book marketing

Authors ask me to give them one easy quick and inexpensive way to sell books online.

Until now, I sold an fairly expensive solution.. teaching you everything you need to know.

By now there is a simpler way.. and if you act now it’s FREE

Seems I spend most of my day dreaming up ways to give stuff away.

I’d say it’s a fun job.. but I can hardly call it work.. more like “my life’s bliss”

This morning, I started a new project over at Squidoo.com. When looking for a name, I thought “hey why not call it “free-book-marketing” and just make everything free there?”

So I did

http://BestSellerAuthors.com/squidoo

If you have a resource you think I should add, let me know. I’ll be adding a lot more soon.

But first, go sign up free and grab a cool link.. there are many topics still available.

Then watch this space for tips and idea on how authors can market books on Squidoo.

I suggest every author, publisher and business get a Squidoo “lens”

Choosing where to guest post

Make a short-list of popular sites likely to be visited by your target audience. Rather than aiming for the top of your niche straight away, you might want to try to be published on the second or third most popular site, just so you have somewhere to go once you succeed.
Guest Posting Secrets – How to Get Published on an A-List Blog by Blog Perfume

Here’s a 3 way cross promotion that is chocked full of goodies

1) MindBites is promoting Squidoo for free promotion of their expertise:

“You should share what you know with the world because it will enrich your life,
enrich someone else’s life and earn money while sharing your passion. Something
that you are very skilled at or something that you have been professionally
trained to do is worth sharing with other people. MindBites makes it easy for
you to upload your own ‘how to’ video and post it up for sale.”

2) They used a great example of a cheaply made video that has great information that you can use plus a very fun song about cheese. Watch and learn now.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXkWzGBf9wM]

You can also upload videos the way I do using http://authorsvideo.com/
3) They are also promotion Squidoo (where every author should have a book lens)

And thanks to the power of blogging, I am promoting my tips about promotion by telling you about this and placing a comment on their Squidoo lens.

You can easily do the same. Just find something cool, comment and talk about it on your blog.

And be sure to put a comment here to let us know what you are up to.

There are two reasons you should see this site:

http://www.webasagame.com/

1) The topic.. You get just what you need to get up and running on Digg, YouTube, and Facebook (and every author should have account on each)

2) The book is a free ebook from posted using Lulu.com.

The book won’t win any award for writing or presentation.. but it’s a quick read, and exactly what you need if you aren’t using all three of the above.

I came up with 3 new ideas while reading and will soon post a video, tell my friends on Facebook, and hope they DIGG it.

Post a comment here (you can DIGG too) and tell me how you are using social networking to promote your book.

Many authors have tried one or more of the social networks and felt it was a waste of time.

Maybe it was the wrong network?:

Social Networks Study Released – MySpace & Facebook Are Different After All!

Whichever you choose, you need to plan on spending a little time building a base to your following.. inviting friends and participating as much as you can to learn the system and make the initial connections.

Which is best?

Depends on your book/topic. However, I look at it like any marketing problem.. I go where the readers are.. test the promising ones and keep the ones that work.

One things is certain. Moving forward, you should have a presence on at least some of these networks

Thinking of promoting your book with online video? (you should)

Here’s the best up to date tips on using video to promote:

The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos

Because it’s Thanksgiving Day in the US.. I was surfing for ideas on how I might share some love with authors. (“love” in this sense means “free web traffic”)

I was inspired by the following.

A Thanksgiving Gift To New Bloggers My Affiliate Journey – Affiliate Marketing Blog by Vlad

I’m planning something similar for authors that subscribe to my free ecourse at http://bookmarketingstrategy.com/ and list building partners at http://zerocostpromotions.com/

Phrases That Keep Your Reader’s Attention – Download Business Coaching For Internet Marketing Entrepreneurs<

by Judy Cullins

The following is a guest article. I feature the best book marketing ideas for authors from whereever I find them, and cross promote with other professionals and authors whenever I can. Leave a comment about how you like this feature and what other quesitons and topics you would like to read about here.

Maybe you have affiliate programs, maybe you have a service-oriented web site. Definitely you want more affiliate click throughs that boost your commissions. Definitely you want more qualified clients, and definitely you want more targeted visitors to your site. To stand out from the crowd do these things:

1. Feature your own free content on you web site to educate your visitors. This builds trust and they are more likely to buy from you. Make most of these articles your own to show you as the savvy expert.

2. Set up your articles with links that lead to your affiliate programs. When you write an article why something is important and useful to your audience, it’s like a mini sales letter and sets up ready buyers.

3. Parlay targeted people coming to your site daily. Build these numbers by submitting your well-edited articles to top article directories like ezine articles.com and article city.com. When thousands, even millions, interested in your topic people, read your gems, they will eagerly go to your web site where after a few visits, will buy from you.

4. Know this viral marketing is the number one way to get BIG visibility. Because blogs, other web sites, newsletters, and big companies constantly need new content for their readers, you can expand to much bigger audiences.

5. Find out your visibility progress by Googling your name or your article title. Once you see the growth as min from 900 in four months to over 110,000 in 6 years. Read where you are featured, and send them more articles because they already used you..

6. Know consistently writing and submitting articles will make you well-respected and known globally. Be sure to send one or two weekly to top-rated Web sites to make your marketing sizzle.

Other article writing benefits include low cost, free if you do it yourself, and you attract many because you take time to educate them . The time to do this is also short, probably only four hours a week. Keep writing those articles. The payoffs are big.

Book and Internet Marketing Coach Judy Cullins helps businesses get all the clients and sell all the books they want. Author of 13 books including How to Write your Book Fast, The Fast and Cheap Way to Explode Targeted Web Traffic, Advanced Article Marketing – Nine Mistakes and How to Solve Them, and Advanced Article Three Book Program. Judy offers 260 articles and free eBook ‘Book Writing and Marketing Tips’ with monthly ezine subscription at http://www.bookcoaching.com