Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors, Book Publicity through Social Networking
Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors, Book Publicity through Social Networking
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Product Description
Get massive exposure for your book, no special computer skills needed -- trade published or self published, fiction or nonfiction
Discover why authors fail with paid advertising, pay-per-click, fee-based reviews, and "bestseller" campaigns
Blog to connect with readers, driving them to Amazon and bookstores
Boost your visibility with Google, use MySpace for viral marketing
Ignite word of mouth with Web social networks
Capitalize on peer content and "amateur" book reviews
Here's what the experts say about this book:
"A wealth of ideas for making your book stand out, including many techniques for Internet buzz you won't find elsewhere."
-- Jane Corn, Amazon.com Top Reviewer
"I spent two years building up skills to market my books Earthcore and Ancestor online, and I can tell you right now that Plug Your Book would have saved me MONTHS of time. I bought this book just to make sure I wasn't missing anything, but it blew me away."
-- Scott Sigler, # 1 bestselling author
"An amazingly rich collection of cutting-edge promotional tactics and strategies. Makes most other books about online publicity look sickly."
-- Aaron Shepard, author: Aiming at Amazon
"...The one book every author needs to read. I don't care if you're writing a computer book, a science fiction novel or the next great self-help guide, you need to get copy of Steve Weber's Plug Your Book!"
- Joe Wikert, executive publisher, John Wiley & Sons "Practical, pragmatic, low-cost ideas for promoting the heck out of your own book, whether it's fiction, nonfiction, technical, business or anything else."
-- Dave Taylor, author: 'Growing Your Business with Google'
"I've worked with most of America's largest book publishers, helping many of them build online marketing departments. I've worked for authors too. Plug Your Book is the new training manual."
-- Steve O'Keefe, author: 'Publicity on the Internet'
"...Plug Your Book reveals the most effective and least expensive tools to promote your titles and to increase your exposure. It's the best book on online marketing I have ever read, and I read quite a few in the course of my consulting practice with small presses."
-- Marion Gropen, president, Gropen Associates
Here's what's inside the book:
... Taking control of your book sales; Electric word of mouth; Amazon's `long tail;' Personalized bookstores; Book recommendation effectiveness
... Amazon Bestseller Campaigns; How Bestseller Campaigns work; Haywired recommendations
... Amateur book reviews; Credibility through peers; Amazon Top Reviewers; Negative reviews; Posting trade reviews on Amazon; Fee-based book reviews
... Building your author Web site; A survey of author Web sites; Your online press kit; Multimedia for books; Podcasting for publicity; When to launch your site
... Blogging for authors; Connecting with readers; Blog comments: pros and cons; Blogging categories; Over the long haul; Blog-to-e-mail service
... Social networking; MySpace: Not just for kids; Facebook; Create your own group; Other places on MySpace; More social-networking sites
... Tag - You're it!; Personal book tagging; Amazon tags; Amazon Media Library; LibraryThing; Tag-based marketing
... Advanced Amazon tools; Buy X, Get Y; Free paired placement; Single New Product e-mails; Amazon Connect; Listmania; So You'd Like to . . . guides; Search Inside the Book; Statistically Improbable Phrases; Writing book reviews; Amapedia; Customer discussions; BookSurge; Your Amazon profile
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Rating
With the ever-increasing number of authors taking the independent publishing route, the issue of how to publicize your work takes on a greater importance. Even for those who *do* go the normal publisher route, there’s still quite a bit you can do to influence and enhance the success of your book. For that, I would highly recommend Plug Your Book: Online Book Marketing for Authors, Book Publicity through Social Networking by Steve Weber.
