Gadgets and Programs to Promote Your Book Online—What Do You Use?

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Submitted by Richard Nash on 14 November 2011 - 4:01pm

A guest post from Joshua Malbin

I explained in the last post I contributed here why I've been serializing my novel Soap and Water rather than publishing it all at once here on Red Lemonade. I'd originally intended to follow that up with a post explaining all the ways you can promote yourself, whether you serialize or not, but I decided it'd probably be more effective if I just described what I use and then invite all of you to add to the list. When we're all done, if there are lots of contributions I'll pull it all together into an easier-to-read form.

Here's what I use. Add your own stuff in the comments.

1. Much of the rest of what I do is made possible by the fact that I have my own website. Web hosting has gotten pretty cheap---I paid under $150 for two years of hosting the last time I renewed the domain with GoDaddy.com. I should say that there's no way I ever would have thought to set this up for myself or known how to design it to look as good as it does. I was lucky enough to have a Web designer friend make a gift of it to me. Maybe you can beg your designer friends to do the same. 

2. When I post a chapter here on Red Lemonade, I also post it on my own site in PDF and e-reader formats (ePub, which serves iPad, iPhone, Sony Reader, and Nook, and .mobi, which serves Kindle). I use PDF Creator to make PDFs and then convert those to e-reader formats at 2EPub.com. Both are free, and it saves me from having to monkey around in InDesign.

3. I record myself reading chapters using a Zoom H2 combination microphone/digital recorder, which sells for around $125 to $150. Honestly, though, from what I understand the microphone on an iPhone is good enough now that you can just use that, if you have one. I'm currently hosting the .mp3s on my own site, but I'm thinking about paying the $5 a month to have them hosted through Libsyn, because they automatically syndicate to iTunes for you.

4. When I put up new chapters I Tweet them, post them on Facebook, and send out an email announcement. I like the messages to go out all together at about 9:30 a.m., so I use HootSuite to schedule the Facebook and Twitter messages and MailChimp to schedule the email. Both are free. MailChimp is nice because now I can invite people to sign up for the email reminders. I also get email marketing analytics like how many people opened and clicked my messages. HootSuite is okay, though its analytics cost extra, and sometimes it forgets to post my scheduled messages on Facebook.

So what about you guys? What are you using to promote yourselves? What self-promotional gadgets should the rest of us know about?

 

Comments

Marcus Speh 12 December 2011 - 5:23pm
A related discussion right now at Fictionaut goes a little beyond the scope of "marketing your own book"; with a bunch of people we're discussing ezines and publishing of the future including marketing data for authors. go to end of thread for the meat. enjoy.
Lucien Quincy Senna 23 November 2011 - 7:57am
I just wanted to say Congratulations for getting your first book of poetry published. It's a long and arduous road but you have done it! I will try and track it down on Amazon to put a few nickles in your pocket or is most of it here? I doubt it. Anyway, again, I admire your success.
Kathryn Mockler 26 November 2011 - 12:37am
Thanks so much, Lucien, for your kind words!

Kathryn
Kathryn Mockler 21 November 2011 - 11:39pm
I've recently launched my first book of poetry, and I really appreciate this post. It's very relevant to know what others are doing in terms promotion online since there are so many options. It's a little overwhelming actually.

I started my online ventures with two writing related blogs in 2009: Resources for New Poets and Resources for New Screenwriters and Filmmakers

Then I created a personal website. I use Weebly; it's easy to use and free. I also regularly use Facebook, Twitter, and a personal Tumblr blog. I try to be careful about how I use social media because I find too much self-promotion can have the opposite of the intended effect. I've also signed up for Goodreads, Red Room, and LinkedIn but don't really use those that often.

I tend to prefer submitting to online journals these days because you can link those publications to your website and promote them on social media, giving the work an extended life. I like the idea of creating audio files of work as well.

I read somewhere that it's best not to over-extend yourself and to use a few social media options that you like and use them well, which I think is pretty good advice.

Thanks so much, Joshua, for posting this discussion and everyone who has offered their thoughts so far!

Kathryn
Marcus Speh 17 November 2011 - 5:09pm
Besides what you guys do (web site including blog & twitter & facebook) I follow a number of blogs written by other writers, or interesting, intelligent information-heavy magazines like atticus review, and participating in (invitation-only) communities like fictionaut, and in online discussions like this recent one about Occupy Wall Street & Art.

