How to find local book events

Visiting the local library can be a great way to find opportunities to market your book.  As I came out of the library today I noticed a poster for an upcoming book event and they needed authors to do signings.  I would make it a habit to visit your local library and watch out for events that you may be able to participate in.

Information for this particualr event can be found at www.bookemfoundation.org so if you happen to be in the Charleston area I would check this site out.

Visit your library this weekend and see what you can find! 

Writing Your Way to Recognition

One of the best things you can do to build visibility to your book is to publish your other writings.  Being published in trade journals and magazines can raise your visibility as a writer and thereby raise the visibility of your book.  You can also publish articles on-line as well.

I found the following information in a forum I am involved with that I think can really be of use when trying to find some other outlets to publish your book. 

“1. You can write for sites like Associated Content (www.associatedcontent.com) or Helium (www.helium.com) as a way of getting started. The pay is not a lot ($5 or less in many cases), but it’s a great way of improving your writing.

2. The Writer’s Market book is a wonderful resource and has contact information for many magazines (trade magazines are a great way to get started and there are more magazines listed than you could ever imagine)

3. Media Bistro and Writer’s Weekly are two other spots which list freelance work for people of all experience levels.”

I would definitely recommend giving some of these options a try and seeing if some other work published can help your book!

Success Story - Award Winner

One of the authors I work with, T.K. Garrison, just won the National Indie Excellence Award in the Young Adult Fiction category for his book, The Collin Chronicles: Book 1 - Magic, Bones, and Catacombs.

Here is a link to his website so you can learn more about his book - http://www.tkgarrison.com/

Here is a link to his book on Amazon.com - http://www.amazon.com/Collin-Chronicles-Magic-Bones-Catacombs/dp/1419658875/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210339450&sr=8-7

If you are looking for a book in this category be sure to check his out! 

Using Amazon Upgrade Program to Increase Sales

One of my authors emailed me today to inform me of a new option Amazon has released that may help you get additional sales of your book by allowing customers to purchase a digital version of your book right after they purchase the print version. It is a fairly small fee and allows the customer to start reading the book right away while allowing you to earn a few more dollars on your book. As long as your book is in Amazon’s Search Inside program you can use this feature. If your book is not activated with Search Inside and you are published through Booksurge you simply need to email customerservice@booksurge.com and ask that they activate this Search Inside feature for you. If you are not a Booksurge author and need this feature for your book see this link - http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=14061791

If you are interested in signing up for the Amazon upgrade service you can email digitalbooks@amazon.com.

If you have more questions about this program please visit the FAQ section on Amazon.com - http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=110744011

I hope this program helps get you some incremental sales!

Another Way to Build Visibility To Your Blog - Submitting Your Blog to Blog Catalogs

There are directories or catalogs of various blogs you can submit to and, if accepted, there viewership would then be able to access your blog. Most of these directories have a free option and this is the one I would choose. You can find some directories at the following link -

http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/best-rss-directories-and-blog-submission-original-list-part-11.htm

It is fairly quick and easy to do and I hope it will help you build visibility for your blog!

Another Way to Build Visibility To Your Blog - Allowing Visitors to Subscribe

Feedburner allows you to make it where people can subscribe to your blog so that they then get an update every time you make a posting. This is a great way to build a dedicated following around your blog and your book.

Feedburner also gives you an RSS feed that you can place into your Amazon.com Connect account so that your blog feeds into Connect automatically.

To do this go to http://www.feedburner.com/ and do the following:

(1) Place the URL for your blog into the blank provided
(2) Choose the RSS option
(3) Setup a username and password
(4) Click next and select all the stat options and click next again
(5) Under Blogger (click one of the other options if you are not using blogger) clcik on the publish a chicklet to display your feedburner feed
(6) Then you need to follow the directions it provides you on how to proceed
(7) I chose the smaller version of the first two widget options and do make sure that you select “Use as a widget in Blogger” if you used Blogger to create your blog
( If you used Blogger it will then direct you right to blogger and will place the widget in for you.

You can see how this looks by looking in the upper left hand section of my blog - it is the field that says “subscribe in a reader”

Go ahead and subscribe to my blog while you are there so that you can receive the posting updates!