Contents: Introduction; Electric Word of Mouth; Amazon Bestseller Campaigns; Amateur Book Reviews; Building Your Author Web Site; Blogging For Authors; Author Blog Platforms Up Close; Blog Tours; Social Networking; Tag – You’re It!; Advanced Amazon Tools; Social Search; Google, Amazon, Digital Content; Book Promotions With eBooks; Syndicating Your Content; Beyond The Blogosphere; Revenue From Your Web Site; Pay Per Click Advertising; Power Tools; Selling On Amazon, Beyond; Other Major Online Retailers; Ethics Of Online Marketing; Recommended Reading; Index
It’s tempting to think that once a publisher puts your book on Amazon or the store shelves, they’ll do everything possible to promote your title. That may be true if you’re Harlan Coben or Janet Evanovich, but let’s be realistic. Not everyone will get that sort of attention. So regardless of who publishes your book, it’s still up to you to get the word out. Steve looks at all the different online options you have available to you as an author to generate buzz. Since Amazon’s such a giant in the book sales industry, quite a bit of the content revolves around how they work. From sales ranking to paired placement to “others have bought”, he gives you enough information to figure out how best to make sure your book gets seen most often by the people most likely to want to purchase it. He also covers the importance of book reviews (of which this qualifies), and it’s a vital piece of the puzzle. Making sure you have reviews attached to your book gives others something to go on if they’re considering a purchase.
Stepping away from Amazon, there’s a whole array of options available to get your name out there. Having a blog is an excellent way to attract potential readers (and to keep actual ones) to your brand or book. He shows how a blog can open up a conversation with your audience in a way few other options can. I hadn’t considered social networking (like MySpace) to be a potential promotion route, but after reading the book I understand how that could work. I’ve even opened up my blog to an author who was doing a virtual blog tour. In that case, the book was backed by a large publishing house and will likely do well on its own. But the authors were wise in making sure they were doing what *they* could to create interest and sales.
Whether you’re a new author going the self-publishing route or an experienced author working on yet another book, you really can’t afford to let your marketing be completely handled by others. Nearly all the ideas in Plug are little to no cost, and the payback can be swift and rewarding…
Rating
I thought I knew a lot of tips and tricks after reading all of the other “Promote Your Book” type titles out there.
Guess not.
My copy of Steven Weber’s “Plug Your Book” has over 20 dog eared pages with enough highlited entries on them, that I could hold up the book as a warning when I’m changing a flat tire on the side of the road.
He covers every facet of online promotions, both good and bad, with pertinent detail including URL’s and attributed examples.
I highly recommend this book to novice and veteran authors alike who are looking to generate additional buzz for their titles as well as that holy grail of publishing…royalties.
Rating
I really liked this book a lot. It was jam packed with content and great information. I’ve been using the Amazon site for a little over a year now to help me with my SCORE counseling. And I’ve written a number of book reviews on books I recommend during my SCORE counseling. As a result, I have become quite familiar with the inner workings of the Amazon site. In my humble opinion, this book does a great job of demystifying Amazon so an author, consultant, or coach can use the site to maximize exposure for their book or publications. The marketing system this book includes will work well for nonfiction writings. Fiction writers probably won’t get much benefit from this book, but maybe authors of children’s books could benefit?
The book includes material on the following six topics:
1. Amazon Online Retailer
2. Other Major Online Retailers
3. Ethics of Online Marketing
4. Web Sites
5. Blogs (A Special Kind of Web Site)
6. Networking Online
Topics 1 and 4 through 6 were covered in some depth as follows:
Amazon Online Retailer
>>Amazon Bestseller Campaigns
>>Google, Amazon, Digital Content
>>Selling on Amazon, Beyond
>>Amateur Book Reviews
>>Tag – You’re It!
>>Advanced Amazon Tools
Web Sites
>>Building Your Author Web Site
>>Book Promotion with e-Books
>>Pay Per Click Advertising
>>Revenue from Your Web Site
>>Power Tools
Blogs (A Special Kind of Web Site)
>>Blogging for Authors
>>Author Blog Platforms Up Close
>>Blog Tours
>>Syndicating Your Content
Networking Online
>>Beyond the Blogosphere
>>Electric Word of Mouth
>>Social Networking
>>Social Search
My favorite topic covered was Amazon Online Retailer. That topic definitely dominates the text. The topics on Web sites didn’t do a whole lot for me since I’m pretty well versed on that subject. Recently I have read a few books on blogging, and the coverage on that topic was good. And I enjoyed reading what the author had to say about Networking Online (NO). I may want to try some of the suggestions on NO to help market a business I’m starting?