  I met a London literary agent a couple of weeks ago who was impressed by the breadth of online promotion I do & the readers I get (several thousands each month, but only as long as I prime the pump) and confessed that neither he, nor the publishers he knows, nor any other agents, have a clue or would be able to do anything like this—which is what thousands of writers do. The interaction didn't make me feel any better, however, about the amount of time I spend doing it (too much for what feels like too small a return), or about the capabilities of the so-called publishing industry and its services.

  My fantasy has always been that this is what publishers and agents should do & leave more time to me to do the writing. Alas, this seems to have been wishful thinking & at this point in time I remain unsure if there's any real return (other than readers and strokes, which is lovely, of course). But I've always been too impatient for my own good, and I should probably give it another couple years. Write more, blog and chat and comment and hobnob less.
Joshua Malbin 18 November 2011 - 3:56pm
Do you use anything to interact with Facebook and Twitter or do you go through their native interfaces? If you use something else, what are the advantages? Similarly, do you follow and comment on blogs just straight-up, through a normal web browser, or do you use an aggregator or reader?
Marcus Speh 19 November 2011 - 11:21am
i use tweetdeck for twitter and socialoomph to publish automatic tweets in the small hours when non european audiences are awake and i'm asleep. i don't have a friend facebook page anymore, though i had close to a thousand so-called friends at some point, but i could not sustain the continuous chat. equally, on twitter where i have many followers, i chat little and i merely repost and blog selfishly when i have got something published, be it a story, an interview, a blog post, or what not. my substitute for sharing interesting news via facebook including commentary, photos and links, is the still relatively new kaffe in katmandu. my facebook page is just a fan page and i use the native interface. the reason why i use tweetdeck is that i have so many different twitter accounts (for kaffe, for my german writing, and a couple more professionally). ... as for comments: i use the fantastic disqus dashboard, which is both a commenting interface and an aggregator. to keep abreast of interesting blogs etc i sometimes use netvibes but i tend to forget about it and rely more on word-of-mouth. i'm not a semi/pro blogger after all, i do my commenting either when asked to or when i'm too tired to do anything else (this is one of those moments). so most of the time i use a regular (fast) browser (google chrome). my comments, as you can testify, are usually long and i keep those that disqus doesn't keep for me in a separate file for later use and for a posterity that might look kindly upon all my effluences. i learnt this obsessive record-keeping from my dad, who learnt it in turn during nazi days out of need (my grandfather was imprisoned in a concentration camp at the end of the war & there was lots to record but danger too), and the record is more important than the medium just as the book is more important than its medium...but i digress, another thing that i tend to do when commenting. having said that, currently i'm lying low web-wise — need to write some. hope this helps.
Marcus Speh 19 November 2011 - 11:22am
there's more on my tweeting "techniques" in in this red lemonade thread.
Bill Ectric 16 November 2011 - 5:24pm
I have a blog on WordPress called Bill Ectric's Place, on which I feature articles and links that relate to subjects I'm interested in and to the types of fiction I write and read. This includes mystery, science fiction, the weird and ghostly, metafiction, B-movies, but also some things that are not so apparently related. The blog allows me to include tags, so people with similar tastes will be more likely to visit Bill Ectric's Place. For example, if I write something about the Edgar Allan Poe Museum, I add the following tags: Edgar Allan Poe, Poe Museum, The Raven, Tales of Mystery and Imagination, etc. If I also talk about the Poe films made by Roger Corman, then of course I add tags like: Roger Corman, B-movies, The Oblong Box, etc. These tags rarely make it to the front page of Google, but they do reach the thousands of other bloggers who use WordPress. Once in a while, if I write about something relatively obscure, it DOES make the first page of Google. A good example of this is my article on Charles Wadsworth Camp, the father of Madeleine L'Engle. Not many people search for Charles Wadsworth Camp, but if they do, baby I'm their man! The idea is that (a) the blog is fun and I would do it even if I wasn't promoting a book, and (b) whenever someone goes to my blog, they will see the ad for my book.
Richard Melo 17 November 2011 - 3:15pm
Hi, Bill, I took a quick look at your blog. It's pretty fun. As soon as I get some time, I am going to take a closer look!
