Market Your Books
and Promote Your Writing Online: The Successful Independent Writer
Promoting your books or writing online is an important way of marketing
yourself and becoming a successful independent writer. Whether you are
writing articles, posts to your blog, or conversing on writing forums
and author social networks, you need visitors. Within the World Wide
Web this is known as getting traffic. With all of the pages on the internet,
traffic is something you have to seek out; it doesn’t just come
to you. Many people understand this concept, but have no idea how to
properly promote their writing or books online. Some just skip it all
together, while others spam all over the net hoping for favorable views
and lots of traffic. Neither of these approaches are good for business
and long-term success as an indie author. But that doesn’t mean
you have to be in the dark.
Write Quality Pieces With Solid Content
The best place to start promoting your writing is in
your books, blog posts, or forum comments. If your articles lack content,
organization, usefulness, and or interest then there will be no reason
for people to read them. On the other hand, if you have quality writing
that is well edited, people will want to read them and even help in
promoting them (see Word of
Mouth Marketing for Books). This can give you natural exposure and
help to give your writing authority – all of which brings traffic.
Often times people will link to your blog post, share your book, and
some will even bookmark your web pages. All of these things are key
to being a successful independent writer.
*A note about SEO. SEO has become all the rage. Known
as search engine optimization, it is a technique used to help get your
writing picked up by search engines. If you optimize your blog posts
or writing too much, it becomes difficult for real people to read (which
is a bad thing). If you are into working with SEO then you can learn
a lot from a wide range of sites online. Just don’t forget that
a quality blog post or article is about more then just search engine
optimization; its about engaging real human readers.
Choose Your Writing Location
Where you write online is going to have a huge amount
to do with the amount of traffic you get. If you write on a site that
has little traffic and a poor way of drawing their visitors to your
materials you will find that you get little traffic from the site and
to your own writing. On the other hand, if you write for a site that
has a large amount of traffic and makes it easy for readers to find
your materials you will see that you get a lot of traffic. Your blog
or website works in a similar way. To be successful online as an indie
writer you need to be in it for the long haul. Its possible to make
a living as a writer online, but it takes time, persistence, and commitment.
Therefore, I recommend that you get your own domain (URL) and host your
own website. Once you are sure that you want to go the route of an independent
author, you have to get traffic (i.e., readers).
Here are some of the ways that I have been successful
at attracting readers:
Social Networking
Writing Forums
Word of Mouth Marketing
Press Releases
Publishing
Blogging
Email Signatures
Search Engine Optimization
Traditional or Offline Media
Beyond using these excellent marketing and promotion techniques, here
are a few more tips.
1. Talk About Your Book or Writing. Most of us have
a large circle of friends and family that would love to know what we
have been up to. They would love to read our writing, learn what we
are doing, and some would even like to feel like they are helping us
out. This makes talking about your work a great way to get readers.
Some will read a few of your items, some will come back again and again,
just for you. If you are a very prolific writer with a lot going on
then set up a website as a sort of "what I am up to" type
of hub. Include general information about the sites you write for, include
the types of things you write about, and lots and lots of links to articles,
profiles, blogs, and other items of interest.
2. Use Your Resources. Most people have a huge range
of resources available as place that they can draw in readers. Some
don’t even realize their potential! You can add links to the bottom
of your e-mails. If you set it up as part of your e-mail
signature then it will be automatic and each time you compose an
e-mail it will be sent out. This is a good non-obtrusive way to advertise.
Other options include adding links to your websites and blogs (if you
own any), all of your profiles (even places like mySpace, Facebook,
MyLot, as well as your writing sites and such), about me pages (where
ever you may have them), and even at the bottom of a post on your blog
(aim for articles related to the topic and you are even better off).
You can also trade links on your friends and family’s sites.
3. Bookmark Your Writing. The big problem with promoting
your work is the fine line between good promotion and spamming a site.
Most of the best bookmarking sites don’t want you to promote just
your work with them. They have spamming rules, but they aren’t
well defined. A good rule of thumb it to promote one of your articles
for one of someone else’s. Both articles should be of good quality
and give readers something that is worth reading.
4. Article Linking. You can link relevant articles
together, but make sure that they are really helpful links. Likewise,
include them whenever you write on a topic with more then one article
in the topic. An example of this would be linking to Using
Online Magazines for Book Marketing and Writing Promotion which
is here at Marketing Your Books and Writing
Online. It isn’t this topic exactly, but those reading this
article may be interested in that very similar topic as well.
5. Links. Linking is where a lot of people start spamming.
Knowing the difference between spam and linking is usually based on
which side of the coin you are on. You can place links in a variety
of places including forums, message boards,
and blogs.
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