Welcome to another installment of our Good e-Reader Independent Author Initiative! Today we are going to talk about some of the various ways you can promote your self-published digital ebook author.
Many authors feel lost in the shuffle when they decide to digital publish either for the first time, or when submitting many different titles. No matter what self-publishing service you use such as PUBIT, Amazon Digital Text Platform, Smashwords or Bookbaby it can be daunting to get sales. More and more people are forgoing dealing with agents and established publishing companies. This is partly due to the ease and connivance of not having official deadlines hanging over your heads or because your book might have got rejected. It is obviously easier to self-publish but there are many trials and tribulations to be successful at writing.
Today we are going to look into some of the various facets that you can advertise yourself and stand out from tons of other people who also submit books to various digital self-publishing services.
Branding Yourself
Decide whether you are going to be using a Pen Name or your real name and stick with it. Don’t fall into the whirlpool of using different names for different projects. You are not Fern Michaels or her alter ego J.D. Robb, she is the exception, not the rule.
Branding yourself is the first step in creating an identity, connecting with your readers and starting an online branding effort.
Your brand is THE most important element and trickles down from your author profile, to your website, blog and various interactions with your readers.
A website
The First step in an effort to brand yourself, after you have established your identity is to start a website. You need to be able to have prospective readers anyone you might interact with. A website is your first step towards your branding effort and many people have no idea how to create one.
It is important to not skimp out on costs when it comes to your career. Many authors either love to write in their spare time or have aspirations to make writing their sole focus. If you are going to devote months if not years of your life, you owe it to yourself to spend some money to stand out.
A website is not that expensive, you can find many designers that charge only a few hundred dollars to set one up for you. I recommend a few web forums that have a great freelance community that is easy to find talent from India, Europe and other countries. Digital Point and Site Point are two great communities to find and acquire talent. They can also help you with choosing a web hosting company and domain name.
Speaking of domain names, I really recommend to choose your author name or pen name.
Once your website is established you can add it to your business cards or on whatever website you submitted your ebook to.
Blog
Blogging has many misconceptions, you do not have to post every day or spend hours of your life working on it. A blog for an independent self-published author is merely a tool for you to connect up with your audience. It informs them on what you are doing, how your book is doing and allows them to connect with you.
WordPress is the best service and it is also free you can use the WordPress service to host your blog and also maintain it. It is important to link your website with your Blog, this interlinks your assets together.
In essence, I recommend setting up a blog, for one it helps when people Google for your book or your name, not only does your personal website, and book appear, but also your Blog.
Book Trailer
How do you know what movies might be worth it to see? You can tell allot about the theme, genre and quality but the movie trailer. Having a book trailer is something most authors do not even consider but is very important.
We recommend to deal with a professional company to do this for you, rather then do it yourself with Windows Movie Maker. Again, you can do it on the cheap, but then your product looks cheap.
A book trailer tells the audience a fair bit about your book, the characters and with additional components like Voice Overs, Music and other things can really enhance your product.
Once your Book trailer is done you want to add your video to your website and blog. The key with all of the things we are telling you to do involves synergy and a strategy that applies to people across many platforms.
Social Media
I firmly recommend you start a Facebook and Twitter account. You may not want to invest allot of time or know why you need to involve yourself.
Most people when they think about Twitter is people Tweeting about what they ate for dinner, what movies they are watching and other things. You have to look at Twitter as an extension of your brand. Talk about your book, how it is doing, appearances you may be making, books you are reading and otherwise.
You don’t need to tweet every day, but it does enhance your overall brand and your Twitter account is visible on Google when people are searching for you.
I suggest you also start a Facebook Fan page and intergrate it into your website and blog. This makes you easily found and easier to follow and find out essential updates. Facebook allows you to easily give updates and newsworthy essentials to your followers. It can also serve as an avenue to interact with your fanbase and answer questions.
Exposure
So besides a book trailer, website and blog how do you promote yourself and draw attention to your book? Most of the things we have recommended you to do so far involve little to no cost, you could do it all for under 1,000 dollars.
The last things to consider involve having other websites talk about your ebook. You can do things such as Giveaways and contests. This stimulates people to talk about your book and do certain things.
Asking people to review your book is solid as well, it gives you more visibility on the search engines but more importantly, gets people talking to you. Speaking of search engines, I recommend you invest in a small book on SEO, it will help you.
Summary
The essence of this tutorial is to help you gain more visibility on the internet and enhance your profile. I recommend you do all of these things and it will allow you to be more visible then your competition.
Today, there are literary thousands of aspiring authors and self published authors. It is tremendously important that you stand out from the competition.
Join our burdening author community on the Good e-Reader Forum! We are here to help.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
