Winning the book promotion race

The advent of epublishing and its corollary self-publishing has led many writers to unwillingly become marketers, as, whether they are published by a publisher or take the self-publishing road, they are required to participate heavily in the promotion of their book both off-line and on-line.

As writing is mainly a solitary and literary activity, the majority of writers are baffled by the requirements behind social media and SEO (Search Engine Optimization), the two main tools of on-line book promotion. As a result, book promotion becomes a chore and is put on the back-burner more often than not, and the book sinks deep to the bottom of the on-line slush pile.

Yet, book promotion is not a chore, it is a game… The aim of the game is to rise faster than the ever-growing on-line book slush pile. In order to play the game, the first step is to set it up. That means setting up a blog or a website that will be the writer’s avatar/pawn/checker or whatever denomination is easier to identify with.

Total lack of computer code knowledge is not an excuse anymore as websites such as wixx.com offer ready-made templates that just have to be filled with absolutely zero fiddling with HTML codes and such.

The recent upgrade of Google Search algorithms (the calculation made by Google to determine which websites/blogs get to the first pages when searching for keywords) is penalizing sites that are over-optimized. This is a huge bonus for writers who never got the hang of using meta-tags, calculating the ideal ration of keywords per content and other SEO tricks. Google has apparently decided that non-SEO savvy writers had the best content and is now pushing non-optimized sites higher on the search ladder.

So that pretty much leaves the book promotion player with having to master the Social Media map, find shortcuts to get ahead in the race which is not only allowed but encouraged and enjoy the race.

Building or joining a team to get ahead in the game is a big booster and can be done on sites like Triberr where tribes composed of members with similar interests are helping each other to get ahead on Twitter. A sensible use of automated tools like TweetAdder helps both the runner and its team gather a larger following, hence get ahead in the game.

For more tools and tricks to use to win the game, go to Promoting vs. Marketing a book  or to 40 Book Promoting Sites.

Enjoy the race, and we will not meet at the finishing line as there is no such thing in that race 🙂