The prevailing feeling I get when I speak with authors and surf the web is that book promotion is a necessary evil. Many people, myself included, are trying to take the pain out of book promotion. This morning I woke up and wanted to know if any author out there is having any fun promoting his or her book.

Personally, I like selling. Selling my business, my book and my kit, Self-Publishing in a Box is fun for me. I like having a goal and working to attain that goal. But what about authors in general? Are you having fun promoting your books? If so, let us hear what you are doing. Promoting your book should be as fun as writing your book. Is it?

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

Interesting article here by Gregory A. Kompes titled Writerpreneur: Electronic Self-Publishing. In his article, Mr. Kompes talks about using blogs, articles, ebooks, audio and video to build an electonic footprint on the web to improve your author platform.

I’d like to add the importance of building a strategic plan to promote your book. Authors have hundreds of tactics they can use to promote themselves, but without a clear plan in place, many authors simply dabble in these tactics and do not pursue them vigorously. If you are a blogger, then you understand the importance of blogging regularly and interacting with other blogs. This activitiy may take several hours a week. If you use Facebook, you’ll be spending several hours a week building your author platform there as well.

As you perform these electonic publishing activities, you will see your following grow. It is usually a long and arduous task, but without a platform, you have very little chance taking your book to the next level so the work is worth it if you stick to it.

I was on the phone today talking to a prospective ZDocs author and she told me she had decided not to print her book but to sell her book first as an ebook. Ebooks were all the rage years ago, but sales have not been very robust and the enthusiasm has waned somewhat. But ebooks are a great concept whose time will probably come once consumer trends change to accommodate them.

For example, push advertising on the Internet failed in the early days when most consumers were using dial-up connections. Now that most of the world has a broadband connection, push advertising is coming back through the form of RSS feeds. I think that once enough consumers (called “critical mass”) are carrying their PDAs and using them to read books, then ebook sales will start to pick up. I also think that producers of information - publishers and self-publishers alike - will need to format their information for the new consumer.

Why I’m talking about ebooks today is that a recent visitor to this blog led me to an incredible article titled Quest for bestseller means lots of returned books, by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, The Wall Street Journal on how expensive book returns are to publishers. If you’ve tried to sell your books in a book store, I’m sure you’ve been told by the bookstore owner that any books that do not sell will be returned to you. This article explains why the book industry is hampered by this system and just how much it costs publishers, the book industry and ultimately the book buyer. The article is fairly lengthy, but I found it very enlightening and worth the read.

Ebooks seems to be a perfect solution to the book-returns problem. Suppliers would move to this new distribution model overnight if the consumer would demand more ebooks. So the problem to me appears to be on the demand side (the book reader), not the supply side.

I told my potential customer that trying to sell her book in ebook format was a great idea despite the overall sluggish sales at this time. To me, the self-publishing business is all about minimizing your risk, which means minimizing your initial investment.

Times are changing. My prediction is that ebooks will be in higher demand in the near future and Amazon’s Kindle is a strong move in the right direction.

Author Blasts is the Authors On The Net Podcast. If you are a member of AON and you have a book, we would like to interview you. Simply send us an email at info@authorsonthenet.com. We are also interested in speaking with publishers, distributors, book designers, editors and other people who have a publishing or book promotion message.

In today’s podcast, we speak with David Bowles, author of Spring House, book one of The Western Sagas. Spring House is a historical fiction based on thirty years of research by the author and has won several book awards including the National Indie Excellence 2007 Book award and the Authorisland.com Readers’ Choice Awards, both for Historical Fiction. Besides listening to the podcast, you can find out more about David’s book at westwardsagas.com Spring House is sold on Amazon and can be ordered through your local Barnes and Noble bookstore.

Click here to download and listen to the podcast. Listen to Author Blasts show now.

http://authorsonthenet.com/audio/v

Note: depending on the speed of your Internet connection, this file may take a few minutes to download. You can also download the interview through itunes. To subscribe to this podcast, go to the itunes store, click on podcasts and search for “Authors On The Net.” Subscribe and you will receive our podcasts directly to your itunes.

Authors On The Net associate, Peter N. Jones, announces the release of his new book tralier. Take a look to learn about his book and to see how he put his video together. Also, yesterday one of our clients introduced me to a site that helps you send video emials and much more. The site is www.helloworld.com. All I’ve done so far is to watch their intro. video, but it looks interesting. As I learn more, I’ll be sure to share.

A big part of your author platform is your credibility and a good way to gain credibility is to win writing contests. While I’m posting an announcement for the New England Book Festival (and there’s literally hundreds of others) the caution I’ll make is to review the contest and be sure it is a good fit for your book. Obviously, winning some contests have more prestige than others, but any award you win can be used in your promotional materials.

THE 2008 NEW ENGLAND BOOK FESTIVAL - CALL FOR ENTRIES

BOSTON (August 11, 2008) _ The 2008 New England Book Festival has issued a call for entries for its annual program celebrating the best books of the holiday season. The New England Book Festival will consider non-fiction, fiction, biography/autobiography, children’s books, teenage, how-to, cookbooks, science fiction, audio/spoken word, photography, art, poetry and spiritual works published on or after Jan. 1, 2000. All entries must be in English.

Our grand prize for the 2008 New England Book Festival winner is $1500 cash and a publicity campaign during the post-holiday season spotlighting your work. The winning author will also have a choice of flights to our various awards ceremonies for our family of festivals and a free vendor table at the day events, including New York, Hollywood and London.
Genre category winners will receive a combination of books, software, cash awards and free vendor tables at our New York or Hollywood Book Festivals. Read the rest of this entry »