How to Promote and Market Your Book on the Internet

Have you just spent quite a bit of time writing and editing your book or white paper to help you promote your business? And now you’re ready to promote it but not sure where to start?

If you’ve even considered promoting your book or white paper, you’ll enjoy today’s post, which was inspired by a very helpful comment posted by Teena Hughes of A Night in Paris in response to a post Branding & Marketing almost a year ago about: 7 Ways to Successfully Market Your Book Online.

I checked out her website and A Night in Paris looks like the ultimate guide to all things Paris and is really fun to read and expore. She’s putting the finishing touches on her book “A Silk Adventure“. Here are Teena’s suggestions:

I do a lot of social networking with social media, and there are many ways to leverage your book. All of the examples above are fantastic, but I’d do one step forward on your own book’s website.

• allow people to leave comments, and reply as soon as you can
• create a page for FAQs – what do people ask you most about your book? answer them on this page
• keep adding pages to your book’s website – don’t leave it at Home page and Contact page – search engines will NEVER find you
• write one or two info pages – per week – about different things in your book e.g. if it’s travel book, focus on one idea per page
• you’re not giving away the contents of the book, but the internet is based on free info, so build up a rapport with your visitors by offering great info for free on your site
• encourage people to sign up on each page of your site
• create a PDF of 5-10 pages of your book – a ‘taster’ – give that away for all subscribers
• post quizzes on your site about your topic to encourage interaction
• build your mailing list by offering great tips (or focus on a chapter heading) once or twice a month as a newsletter
• ask subscribers to tell you about their story (related to your book) and post them on your site

All of this creates additional content, and if you SEO your pages, the search engine robots will come by often to see what all the activity is about :-) Trust me, this one WORKS!

This may not be suitable for a book, but on one of my websites I give away a free gift each month, name drawn from the list of subscribers. The gift has a perceived value of $35, and because it’s free, friends tell friends tell
friends.

This could be juicy tips as a PDF which is ‘not in the book, not on the website, secret info only an insider would know” (for example).

Hope this helps someone, and thanks for all the great tips above!

Cheers, Teena!

Thanks Teena! These are great ideas!!!

Do you have a book that you’re promoting on line? Many authors find out that once the writing is done, the work has just begun. The great thing about promoting online is that you can do so much of the work yourself, but sometimes it is difficult to know where to start.

First step, create the marketing plan! Do you have a marketing program for your book? Check out these helpful links:

• Chris Brogan: Promoting your book online
• Wiley Publishing White Paper: Marketing Your Book
• Roger C. Parker: How to Promote Your Book on the Internet
• Laura Ramirez: Book Marketing: Five Tips for Successful Online Book Promotion
• Chris Brown (me!): Branding & Marketing: 7 Ways to Successfully Market Your Book Online