Thursday, November 29, 2012

Great Help for Marketing Books

I finally finished writing my first book, Victory Ground. What a chore, but what a fabulous feeling also. I chose to self-publish through CreateSpace. My wife, the graphics artist, did all this step. What a great help she was, too. Now the big question: how to market my book? I am very new at all this, and the questions inside the big question are many, to say the least.

So Judy came across an ebook (I would say a treasure!) available through Kindle that has become my new Bible when it comes to marketing. It is Shelley Hitz's book, Marketing Your Book on Amazon. Every chapter is packed with helpful ideas, some I am not ready to use just yet, but some that are immediately invaluable.

For instance, the Amazon website for my book is very long (two lines of type, at least). It makes it difficult to tell people, or to show it on FaceBook, for instance. Well, Shelley has a number of suggestions how to shorten the URL to something quite manageable. That was a great help to me.

And again, Judy is preparing the book as an ebook for those who like to read online. The problem: some of my friends want an autographed copy, even on an ebook. Shelley to the rescue again. She has a chapter called Digitally Autographing Your Kindle eBooks. Talk about timely! It is the perfect chapter.

So all in all, if you are thinking about self-publishing (and that is so easy nowadays), then you must get Shelley's ebook to help with your marketing. Go ahead and get it, you'll thank me later.