Author Tools & Resources, Book Marketing & PR

Promoting & Marketing Your Book! Awesome Tools & Resources

*This is Part 4 in the series, and is cross posted from my other site Ladies Who Critique.com*

Promoting a Book: 10 Sites You Can Use in Your Promotions

1. Amazon Author Central Be sure to fill out your Amazon author central profile, claim your books, import your blog and Twitter feed in order to make the most of the free profile Amazon offers you.

2. Vistaprint Create marketing materials such as bookmarks, business cards, Tshirts, pens & fliers for a low cost at Vistaprint.com.

3. CafePress– Merchandise can be designed and ordered in a print on demand fashion, at CafePress. This can help with offline PR efforts, and is a lot of fun too! For example, here is the CafePress Ladies Who Critique shop.

4. YouTube: Make a video blog (vlog) or book trailer and upload it to a YouTube channel for free. Make it interesting or entertaining and it might just go viral.

(You can read this great article from NovelPublicity about the why and how of book promotion on YouTube).

5. Quibblo: Quibblo online quizzes are a great way to introduce your characters and story to potential readers. Create character quizzes, fun surveys, polls & personality quizzes. Make your own quiz for your blog or Facebook.

 6. HARO.com Help a Reporter Out – “No such thing as free PR? Over 50000 journalists use HARO to locate experts for on-air interviews, article quotes and more.If your book is non-fiction, or has some non-fiction PR angles, be sure to read the HARO emails each day where journalists and other media peops send out requests for experts or people with knowledge in a certain field to quote. That could well be you!

7. Animoto.com: Animoto is a slide show software that allows you to add pictures and music – a great, low budget way of making book trailers. It’s free for up to 30 seconds, longer videos are available for a low cost.

See an example book trailer made with Animoto.com.

8. Blogging platforms: WordPress is my platform of choice (very customizable and flexible – Ladies Who Critique is hosted on WordPress), Blogger is also a popular (and free) option.

If you want a great resource to learn how and what to blog about in order to create a successful blog, I suggest Kristen Lamb’s Are You There Blog, It’s Me Writer.

9. Email marketing services: Mailchimp/ Constant Contact are both great services for emailing several people at once; perfect for author newsletters or for spreading news about your writing/ books and keeping a complete list of subscribers. Mailchimp is my fave, plus it’s free up to 2000 contacts.

10. Reddit: Users add news links, but these don’t really have to be “news” in the traditional sense. You can upload links to your latest blogpost, photos, or anything that might be of interest. Votes by other users promote stories to the front page (but you can also be voted down so be sure to add something of value!) Great for promoting your own articles and news. As a writer, be sure to join these groups: writing, nanowrimo, selfpublish, books, literature.

 The next post in this series will cover social media sites you can use in your promotions: stay tuned post-Thanksgiving!