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You’re new author; you’ve written a book. You know that in order to sell your book, you’ll need to promote it. Let’s look at some easy ways for you to do that.
1. Create a Blog and Blog Consistently
To become known as an author, and to sell your book as well as all the books you’ll write in the future, you need to create a platform. The easiest way to begin creating a platform is to create a blog.
It’s easy to create a free blog. You can do it in minutes. Your blog is powerful, as long as you blog consistently. You’ll build your readership one reader at a time. Your blog gives your readers the opportunity to get to know you and your writing. If they enjoy your blog, your readers will not only buy your books, they’ll help you to promote them.
2. Offer the First Chapter Free
Amazon does this because it works. If you’re publishing your book on the Kindle book store or on Amazon, Amazon will offer a free chapter of your book. If you’ve written a very short book, the freebie will be around 10% of your book.
Whether or not your readers find your book on Amazon depends on how clever you are with metadata. The metadata is your book’s title, its category, its tags and its description. Creating the right metadata is vital. Look on it as advertising for your book.
You should also make a free chapter available on your blog.
Please don’t forget to link to your book’s page on Amazon so that readers can buy; many writers omit this simple step. (Then they say that blogging “doesn’t work” to promote books.)
3. Become a Guest on Others’ Blogs
Writing a guest article for another author’s blog is an easy way to tap into that blog’s readership.
You can also interview authors on your blog; in return they may interview you.
4. Buy Inexpensive Advertising
Advertising works. It’s very easy to buy small ads on various blogs. Some of the larger, and more highly trafficked sites will of course charge you more than smaller sites.
However, don’t discount even small sites. Because of the way the web works, all links to your site a valuable. Therefore if you buy an inexpensive advertisement on a small site, you can count on additional search engine traffic, as well as traffic from the site on which you’re advertising.
5. Make the Most of the Tools Amazon Gives You
We’ve already talked about metadata. Even huge publishing companies don’t use the metadata on Amazon as effectively as they could. Beyond metadata, Amazon has other tools for you to use.
Your primary tool is your Amazon author page. Make sure that all your books are listed on your author page, and that you write an effective bio.
You should also add your RSS feed to your author page. Once your RSS feed has been added, each time you post an article on your blog, the article will also appear on your Amazon author page.
The more visible you are online, the more your readership will grow. Remember that you’re not just promoting and selling one book; you’re building your platform as an author.
Want to write a book? You can, with Angela Booth’s comprehensive Write a Book Collection. Discover the secrets and develop the skills you need to write ANY book, from how-to guides to novels and memoirs. Angela’s been writing since the 1970s, and she shares her secrets with you. Her Just Write A Book Blog helps you to write a book and get it published.