Promoting Books on the Internet: Part 2

A lot of us have a lot of experience promoting books online, making this a pretty broad question.

Be Ready

• Make sure you have a solid site with good content, not just sales hype
• Make it easy to order your books using forms and other options
• Make sure your site is fast-to-load and easy-to-navigate
• Make sure your site is ready to promote, with appropriate page titles, keywords, metatags, etc.
• Update your site frequently

Create Awareness

• Be listed in all the search engines and directories
• Set up links with other sites your audience visits
• Participate in e-mail lists and newsgroups your audience frequents, playing by the rules established in those particular venues
• Use mailing lists as a form of simple "push technology" to remind people on a regular basis that you're there
• DO NOT SPAM -- this just makes people angry and does not sell anything
• Mention your e-mail and site addresses in all your offline promotions, including news releases, radio, television, stationery and business cards

Mary Westheimer
mary@bookzone.com

A few other points:

• Put together FABULOUS content -- give people reasons to come back over and over.
• Have some mechanism to capture names and e-mail addresses. (I use sign-up forms for two monthly tip sheets.)
• Think like a viewer -- for example, when listing keywords, include common misspellings of your most important words.
• Make things as easy as possible on your visitor: avoid stuff that crashes people's computers (i.e., frames, JavaScript, large graphics); stay away from anything requiring a plug-in without a darn good reason, and make sure several forms of contact info are easy to find.
• Bone up with some of the Internet site design and promotion newsletters out there (just as you probably read Poynter and Ross and Kremer before you went to press).
• Include full ordering information.

I could go on and on -- books have been written about this!

BTW, I started my company back in 1981. Yet my presence on the Net is bringing in an average of 40% of my income, even after only four years online and over a decade as a traditional business.

Shel Horowitz
shel@frugalfun.com

James A. Cox
Editor-in-Chief
Midwest Book Review
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Oregon, WI 53575-1129
phone: 1-608-835-7937
e-mail: mbr@execpc.com
e-mail: mwbookrevw@aol.com
http://www.midwestbookreview.com

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