Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Book Marketing: Resources for Getting Started





Here is an updated list of book marketing resources and tools that I recommend to my "Self-Promotion for Writers" class.The list includes books, social media blogs, an old school PR blog, an SEO blog, publishing industry blogs, and some Web based tools that I continue to like -- even after using them for a year.

I) Getting Started


For getting started with a new technology or a social media tool, a book is the way to go. No dough? Borrow them from the library. Though most books are out of date by the time they hit the shelves, you can still learn the basics, then sign up for a blog to stay up to date.

Books:

- Good Overview of book marketing
"Online Book Marketing" by Lorraine Phillips
- Books for skeptics: "Social Media is Bullshit" by B.J. Mendelson
-  "Talk up your book: How to sell your book through public speaking, interviews, signings, festivals, conferences, and more," by Patricia Fry.
- Dummies books and other how-to books on social media, blogging, twitter, e-mail marketing, public relations, are all useful and will save you a lot of aggravation.

Blogs:


Blogs on publishing industry: agents, trends, marketing

Writer Beware: Sleazy agents, sleazy publishers, and other sleazeballs writer's need to be aware of.

Self-publishing and book marketing

Self-promotion for writers:

Blogs on blogging:
- http://www.copyblogger.com/blog/ (lots of free guides on blogging and SEO)
- Article: Is Blogging a Waste of Time?
- Article: types of articles that get traffic.


Social Media Blogs:
- Facebook:



- Article: Getting started with Twitter.

SEO:

- Article: Keyword Basics

Old-School bookmaketing: PR
- publicity hound

II) Tools


Blogging:
- Easy, do-it-yourself blog platform (Blogger): http://www.blogger.com
- Find free, legal art for your blog: http://search.creativecommons.org/
- Free image editor (crop and tweak photos and art) http://www.irfanview.com
- Audio tools: 
*free audio editor; tricky to use: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ 
*a Youtube-like storage site for audio: https://www.box.com/
- Capture subscribers for your blog: http://www.feedburner.com/
- Monitor traffic to your blog: http://www.statcounter.com
- Round-up of Blogging Tips, Tools, and Resources:

SEO:
- Google Keywords Tool (you may need to sign up)
https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool


Twitter tools:
- Dump people who don't follow back: http://www.manageflitter.com 
- Organize Twitter, pre-schedule Tweets, plus and easy tool to capture and Tweet pages you find on the Web. http://www.hootsuite.com
- Automatically post new blogs to your Twitter, Linked In, and Facebook accounts. Note: this tool will truncate your blog's headline and some of the text. Double-check posts once they appear in Facebook and Linked In to make sure the headlines read OK. http://www.twitterfeed.com


E-mail management service:
  

Toolkit image: By Davidpk212 at en.wikipedia [CC-BY-2.5], from Wikimedia Commons


 

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