I have submitted my book, Fast & Furious Book Promotion, to be available as an ebook on Kindle. However, after uploading my book, I have been unable to set up my account. When I looked into this issue, it appears many other people are trying to set up their accounts as well with no success and it appears this has been going on for some time. The service is still in Beta. You might want to wait until the service actually works before wasting too much time. I’ll keep trying and when I can successfully set up the account and actually see my book available for sale I’ll let everyone know.

When you start using Amazon, either as a customer or an author, you will want to build your profile. If you are a new customer to Amazon or you want to start a new account, when you go to Amazon.com you will click on the link to start a new account at the top of the page. Once you log in, you will then see several new sub-menus appear and one of these will be “Your Profile.” Click on this and begin building your profile.

While filling out the profile is fairly straight forward, a few things to keep in mind is that whenever you do something on Amazon, people will see your signature and be able to click on your name and come directly to this profile page. Your profile page is your portal on Amazon. When you build a listmania list, it will appear on your profile. When you leave a blog post or a book review, it will appear on your profile.

Another helpful hint is to be sure to include your blog site address or your website address in your signature. You will see why when you start interacting on Amazon. Your signature appears when you interact in the Amazon community, like when you leave a book review for example.

When you set up your profile, you will also want to set up your AmazonConnect function. You can click on the orange button that says, “Edit Your Profile” to find the AmazonConnect set up page. You can also get there by going to www.amazon.com/connect. Once you set this function up, you can begin using your Amazon blog. If you already have an outside blog, you can simply have your posts feed directly to your Amazon blog. This is what I set up, but I also plan to make original posts when I can.

It might be helpful to view my profile to get a visual of what I’m talking about. To see my profile, click on this link.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A2Y200C07X1N5T/ref=sv__4

I’ve read a lot about ebooks and I’ve blogged many times on how well they work or don’t work etc, etc. Today I found this blog post (see below) and I thought, why worry whether it works or doesn’t work, we should all just be doing it. The post gives detailed information on how to get your ebook out and then there are multiple comments from other people offering great insight. Here are two things that impressed me. First of all, the author sold 30 copies in 20 days. That’s great. Sure, he had some problems and he returned some, but 30 copies in 20 days, that’s over $300 in sales with no variable printing and shipping costs. The second thing that impressed me was that half of his ebook sales were by customers outside of the US. He attributes this to a better acceptance of ebooks overseas. I’ve spent a lot of time outside the US and this author may be on to something. To read his article, click on the link.

http://www.fonerbooks.com/2008/05/new-pdf-ebook-sales-data-and-problems.html

John F. Kennedy lived a long time before the Internet and the mega online bookstore Amazon. And yet, the more I learn about social media and using Amazon to promote books, the more I keep thinking about Kennedy’s famous inaugural speech back in January 1961. Toward the end of his speech he says:

“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.” Inaugural Address by John F. Kennedy - January 20th 1961

A few months ago I walked into the Sam Wellers bookstore, an independent bookstore here in Salt Lake City, Utah and I asked the General Manager what kind of author he likes to work with. He simply said, “a famous one.” That got me thinking about JFK’s speech. How often are we so caught up in what we want or need that we do not think about what the bookstore owner wants or what an agent wants or a publisher or Amazon?

In the month of October, I will be discussing 10 tactics authors can use to promote their books on Amazon. When you look at these tactics, you will notice that most of them are geared to helping Amazon sell more books. You will also be interacting with your competitors. To be successful on Amazon, authors will need to be comfortable with these two concepts: helping Amazon and helping other authors, authors who sell books similar to yours. But, as you go through these 10 tactics, you will begin to see how these tactics will also help you build your own author platform.

So here are the top 10 tactics I’ll be discussing in the month of October:

1. Building your Amazon profile
2. Using your Amazon blog
3. Using Listmania
4. Using Amazon Guides
5. Building your book detail page
6. Using Amazon Advantage
7. Using the search inside function
8. Using Amazon Marketplace
9. Why you might want to use the BXGY service
10. Using the CAP program

I received an email from Alex Mandossian today introducing his idea for an audio billboard. To see how this tool might help you sell books or put people in seats for a seminar, click here.

I’ve blogged several times on strategies on giving away free copies of your book. Today’s strategy is one of the best I’ve read. It comes form Joe Wikert’s blog and if you read the comments you’ll see that many other people agree that the Thomas Nelson groups seems to have hit on something with this strategy. Here’s a quick blurb and I encourage you to click over to the full article.

Kudos to the PR team at Thomas Nelson. I thought it was a cool idea that they were offering a free copy of their new book The Faith of Barack Obama to the first 100 bloggers who promised to write a review of it. It’s a good, smart way to leverage the blogosphere…but it’s not exactly revolutionary, right? That’s not the end of the story…

http://jwikert.typepad.com/the_average_joe/2008/08/thomas-nelson-pr-gets-it.html?cid=126653562#comments

Not sure if you spend much time on the Writer’s Digest website. I know I wish I spent more time there. I did find some time to visit this evening and I found an interesting interview about the need for self-publishers to hire professional marketers to help them. I couldn’t agree more. To watch the video, click on the link below.

Writer and marketing expert M.J. Rose (The Reincarnationist) chats with Writer’s Digest editor Maria Schneider about her early days of self-publishing and why she thinks you should consider hiring professionals to market your work.

http://writersdigest.com/article/wdlive-mj-rose/

I received an email from book marketing teacher, Liz Nakazawa, about a tool she uses to simplify her book promotion activities. She calls her tool the “One-page Book Sheet” for non-fiction books. According to Liz, the One-page book sheet is an easier, cheaper and faster way of getting the word out about a book than giving away books, which is an expensive form of marketing. She says this tactic has worked well for her when promoting her books.

Liz is open to sharing her tactic with other authors and you can contact her by email at liznakazawa@gmail.com

One thing I love about working with authors is how creative each author is when it comes to promoting his or her book. In fact, this is why I talk about the need for authors to “invent” their own strategies rather than relying on other so-called proven strategies. You can read more about creating your own strategy in our book publishing and book promoting sections once you register to our site. Registration is free. Click here if you’d like to register now.

For years now I’ve been a big believer in the power of the “Blog” to sell books. But in truth, a blog is more of a platform building tool than a sales tool. An author’s platform is his/her credibility and audience. If you start a professional blog about your subject matter, you will begin to position yourself as an expert in your field. As you continue to blog, you will also create a following; a following you can track by the unique visitors to your blog.

A few months after I started my blog about publishing books, I had a Wall Street Journal reporter calling me about book publishing. That’s credibility. On my blog, I have a place for people to sign up for our community, Authors On The Net. With each sign-up, my audience is building. This, in my opinion, is the power of blogging. Credibility and Audience. Most authors will probably experience few direct book sales from their blog, but if done correctly, all authors can build their credibility and their audience for their book.

I am a strong believer that to publish and promote a book, an author should use a blog as the centerpiece for their book promotion. The key concept is platform. Selling books begins with a strong platform.