP.com
www.WealthVirtues.com