How to Create a Blog

I have been posting quite a bit lately on how to build visibility to your blog and so I wanted to provide those of you who do not know how to get a blog started with a video that explains how to do this.

Please see this link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnploFsS_tY

It explains how to create a blog using www.blogger.com, which happens to be the service I use.

It is free so give it a try if you do not already have a blog!

Another Way to Build Visibility To Your Blog - BlogCatalog.com

This site can be a great way to build visibility to your blog and to find other blogs you might be interested in commenting on. In their words they are, “Blog Catalog is the premiere social blog directory on the internet. Whether you’re looking to promote your own blog or find blogs on various topics, this site is for you.”

Here is the site - http://www.blogcatalog.com/

First go to this site – then fill in info about your blog – the next step is to verify ownership – I picked the rate my blog feature to do this – I then put the html code they provided below the “my profile” section in my blog – then go to your personal blog where you can edit html – find where your profile is and then paste the coding in this spot (an easy way to do this is to click “ctrl F” and then type in “profile”)

You should then be able to preview your blog – make sure it looks ok and you will now be setup in this blog catalog!

More Ways to Increase the Visibility of Your Blog

An author of mine sent me some valuable information after my initial posting on increasing the visibility of your blog. There is information on promotional videos, free book downloads, and general visibility.

Here is his email:

John,
We review a few books at Blogsboro.com Contact and submission info is here: http://bloggingpoet.squarespace.com/contact-blogsboro/

My recommendation is to read the various Team Blogsboro blogs and then decide which writer would be most like the sort who would enjoy your book(s).

Also, if any of your authors are doing promotional videos and uploading them to YouTube and other video sites I highly recommend they upload them here as well: http://blogsborocomvideochannel.magnify.net/ Videos uploaded to our channel have the best chance of being featured on the Blogsboro Network where we have over 80.000 unique monthly readers.

If your authors are poetry bloggers then they need to contact me so I can feature them at BloggingPoet.com and add their blogs to Poetsarus.com.

Anyone using free online novels as a promotional tool needs to follow this link: http://bloggingpoet.squarespace.com/blogels-online-novels/

There’s more here: http://bloggingpoet.squarespace.com/blogsboro/how-to-promote-your-poetry-free-almost.html While it’s geared towards poets most of it will work for any author.

And here is the world’s most complete list of local English Language blog aggregators: http://bloggingpoet.squarespace.com/blogsboro/local-blog-aggregators-by-city-state-and-country.html

And finally, because Booksurge products are available through wholesalers I can add them to BloggingPoet-Shoppes.com , BillysToyStore.com and several other of our aStores.

-Billy

PS. Beginning April 1st Blogsboro and BloggingPoet.com will be hosting the 4th annual Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere election: http://bloggingpoet.squarespace.com/bloggingpoetcom/category/poet-laureate-of-the-blogosphere I’m expecting well over 100,000 readers to tune in.

How to Make your Blog More Visible - Generate Tags

So you have this great blog, but can’t figure out how to get anyone to see it.

If you have this problem then it may be because you are not tagging your posts with keywords. This is very easy to do and makes your blog postings more likely to show up on the wider web. Here is a step by step guide on how to do this:

(1) Develop a set of keywords that you think fit the blog post you are creating. For example, I used the following keywords for this posting - how to use my blog, make my blog more visible, marketing help for my book, help me market my book, online book marketing tools
(2) Once you have your keywords for the post go to this link to generate the tag - http://www.egmstrategy.com/ice/tag-generator.cfm
(3) You should see that option one on this site is to generate a tag. In the blank that asks for keywords place the keywords you have developed separated by commas.
(4) Do not adjust any other of the options.
(5) Scroll to the bottom and click “generate code”
(6) Copy the code that comes out and make sure that you copy the entire code.
(7) Go to where you can edit the posting you are placing on the blog. There should be an option to “Edit Html” - click here - please note that you should have already written the posting and that you can do this to past postings
( You will then see the full code for this posting - scroll to the bottom - click enter - then paste the code at the end

You can do this for every posting and it will make it much more likely that your blog postings will be viewed by the wider web!