Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Social Media and Promoting Your Book Online

Book Launch 2.0

This YouTube video about an author marketing the paperback release of his book is pretty funny and has gotten some good play (40,000+ views) in the publishing community. Pretty smart, too. The author, Dennis Cass, truly is promoting the release of his book Head Case: How I Almost Lost My Mind Trying to Understand My Brain, which stemmed from his research in trying to beat a case of writer's block.

A good friend of Cumberland House recently forwarded this slide show. It’s also worth a look.

Rose Keefe is a Cumberland House author who frequently posts comments on this blog (thank you Rose). Her new book, The Starker, is the story of Big Jack Zelig, New York's first great gangster boss.

Rose has recently started her own blog at http://rosekeefe.blogspot.com/. In a post called, “You Wrote It – Now Make Sure They Come,” Rose provides some great ideas well worth reading for authors to promote their books:
- Give the book, and yourself, an online presence.
- Register a domain name (i.e. www.yourname.com) and build a site.
- Update your site regularly.
- Join a forum or e-mail list dedicated to your subject.
- Sign up for an Amazon Author Blog.
- Join GoodReads.com.
- Contact local book clubs.
And my favorite:
- Set up a MySpace or Facebook page. Profiles on social networking sites are ridiculously easy to set up and use. Because they are so popular (not mention searchable, allowing you to locate fans of your book topic), several of my author associates forgo setting up their own websites in favour of having a presence on either of these networks. They have groups dedicated to all kinds of topics, and you’re sure to find one that caters to your target audience. When I was promoting my third release, The Starker: Big Jack Zelig, the Becker-Rosenthal Case, and the Advent of the Jewish Gangster, I created a MySpace profile that appeared to be maintained by Big Jack Zelig himself. True Crime fans got a kick out of it, and even learned to speak 1912 gangster jargon.

Brilliant.

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