Although I gave this book a “5 star” rating, I came very close to giving it just 4 stars. The outline of a book and its flow are VERY important to me. The topics I list above were the chapter titles in the book. But they are not organized here the way they were in the book. Thus, the book did not really flow for me. Just the same… 5 stars!
Rating
You’ve got your novel all written, proofread, and have even found someone to read it and give a good critique of it, and his suggestions were all carefully considered and where appropriate implemented. Now what?
For most new authors, what’s next is an excruciating travail of trying to find someone interested in actually publishing it. The process can take years. But then you find a small publisher willing to take a flyer on your book, and you finally hold an actual printed copy in your hands. Your job as the author is done now, right? Surely your publisher will do everything possible to make this book sell, and sell…
Well, maybe. More likely is that their `marketing’ department will only put out a few announcements, try and set up a few speaking/book signing events for you, and have it on the shelves for a few months only. If you really want to make your book sell, you need to do something about it yourself. How?
Read this book. Follow its suggestions. Doing so is not a small amount of work, but you’ve already invested a huge amount of effort in writing your book, so a little additional effort is probably more than justified.
This book has as its main focus spreading the word about your book through various on-line sites and tools. Weber makes the telling point that the network is your friend, that one mention at one place leads to another connection at another site – and readers of these sites, seeing your book mentioned more than once, are far more likely to buy your book.
The main tool he recommends is this site. For better or worse, Amazon is the 800 lb gorilla of on-line book marketing. Weber details many, many features of this site that can help you sell your book and precisely how you can take advantage of them. Prime is garnering reviews of your book, and Weber does an excellent job of explaining which reviewers to contact and how to get those reviews without coming across as a spammer. To some degree, this review feels a little incestuous, as I’m one of the resources he lists as useful. He also explains the various `tie-in’ tools available to authors and publishers, the Amazon sales ranking system, the benefits and downsides of contracting to get your book pushed up in the Amazon rank system, linking possibilities, and what to do about reviews that appear that you might consider inappropriate or factually in error, along with many other things.
Other, more traditional methods of promoting your book, and other on-line retailers are not ignored, but they receive a much less detailed delineation, along with comments about how hard most of these methods are for an individual author to actually use.
The second main tool he recommends is the blog/web site. Once again, the main idea is to get your book noticed by those who care about your subject matter. He details where and how to set up a blog, and gives solid recommendations about what content it should contain, from press-release type material to audio/visual author interviews (and also gives some pretty good estimates of the cost factors of producing such materials). Google page-ranking, click-ads, and other such items relating to how easily searches for your book’s subject material will actually return your book’s title are also covered.
Third is something he identifies as `social networking’ on places like MySpace. Once again, he offers very specific suggestions on how to go about this without irritating those you are communicating with, a highly important point on today’s net where anything even remotely looking like spam is going to be immediately ignored.
Now the real question is, do Weber’s recommended actions actually work? The answer to this is a qualified `yes’: in general, it won’t make your book a best-seller, but can get it into the mid-list sales numbers, assuming your book is of general interest and is well written – a point Weber emphasizes, as no amount of marketing will help a bad book. Weber gives several examples of authors who have been successful in this manner, and I know from tracking a couple of authors that I like that things like a well-written blog and good reviews can do a lot to get a book noticed and bought.
Throughout this book, Weber gives specific web addresses, contact information, and setup instructions. As such things can change with lightning speed on the web, he also maintains a on-line site that has updates to such information.
About the only thing missing from this was an overall estimate of just how much effort doing all the things he recommends would take. While this is certainly not a minor number, it’s also true that few people would actually try and do everything specified here. A person planning on trying his suggestions should carefully read this once, then go back a second time and determine which particular portions of it are both applicable to his book and are something he thinks he can actually do.
In all, a very solid, practical book that should be of great value, especially to new or lesser-known writers.
— Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)
Rating
I’ve spent two years building up skills to market my books Earthcore and Ancestor online, and I can tell you right now that Plug Your Book would have saved me MONTHS of time. I bought this book just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, but it blew me away. I’m already implementing Weber’s practices in my marketing.
