Review of Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors, Book Publicity through Social Networking (Paperback)

September 21st, 2009 Leave a comment Go to comments

One rule of thumb among independent consultants is that they should spend about half their time not just doing the job they do, but schmoozing and hustling the next job. Weber proposes something similar for writers. The craft of writing the book itself is dealt with elsewhere, at length. Weber deals with writing about your book, and about all the other hustling that it takes to get people to pick it up in the first place. He identifies two big parts to this job: selling the book, and selling the writer.

An unknown writer is in the odd position of proving he has something to say before anyone will listen. A solid third of the book, plus a pervasive atmosphere throughout the rest, talks about creating an internet presence: blogging, social networking, and generally putting yourself where your potential customers will see you. If you want their eyes on your writing, you have to put a lot of it out there, with new content all the time to keep them coming back. (The motto of the internet may be “Yeah, but what about lately?”) Building a following takes time, maybe years, and the day the book hits the streets is way too late. The ongoing effort may seem daunting. If you’re really a writer, though, you would have been writing anyway. Weber’s advice is about putting it where it will do the most good.

Then when your book is on the electronic shelves of the internet booksellers, a whole new job begins. (A new writer’s share of brick’n'mortar shelf space is just about zero – your choices are the internet or the trunk of your car.) Weber discusses dozens of techniques for directing buyers to your book, centered largely on Amazon. He discusses lists, links, tags, and especially reader reviews like this one. Positive reader reviews may be the biggest thing that sells a reader, once they’ve found your book’s page. Free review copies, like the one I’m reviewing, are one great way to get the first few reviews written.

Weber is well aware of the line between intense promotion and unethical shilling, including embarrassing cases where writers were outed as authors of glowing reviews for their own books. There are cases, though, where the line is subjective – the difference between eagerness and aggressiveness is sometimes in the eye of the beholder.

There are reams of useful tips here. One interested me in particular: writing your book so as to make the most of the internet sales venue. When I first opened this book, its dense and detailed table of contents took me by surprise – it lists two or three entries for some individual pages. That made sense after Weber pointed out that booksellers sometimes display the TOC or index on the product page. A detailed TOC or index lets the author make as much use as possible of this feature. Well, it’s a new kind of world out there. Weber offers a useful guide to navigating your book through it.

//wiredweird, reviewing a complimentary copy

Product Description
Get massive exposure for your book, no special computer skills needed — trade published or self published, fiction or nonfiction

Discover why authors fail with paid advertising, pay-per-click, fee-based reviews, and “bestseller” campaigns

Blog to connect with readers, driving them to Amazon and bookstores

Boost your visibility with Google, use MySpace for viral marketing

Ignite word of mouth with Web social networks

Capitalize on peer content and “amateur” book reviews

Here’s what the experts say about this book:

“A wealth of ideas for making your book stand out, including many techniques for Internet buzz you won’t find elsewhere.”

– Jane Corn, Amazon.com Top Reviewer

“I spent two years building up skills to market my books Earthcore and Ancestor online, and I can tell you right now that Plug Your Book would have saved me MONTHS of time. I bought this book just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, but it blew me away.”

– Scott Sigler, # 1 bestselling author

“An amazingly rich collection of cutting-edge promotional tactics and strategies. Makes most other books about online publicity look sickly.”

– Aaron Shepard, author: Aiming at Amazon

“…The one book every author needs to read. I don’t care if you’re writing a computer book, a science fiction novel or the next great self-help guide, you need to get copy of Steve Weber’s Plug Your Book!”

- Joe Wikert, executive publisher, John Wiley & Sons “Practical, pragmatic, low-cost ideas for promoting the heck out of your own book, whether it’s fiction, nonfiction, technical, business or anything else.”

– Dave Taylor, author: ‘Growing Your Business with Google’

“I’ve worked with most of America’s largest book publishers, helping many of them build online marketing departments. I’ve worked for authors too. Plug Your Book is the new training manual.”

– Steve O’Keefe, author: ‘Publicity on the Internet’

“…Plug Your Book reveals the most effective and least expensive tools to promote your titles and to increase your exposure. It’s the best book on online marketing I have ever read, and I read quite a few in the course of my consulting practice with small presses.”

– Marion Gropen, president, Gropen Associates

Here’s what’s inside the book:

… Taking control of your book sales; Electric word of mouth; Amazon’s `long tail;’ Personalized bookstores; Book recommendation effectiveness

… Amazon Bestseller Campaigns; How Bestseller Campaigns work; Haywired recommendations

… Amateur book reviews; Credibility through peers; Amazon Top Reviewers; Negative reviews; Posting trade reviews on Amazon; Fee-based book reviews

… Building your author Web site; A survey of author Web sites; Your online press kit; Multimedia for books; Podcasting for publicity; When to launch your site

… Blogging for authors; Connecting with readers; Blog comments: pros and cons; Blogging categories; Over the long haul; Blog-to-e-mail service

… Social networking; MySpace: Not just for kids; Facebook; Create your own group; Other places on MySpace; More social-networking sites

… Tag – You’re it!; Personal book tagging; Amazon tags; Amazon Media Library; LibraryThing; Tag-based marketing

… Advanced Amazon tools; Buy X, Get Y; Free paired placement; Single New Product e-mails; Amazon Connect; Listmania; So You’d Like to . . . guides; Search Inside the Book; Statistically Improbable Phrases; Writing book reviews; Amapedia; Customer discussions; BookSurge; Your Amazon profile

–This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

From the Publisher
Get massive exposure for your book, no special computer skills needed — trade published or self published, fiction or nonfiction