Book Marketing #3 Blogging You're a writer, so what better way to get the word out about your book than to write about it? Basically, a blog is a way of writing and publishing short articles online and you control the content. Wordpress is a great platform for setting up a blog, either within your author/book website or as a standalone blog site. Write about what you know, share your articles with others, invite guest bloggers, reviews of your book, and link your blog to other sites and blogs.  Maintaining a blog takes some effort, but is a great (and free) way to market your work and get involved with the online writing community. Articles Writing articles and posting them online will help lift your profile and build your brand. Articles are usually associated with non-fiction books, but even a novel may have a central theme. If you write a detective story set in 19th century London or the modern day outback of Australia, no doubt you will do a fair bit o...

Book Marketing #2
Do I need a website? It's important to understand that your readers not only will be interested in your book, but they will also want to know about you, the author.  To feed this interest, you will need a platform on which to build your brand. The best place to start is by creating a website devoted to you and your book. This one marketing step is a must for all authors. Imagine it as your shop front and it is open 24/7 to the world! Creating a website doesn't mean you have to spend thousands of dollars. In fact, depending on your requirements and knowledge, you can set up a basic site for free. (At this point, you need to decide how much work you can manage yourself, how much you are willing to outsource, and how serious you are about sales.) The cheapest option: You can create your own website using free program Wordpress or Joomla. (Both program are used by pro-site builders to excellent effect.) If you choose to go it alone...

  Book Marketing Part 1 This is the big one: the one question all self-published authors want to know the answer to: 'How do I market my book?' We've broken this marketing report into five sections, and will discuss the following topics over the next few weeks: #1. Book Marketing: Beware the shark infested waters. #2. Do you need a website? #3. Blogging, writing articles, forums and book reviews. #4. Using Social Media Networks to market your book. #5. Building your brand. #1 Beware! As a self-published author and director of Publicious, I am constantly searching for that magic-bullet that will not only fire my books to success, but also those of my clients. In my early days, as a novice self-publisher, I was tempted by companies who offered 'marketing packages' and 'guarantees' that my book would be stocked in bookstores worldwide at wallet-deflating pri...

Online global distribution how does it work? Not so long ago, a self-published author would have to print a large quantity of books, and then post them out, one at a time, whenever a sale was achieved. This was very costly; especially if sales were being made overseas. With the varied options for online global distribution, this expense and limited delivery is now a thing of the past. Print On Demand (POD) works in conjunction with online stores so authors no longer have to purchase a stock of their books or worry about the high cost of postage. When a buyer purchases a book through one of the online stores, such as Amazon or Barnes and Noble, that one book is then printed at the POD facility closest to the buyer and posted to the buyer at the buyer's expense. Taking advantage of this method of book distribution launches your book to the world market and ensures it is for sale 24/7. Have you ever purchased a book from Amazon or one of the similar online stor...