You've just gone through the work and the excitement of completing your first book or e-book and you are ready to showcase it to the world. Now, you have to get the word out and try to get some buyers for it. This by the way, is just as strenuous if not even more so than writing the book in the first place. You will realize soon enough that you have to dig deep within yourself to market what you have created to others to make the sales. One author I know when once asked how his books managed to sell so well said. "It's easy. Write it, put it in a place where people can buy it, and then promote the heck out of it for about 3 years."
In this article I don't plan to discuss the myriad of things you can do outside of the Internet to promote your creation such as book signings, getting a table at trade fairs to showcase your book and give away autographed copies, trying to get retailers to sell it (if you've created a bound version of it), etc. The tips provided below are written to help you get maximum publicity for your book or e-book online.
Let's start with building your online selling strategy. Where will you put your book to sell it?
The most popular choice on the Internet is Amazon. This is a very good first step for many books, particularly e-books. Amazon owns Kindle Books, the defacto leader in E-Book marketing and distribution. The whole world has heard of Kindle and there are literally millions of Kindle Readers out there that people can use to read your e-book not to mention that Kindle book reading software is available for computers, tablets and even mobile devices - so it is very easy to distribute and make your creation accessible to others. Amazon also owns "Create Space", a second entity that can turn your E-book into a bound book that can also be sold on Amazon-Kindle and through distributors globally. If you want to "pay-market" your book through Amazon? You can do that as well through building one of their economically priced advertising campaigns.
Going through this process also gets you an ASIN number for your book or an ISBN number for your book if you wish to go that route (needed for selling hard-copy books through Create Space but not for e-books just sold on Amazon-Kindle). You can enroll your book as well into the Kindle KDP Select program which is like an online library that people pay a monthly subscription to and you can get additional royalty payments for your book from here - based on number of pages read. You can also get promotional banners from Amazon that you can put on your website or blogsite and even send in e-mails to people to further promote your book.
Bottom line is that starting out, Amazon - Kindle has a lot to offer a new self-publisher. You can literally get your book out there in under a week and start making money from it if people purchase it.
But you will need to do further work to get your book to actually sell and start earning you revenues. Your book will get onto Amazon OK, but it has to be seen and desired in order for you to make sales. There are books that have sat there for years without any sales at all so don't think your done once you get your book published and onto the site. You have to help the sales happen by promoting it. So below is a list of things you should also be doing yourself online to get people to your Amazon purchased page to buy your book.
* Be sure you build out your Author profiles on Amazon Central and on book review sites such as "Good Reads". On Good Reads, also be sure to get your book into their "Listopia" program - so learn how to do that. Find other similar Author sites and get your name out there as well.
* Consider getting out an online press release on your book as well. Make sure it has back links to where people can view and purchase your book. Take a look at "Reddit" as one possible site for this.
* Promote your book on different social media platforms such as Pinterest, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, etc.
* Consider building a YouTube channel and creating a promotional video for your book with linkbacks to where your book can be purchased.
* Create your own "Author" blog-site to further promote your book. Traverse the Internet to get linkbacks to your site or book through guest posting, article writing, etc.
* Get an automated e-mail marketing and autoresponder system in place and use it to help promote your book - build your e-mail subscriber lists!
* Consider getting a podcast series going on iTunes where you can have "podcast discussions" about the content of your book. FYI - Once you get some of these built, stick an image of your book in front of them and upload these to your YouTube channel as well as "Video Podcasts".
* Keep posting and guest posting and getting yourself out there with people. The more people that know about you and your book, the better your sales will be. Build relationship bridges with other authors (EzineArticles and Good Reads are good places to do this), with book reviewers, people knowledgeable in your "book space", etc. Get known out there.
* Build a Facebook business page for your book and put your author "Good Reads" button onto your Facebook pages that can bring people back to your Author page at GoodReads. Promote your book on Facebook using the "Boost Post" feature - this is a very economical marketing platform with great targeting capabilities.
* Be sure to get on Google+ and build out your profile there. Then, search for and join several communities relating to your topic area and also relating to other authors - become a positive content contributor to these communities.
In summary, if you can get through all the above steps for promoting your book online, you will be well on your way of starting to build the base needed to start earning revenues for your book. Best of luck to you in your writing career.
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