Bill Ectric 18 November 2011 - 12:11pm
Thanks, Richard. I also design a collage for most every blog entry. Sometimes the photoshopping take longer than the writing, but I'm rather proud of my little collages.
Marcus Speh 19 November 2011 - 11:27am
i think these collages of yours are great. i really, really like them. personally i like to doodle (because i cannot handle photoshop really) — here is an example & i admire your consistency—you created quite a style there.
Joshua Malbin 18 November 2011 - 4:01pm
They are pretty cool. Can you walk through your actual process for creating them? Where do you get the images, what program do you use for assembling and reviewing them, that kind of thing.
Bill Ectric 21 November 2011 - 2:52pm
Not sure if you're asking me or Marcus, but I'll go ahead and field the question. I use a program called Microsoft Picture It, which is very similar to Adobe Photoshop. I had Photoshop on my first PC. When that computer crashed a few years ago, my new PC came with Picture It. Both programs give one the ability to manipulate images by cropping, overlapping, stretching, changing the color and brightness, etc. The only way to learn how to do it is to just do it. Like photographer Larry Keenan said a few years ago when I interviewed him, "You have to put a lot of miles on the mouse." It sometimes takes hours to get a collage I'm really satisfied with. I might work on one for two or three hours, look at it the next day and realize I should have done something different, and redo the whole thing. In that regard, it's pretty much the same as writing and rewriting. I've learned to save certain cropped images so I don't have to crop them again - things like leaves, hats, doorknobs, trees, desk drawers, the green diary from my book, Tamper, etc. Google Image Search is a good place to get pictures. You can narrow down your search, like, instead of "cat" you can search for "black cat," "wild cat," or even "cat wearing glasses," and by God, there will be a whole page of cats wearing glasses. Amazing. I always try to find out if the picture is copyrighted and who owns it. Some sites, like Wikipedia, tell you if the image is copyrighted or if it's in the public domain, which anyone can use. Some images are covered under the Creative Commons deal, and it will say you can use it as long as you credit the artist or photographer. Sometimes it says you can only use it if you don't alter it. I really enjoy corresponding with people to request permission to use their image (usually by email). This can actually help you meet people with interests similar to your own. More than once, after receiving permission to use someone's work, I've ended up mailing them a copy of my book. I always assure them that I'll give them credit on my blog, and include a link to their blog or web site if they have one. Album and CD covers, book covers, etc. are almost always okay to use without asking. I mean, it's the same image one would see on Amazon.com or sitting on the rack in a store, and it's free publicity for the product. So if I want an image representing a certain author or musician, and I'm not sure which photos are okay to use without infringing on someone's copyright, I'll use a book cover or album cover. Now, if someone has taken a particularly nice picture of, say, a rare book cover, I will ask permission to use it. Only once did I ever get in trouble for using somebody's photo. Well, I didn't exactly get in "trouble" but it was not pleasant. I found a good photograph of a certain science fiction writer whom I shall not name. He was no longer living when I wrote about him, and his official website was apparently maintained by members of his family, possibly in cooperation with a publishing company or some other corporate arrangement. But whatever the arrangement, there was a nice publicity photo of this writer on the bio page of his website. I should have asked for permission, but got carried away by my enthusiasm, and after all, I did provide a link to his site where his books can be purchased, and everything I wrote about him was positive. It seemed like one of those standard press release pictures. On Christmas Day - Christmas Day, mind you - I got a comment on my blog saying (and here I paraphrase), "I make a living as a photographer, but it it very difficult to do so when people use my work without compensating me or even asking my permission." I replied to the message with an apology but never heard back from them. I confess that at first I was not altogether charitable in my next action. I left the person's comment on my blog and replaced the photo with a different photo, but if I tell you what it was, it would give away the name of the author, which I hesitate to do, unless of course, Richard Nash himself were to insist on it. The next day I removed the collage altogether because, really, the photographer was right, I should have asked. Well, I've gone on quite a bit. Hope some of this was helpful.
Bill Ectric 21 November 2011 - 5:29pm
