Book Marketing Blogs

Get some inspiration from these book marketing Tweets from the past week, courtesy of bloggers, marketers, authors and others. The topics include ways writers can use Pinterest, how to find great content to Tweet, methods to promote your virtual book tour, and much more. Happy marketing!

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* Top 10 Ways to Promote Your Virtual Book Tour

A step by step guide to making your Virtual Book Tour a success:

http://blog.publishedandprofitable.com/2011/12/09/top-10-ways-to-promote-your-virtual-book-tour/ (more…)

Guest post by Danielle Rodabaugh

If you’re trying to market your published work, chances are you’re using the Internet to promote it in one way or another. If you’re developing the promotional content on your own, understanding a few key rules can help you write for the web more effectively. You’ll benefit from knowing how writing for the web is both similar to and different from traditional writing forms.

How writing for the web is similar to traditional writing

Many traditional writing rules apply when writing copy for online marketing.

• Support your claims with research. Directly linking to outside research makes citing sources online extremely easy.
• Connect to your specific audience. As with traditional writing, well-written and highly informed pieces will go unread if you can’t keep readers’ attention.
• Use action verbs. When telling a story, action verbs drive the storyline. In marketing, action verbs encourage people to buy your product, which, in this case, is your writing.
• Edit with a vengeance. You wouldn’t publish an article or book without having it thoroughly edited. Promotional copy should be no different as errors divert potential customers.
• Be consistent. If you use a blog to promote your work, you need to update it regularly and with a similar style and tone. (more…)

Guest post by Victoria Heckstall

Words are all around us, and there are many people who desperately want to learn how to use them for self-expression. But the sad fact is that even though learning a language and its functions can be relatively easy, learning to express yourself openly is not the easiest thing to do.  Developing your voice as a writer is a process that takes self reflection, dedication and practice. Thankfully, there are a few tips that you can use to become a better writer regardless of your level and experience.

Read as much as possible

The journey to becoming a competent writer starts with research, but unlike boring school research, as a writer you have the freedom to research expression itself. Not only is reading beneficial to your intellect, it will also help you to pick up and assimilate the techniques and feel of great writers. If you can take the things that you like from a broad spectrum of writers, and manipulate them so that they become your own, your writing will immediately improve. Also, reading a lot will show you what has already been done so that you can steer clear and keep your own work as fresh as possible. (more…)

Enjoy some of the most informative book marketing Tweets from the past week, courtesy of bloggers, marketers, authors and others. The topics include the best time to post content, how to increase your book’s Amazon rank, Facebook marketing tips, and much more. Happy marketing!

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* The New Author Pitch: Show, Don’t Sell

http://www.alanrinzler.com/blog/2012/01/16/the-new-author-pitch-show-don%E2%80%99t-sell/ (more…)

We had a great show with guest Dave Ursillo on cultivating a personal leadership style.

About our guest: Dave Ursillo’s book, Lead Without Followers: How to Save Our World by Radically Redefining the Meaning of Leadership, teaches people how to become “leaders without followers” in any walk of life by discovering a personal and profound sense of inner leadership.

Since its inception in 2009, DaveUrsillo.com has reached over 75,000 readers in 173 countries. In June 2011, his site was seen in a feature story on nationally-televised CBS Sunday Morning about the world of blogging.

About the book: Lead Without Followers not only explores the cultural, social and political origins of today’s “Leadership Problem,” but cuts into the heart of the human source of today’s convoluted definition of what it means to lead. (more…)

Guest post by Bill Johnson:

Narrative tension is the tension characters in a novel feel about unresolved and unfulfilled events and needs. When characters in a story are blocked from gaining what they want, they experience narrative tension.  When acting to gain something increases a character’s pain (because the story/storyteller increases the obstacles) a character in a story experiences increasing narrative tension.

Romeo, in Romeo and Juliet, is a great example of narrative tension.  To act on his love for Juliet is to turn against his clan and family; to not act on his feelings for Juliet is to violate his sense of what’s important to him.  But any action he takes increases his pain. (more…)

Here are a few of the top book marketing Tweets from the past week, courtesy of bloggers, marketers, authors and others. The topics include how to monitor Twitter, publishing advice for authors, ways to use Pinterest, blog content ideas and much more. Happy marketing!

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* 30 Inspiring Ideas To Develop Content For Your Blog

http://www.jeffbullas.com/2010/12/17/30-inspiring-ideas-to-develop-content-for-your-blog/ (more…)

Guest post by Harry Bingham:

Most authors exploring a book marketing website won’t be thinking about the merits of a creative writing course. Aren’t you beyond all that? If your book is in its tenth draft, if you’ve got your cover design chosen, your blurb written, your marketing under development – aren’t you beyond learning the ABCs of writing?

Well, maybe. I used to think so. I should say that I’m a working writer myself. I’ve been published by HarperCollins, Random House, Bloomsbury and others. I’ve had novels become bestsellers and others make prize-shortlists. I’ve been published most places that matter between Japan and New York – so I’ve been around the block. I’m not a newbie any more.

But the notion of a creative writing course isn’t so foolish, all the same. For one thing, most writers just charge in to their first novel. I did. Bash your first draft out on a laptop convinced you’re Dan Stephen King / Nora Roberts / Jonathan Franzen. Mess around with it, trying to get the darn thing into some kind of shape. Send it off to a literary agent. Hope you get lucky. (And I did.) (more…)

Guest post by Steven Moore:

I have made some noise in my blog about the fact that I’m going all eBook.  I have a list of reasons, but there is always that alter-ego of mine called “buyer’s remorse” who is telling me that I’m killing myself.  Read on, Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath, and console me.

Let’s enumerate the reasons again.  The top one is that I can’t afford to keep on paying for POD.  Even though prices have come down and service has gone up (I have no complaints about Infinity Publishing’s production of trade paperbacks, for example), for the same price I can produce multiple eBooks.  I have many stories I want to tell.  If this paradigm shift to digital publishing continues, eBook media is my most economical route.

It’s a toss-up which media, eBook or trade paperback, is most effective for marketing, something I’m forced to do on my own.  I can’t afford even a small ad in the NY Times Book Review section, let alone a trailer that is shown on TV, but that’s true whether I’m marketing an eBook or a trade paperback.  As for book signings and/or discussions in more traditional venues (bookstores, libraries, book groups, and eclectic coffee shops), I’d say the eBook is at a distinct disadvantage.  It’s also hard to put an eBook in someone’s stocking at Christmas. (more…)