BOOK PROMOTION ON A BUDGET: PART 2

BOOK PROMOTION ON A BUDGET: PART 2
Things I wish I’d known before I started out on the published authors trail.





WEB PAGE:

Every author “MUST” have a web page.

If I type an author’s name into Google and don’t see a website, I can’t easily find more information on the book they are selling.

Authors need to realize that the book buying community is just as busy as everyone else. If I can’t find what I am looking for on the Internet in under five minutes—and I’m being generous here because I won’t even give it that long—then I’m moving on to something else. Some authors use blogs as websites, but they really aren’t set up to provide all the information that a website does.

Publicists, blog hosts, interviewers, readers, radio hosts or anybody who wants information, the first place they look for information is “the authors’ web page”.

There many companies that offer a service of setting up your web page offering services such as the purchase of your own domain (.com name), page design for your book even your own email addresses.

Again I have seen costs for this “one of set up” going into four figures, and not always starting with a one. After that there is often charge for continued support and any changes required.



Let’s take a look at this…

One of the top locations for “web hosting” these days is http://godaddy.com
While they are always producing special offers and mixing and matching what they have to offer here is a basic break down on what it might cost you to create your web site.

To purchase your own domain, “.com” “.net” or whatever you want it will cost you “under $10 a year” this can offer also supply you all sorts of other add-ons, freebies etc, but for now I’m going to show you the worst costs.
Now you have your domain/site name, you need to set up where you web site will be of “hosted/located”. For the majority of cases just a basic economy plan will do you.

This will cost you under “$5 a month” and for that you will get:

10gb (giga-byte) of space, email accounts, email forwarding, some free software and free advertising on the likes of Google and Facebook.

There is even an option for a blog set up, and something called “Web Site tonight” which provides templates for you web pages some especially for authors, with book, bio, author pages etc.

While this sounds complicated and you might not want to get involved in setting up such a thing, it really is not that hard. I could for instance set up an author’s web site, with mail, blog, five pages about them and their book even advertise it on the internet for $299 and that includes a few dollars for my time.

A fraction of the thousand or so you see being charged.



PART THREE "YOUR BOOK IS PUBLISHED" TOMORROW



Author of Young Adult Romance/Fiction book
Across the Pond
http://acrossthepond-storyheart.blogspot.com/
http://across-t-pond.com

"HOW TO PROMOTE YOUR BOOK ON A BUDGET" - PART ONE

BOOK PROMOTION ON A BUDGET: PART 1

Things I wish I’d known before I started out on the published authors trail.

As all writers know there are many places on the web the offer you various services to help you become the “next best selling author”, and while many are there to help you, some other are just there to make as much money as possible from any unsuspecting author.

Plenty of places are out there, plenty of emails, and contacts come your way however before you jump on the sometime costly bandwagon, just see what is there for perhaps less money or with a better service.

See what the best “BANG FOR YOU BUCK” might be.

BEFORE YOU START:

Before you go anywhere remember these words….

Marketing and Pr doesn’t sell books - it gets you exposure!

As one of my fellow bloggers and radio hosts put it today…

Publicity=exposure
Exposure=name recognition
Name recognition MAY equal book sales

Don’t think that just because you have your book being published you will be the next J.K Rowling. There are not that many authors out there who actually make a living from their books. So in other words:

“Dream of the day… but don’t lose touch with reality”

SO YOUR BOOK IS BEING PUBLISHED:

Before the ink is out of the bottle, let alone dry on the pages of your book you should have some items to aid your book promotion already set up.

You should look to set up the following:

Facebook Page
My Space Page
Blog
Book Email
Twitter Account
Web Site

There are plenty of places out there which will offer services for such things sometimes charging over $1000. So let’s break these items down and see what there is on offer.

SOCIAL NETWORKING:

Facebook, My Space and Twitter etc are what come under “Social Networking”.

I recently read and that a major publisher is now proud to offer a “Social Media Setup Service” that will help an author into “the world of social media”

You Got:
A blog on the popular and easy to use WordPress platform
A Facebook profile for your identity as an author
A Facebook page for your book
A MySpace page for your book

This was available at a “Special Introductory Price of $999”

I also received information from a “Marketing and Promotion” company, which offers many such items, their charge for setting you up with these services was $149



Setting up these Social Networking options and locations costs “$0.00… Nothing… Zero”. Any person who has access to a computer can go on the internet, create exactly what these companies offer for nothing, and achieve the same results in under an hour.

One of the other things I noticed with some interest is that the blog offered was on WordPress, which though very good quite often might require you to have some knowledge of HTML coding to change certain formats and styles. For a person who perhaps does not have such skills I would recommend a person uses “BLOGGER” (www.blogger.com) is a far easier platform, similar to writing something in “Word”
It is equally as good for getting your information out on the web, and like WordPress “IT’S FREE”

Twitter while the flavor of the moment, only gives you 140 characters to pass on your news, links or whatever.

There are many other “free” ways of passing on news VOX, XANGA, LIVE JOURNAL, MSN, AOL to name a few. You can even use the likes of http://ping.fm (again FREE) where from one location you can post your news to many locations.

Many writers/readers groups such a SCBWI have their own blog sections.

One other thing that is very important is to be author must be aware of how much time you can dedicate to social media. If you sign up for 50 sites, but never update them, then they’re useless.

While ping.fm helps you update multiple sites at a time, it is still limited in what it can work with, so authors really need to decide how much time they have and only sign up for the sites you can commit to.

Don’t forget, the more you’re out there… the more exposure, name recognition and “possibly” sales.

PART TWO "WEB PAGE" TOMORROW



Author of Young Adult Romance/Fiction book
Across the Pond
http://acrossthepond-storyheart.blogspot.com/
http://across-t-pond.com