Sometimes I use photos that I took myself. A couple of examples: I took the picture of Sohrab Fracis that appears in my article about him, and of Evergreen Cemetery for the Charles Wadsworth Camp article, because it's here in Jacksonville.
Bill Ectric 22 November 2011 - 10:06pm
Sorry to keep adding comments and risk overstaying my welcome, but I wish to clarify that not every collage takes hours to complete. I knock out some of them in a few minutes. That is all.
Marcus Speh 24 November 2011 - 4:28am
...adding comments is what it's all about, i think! no worries...i liked your detailed description so much that i'm going to share it as class material with my students in a current course on blog writing which i've taught for a few years now. especially details such as the informed use of "creative commons" etc are concurrent topics of discussion among those creating intellectual capital on the internet. thank you, bill.
Bill Ectric 28 November 2011 - 5:40pm
Marcus, you are too kind. But don't let that stop you.
Les Butchart 15 November 2011 - 2:26pm
Thanks, Joshua, for all those pointers. I am doing something similar, but I set up an e-press called FugitivePoetsPress.com as a repository for ebook marketing information, and for publishing me and my friends. Just started it but will be bringing out a book of poetry soon by Claudine R. Moreau, a truly excellent poet. I especially like your mp3 idea, didn't know about Libsyn, will check it out. I am also experimenting with a "Facebook novel," publishing chapters as I write them, but also revising on FB - http://www.facebook.com/pages/This-Side-Of-Somewhere-Else-A-Facebook-Nov.... If you check out the FB novel please be aware that I haven't begun to promote it. I'm waiting to have three chapters online before I push it. I wanted there to have substantial amount of text in place. A bit of an odd twist on my "strategy" is that the novel I'm putting on RedLemonade - http://redlemona.de/les-butchart/the-music-were-born-remembering - has a character named Tyler Elkin, a creative writing teacher who is famous for his novel "This Side of Somewhere Else." Originally I had thought that this was a kinda goofy name for a novel, but the more I thought about what kind of novel Tyler would write, the more I became intrigued with the idea of actually writing it myself. So there is a "transmedia connection" between the two novels, or so I'm hoping. A way to build an audience for one completed novel and a related work-in-progress novel. Because the central character of "The Music We're Born Remembering" is a poet, I will be doing videos of her (an actress portraying her) reading her poems in book shops, something like a web series, but I'll eventually embed the clips in an enhanced version of the novel. All of this in an effort to "grow" the experience of the novel(s) and thereby gain an audience for them. This kind of multimedia/transmedia approach is what we'll be exploring under the Fugitive Poets Press banner. Les Butchart
Marcus Speh 7 December 2011 - 4:57pm
this is fascinating, les, it's good to hear you're doing this and it's also good to hear you explain it so concisely! especially like the idea of the "facebook novel". asked a few students of mine to explore this too & i think it's good depending of course who your target audience is...
Joshua Malbin 18 November 2011 - 4:12pm
I notice that Fugitive Poets also seems to have one or possibly two parallel arms in filmmaking. What's the relationship between those ventures and what you're doing with the press?
Les Butchart 7 December 2011 - 2:22pm
Yes, Joshua, Fugitive Poets and Highway 29 Motion Pictures have parallel interests and business plans ... both companies are being built around a literary sensibility, and we see the literary properties that Fugitive is involved with as potential screenplays or transmedia projects; likewise, we'll be using Hwy29's filmmaking resources to explore possibilities with enhanced books ... video clips that hopefully enhance the reading experience. For example, for The Music We're Born Remembering (two chapters online here at redlemona.de) we plan to film the main character's poetry ... it is the story about a country girl whose mind "catches fire" with help from a community college poetry class. For a book of flash fiction we are publishing, we plan to use audio versions of stories as promotional pieces, etc, etc. Lots of possibilities. Currently, the press is in beta. We are publishing a book of "suburban gothic" poetry by a marvelous poet named Claudine R. Moreau. We are working through all of the POD and ebook formats, and marketing for the book. Then we'll proceed with other titles, poetry and literary fiction. On the marketing side, another angle we are experimenting with is the cross-promotion of books and films. For example, we are launching a 20-episode dramatic series for the web ... it's called THE HIVE - www.catchthebuzz.tv - and we'll be relaunching the series in January through Blip.TV ... each episode will carry a commercial for a Fugitive title.