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

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17717 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-25
• Released on: 2007-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 204 pages

From the Publisher
> 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

Customer Reviews

The hard part of writing a book
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

An Author's Marketing How-To
You've got your novel all written, proofread, and have even found someone to read it and give a good critique of it, and his suggestions were all carefully considered and where appropriate implemented. Now what?

For most new authors, what's next is an excruciating travail of trying to find someone interested in actually publishing it. The process can take years. But then you find a small publisher willing to take a flyer on your book, and you finally hold an actual printed copy in your hands. Your job as the author is done now, right? Surely your publisher will do everything possible to make this book sell, and sell...

Well, maybe. More likely is that their `marketing' department will only put out a few announcements, try and set up a few speaking/book signing events for you, and have it on the shelves for a few months only. If you really want to make your book sell, you need to do something about it yourself. How?

Read this book. Follow its suggestions. Doing so is not a small amount of work, but you've already invested a huge amount of effort in writing your book, so a little additional effort is probably more than justified.

This book has as its main focus spreading the word about your book through various on-line sites and tools. Weber makes the telling point that the network is your friend, that one mention at one place leads to another connection at another site - and readers of these sites, seeing your book mentioned more than once, are far more likely to buy your book.

The main tool he recommends is this site. For better or worse, Amazon is the 800 lb gorilla of on-line book marketing. Weber details many, many features of this site that can help you sell your book and precisely how you can take advantage of them. Prime is garnering reviews of your book, and Weber does an excellent job of explaining which reviewers to contact and how to get those reviews without coming across as a spammer. To some degree, this review feels a little incestuous, as I'm one of the resources he lists as useful. He also explains the various `tie-in' tools available to authors and publishers, the Amazon sales ranking system, the benefits and downsides of contracting to get your book pushed up in the Amazon rank system, linking possibilities, and what to do about reviews that appear that you might consider inappropriate or factually in error, along with many other things.

Other, more traditional methods of promoting your book, and other on-line retailers are not ignored, but they receive a much less detailed delineation, along with comments about how hard most of these methods are for an individual author to actually use.

The second main tool he recommends is the blog/web site. Once again, the main idea is to get your book noticed by those who care about your subject matter. He details where and how to set up a blog, and gives solid recommendations about what content it should contain, from press-release type material to audio/visual author interviews (and also gives some pretty good estimates of the cost factors of producing such materials). Google page-ranking, click-ads, and other such items relating to how easily searches for your book's subject material will actually return your book's title are also covered.

Third is something he identifies as `social networking' on places like MySpace. Once again, he offers very specific suggestions on how to go about this without irritating those you are communicating with, a highly important point on today's net where anything even remotely looking like spam is going to be immediately ignored.

Now the real question is, do Weber's recommended actions actually work? The answer to this is a qualified `yes': in general, it won't make your book a best-seller, but can get it into the mid-list sales numbers, assuming your book is of general interest and is well written - a point Weber emphasizes, as no amount of marketing will help a bad book. Weber gives several examples of authors who have been successful in this manner, and I know from tracking a couple of authors that I like that things like a well-written blog and good reviews can do a lot to get a book noticed and bought.

Throughout this book, Weber gives specific web addresses, contact information, and setup instructions. As such things can change with lightning speed on the web, he also maintains a on-line site that has updates to such information.

About the only thing missing from this was an overall estimate of just how much effort doing all the things he recommends would take. While this is certainly not a minor number, it's also true that few people would actually try and do everything specified here. A person planning on trying his suggestions should carefully read this once, then go back a second time and determine which particular portions of it are both applicable to his book and are something he thinks he can actually do.

In all, a very solid, practical book that should be of great value, especially to new or lesser-known writers.


--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

Plugging Along
The World Wide Web is a wonderful Al Gore invention; at long last, authors from small houses or authors who have self-published can finally compete with the big boys in terms of marketing and promotion. But for those of us rather technically challenged (myself included) the Internet--and its virtually limitless options--can be a rather intimidating accomplice when it comes to how and where to most effectively promote your book. Enter Steve Weber and his little gem of a how-to: PLUG YOUR BOOK! ONLINE BOOK MARKETING FOR AUTHORS.

Weber starts with the obvious--Amazon, the world's largest bookseller. Most of the features here I already knew about and had played with, yet Weber effectively covers all the bases and offers enlightening tips to make your title soar in the Amland sales rankings. Of more interest to me were his discussions of promotion elsewhere online, including blogging, setting up an account on MySpace. . .even utilizing ebay. Wow. None of this stuff would have occurred to me if I had had a gunnysack full of epiphanies.

Weber not only tells you about these websites, he gives you links to everything. The information is presented in a concise, informative, and organized manner (just like I like it), and Weber doesn't wax poetic on anything--just the facts.

I have implemented several of Weber's suggestions, but have only scratched the tip of the cyber iceberg. For those of you who have written or are writing a book, I highly recommend you use PLUG YOUR BOOK! as your online marketing guide. Your pocketbook will thank you later.
--D. Mikels, Author, DAWN OF THE TRANSCENDENCE/WALK-ON/THE RECKONING