Rating
Authors can’t rely solely on their publishers to do the marketing for their book especially self-publishers. They need to take it in their own hands and the Internet simplifies the task. However, are authors making full use of the Internet? Plug Your Book! is a checklist complete with instructions so authors ensure they explore every potential book promotion resource.
The book’s introduction gives good advice on how to use this book. Make a copy of the table of contents and cross off each item as you do them or pass over them. To be thorough, read the book and decide which methods work best.
As a frequent book reviewer, I’ve seen successful authors rely on many of the tactics covered in this book. Book marketing goes beyond using Amazon, blogs and your own web site. Weber shows how to get more mileage from these resources and points to others like social networks, search engines, and tags.
Creating an account in MySpace may be obvious to most. Some tips Weber offers for making MySpace work for you including making the right friends, managing your top eight pictures, and paying extra attention to specific parts of the profile. He provides detailed advice so there’s no confusion on what to do.
The Internet makes it easy for authors and publishers to use other identities in posting positive book reviews and buying books to boost the book’s rank. Weber briefly addresses the ethics of marketing books online.
Authors and Internet pros who know about most of the resources covered in the book will benefit because of its organization, scannable contents, readability and conciseness. Plug Your Book! succeeds in ensuring the author makes the most of every opportunity and resource.
Rating
Today, the web is much more than a place to blog, catch up with friends, shop or follow the latest developing news. It has also become the most powerful marketing tool ever designed, particularly for those who are trying to promote and market their self-published books and magazines. Though I’ve had one book commercially published and another one undergoing final editing, I’ve always wondered how I would have gone about it had I never found a publisher. Since I’m working on a self-publishing project for a very specialized niche market, this book arrived in the nick of time, before I had even moved beyond the conceptual stage. Steve Weber’s book is tailor made for folks like me or someone contemplating doing their own publishing, because it makes the daunting task of sorting through the hype and pure baloney found on the net very simple and user-friendly. From topics ranging from how to use MySpace to your own advantage and how to tag your book to attract maximum interest, and from how to market it as well as to find and work with customers, this is the definitive primer. Weber’s writing is direct and to the point, devoid of jargon, and full of practical examples that illustrate how you can put the power of the Internet to work for you. Highly recommended, read this first before you buy anything from anyone else!
Rating
The World Wide Web is a wonderful Al Gore invention; at long last, authors from small houses or authors who have self-published can finally compete with the big boys in terms of marketing and promotion. But for those of us rather technically challenged (myself included) the Internet–and its virtually limitless options–can be a rather intimidating accomplice when it comes to how and where to most effectively promote your book. Enter Steve Weber and his little gem of a how-to: PLUG YOUR BOOK! ONLINE BOOK MARKETING FOR AUTHORS.
Weber starts with the obvious–Amazon, the world’s largest bookseller. Most of the features here I already knew about and had played with, yet Weber effectively covers all the bases and offers enlightening tips to make your title soar in the Amland sales rankings. Of more interest to me were his discussions of promotion elsewhere online, including blogging, setting up an account on MySpace. . .even utilizing ebay. Wow. None of this stuff would have occurred to me if I had had a gunnysack full of epiphanies.
Weber not only tells you about these websites, he gives you links to everything. The information is presented in a concise, informative, and organized manner (just like I like it), and Weber doesn’t wax poetic on anything–just the facts.
I have implemented several of Weber’s suggestions, but have only scratched the tip of the cyber iceberg. For those of you who have written or are writing a book, I highly recommend you use PLUG YOUR BOOK! as your online marketing guide. Your pocketbook will thank you later.
–D. Mikels, Author, DAWN OF THE TRANSCENDENCE/WALK-ON/THE RECKONING
Rating
Being an author, I just had to read this book. It is chalk full of great ideas and inexpensive ways to plug your book. Steve goes in great detail on how to use myspace, Amazon, and blogs to promote your book. It full with such interesting information that I read the entire book in one day. I am recommending this book to all of my author friends and future authors I talk to.
Rating
While not exhaustive,this book is a GREAT checklist of things to do to promote your book. Yes, the publisher promised. No, you have to do stuff yourself. Did you forget MySpace? A blog? This book has ideas you may have forgotten, or at least it serves as a gentle reminder and organizer. Recommended.