Plug Your Book!, Steve Weber [the unexpected everything TXT] 📗

www.FonerBooks.com/ cornered.htm. # Morris Rosenthal got started in self-publishing in the 1990s by posting some ideas for a computer book on his Web site. Word spread quickly, and by simply answering one question from a reader each day, Rosenthal attracted a big following and sales of his book took off. That led to this blog and a related book about self-publishing, _ Print-On-Demand Book Publishing_. www.JWikert.typepad.com.# Joe Wikert is executive publisher in the professional/trade division of John Wiley & Sons. His Publishing 2020 blog provides daily commentary on new-media issues, and dispenses the kind of advice that's hard to find, such as how big an advance authors can expect, whether you need an agent, and how to know who the good ones are. Blogs into blooks

It's getting more common for authors to blog their book as they write it, or condense the contents of a blog into a book, or blook. # www.Blogbasedbooks.com# and #www.Blurb.com# offer free software like BookSmart, which automatically converts a blog or MySpace site into a book by deleting the hyperlinks, time-stamps and other Web formatting. But the prices aren't competitive with regular offset or on-demand book printing; Blurb charges $29.99 for a 40-page hardcover. Mostly these services attract vanity projects, where authors are willing to pay a premium to avoid the tasks of book layout and design.

Blog tours

So far, we've explored techniques for luring readers to your blog or Web site. Now we'll turn to outreach campaigns--going where part of your potential readership already congregates.

You can introduce your book to lots more readers with a series of appearances on blogs catering to your audience--a blog tour. Sometimes it's called guest blogging or a virtual book tour.

Blog tours are especially valuable for authors unable to travel, uncomfortable with public speaking, or whose dispersed audience makes touring impractical. Blog tours can expose your book to a much larger audience than a traditional bookstore tour, while requiring less time and money. Blog tours are especially helpful in launching new books.

"Blogs are like rocket fuel for online book publicity," said Steve O'Keefe, executive director of Patron Saint Productions, a book publicity firm.

Blog tours are also a good deal for the host blogger, who gets free content for his or her readers and affiliate revenue from book sales.

Typical blog tours include these elements:

An #excerpt# displayed on the host blog to publicize the tour appearance.

A one-day #appearance#, beginning with an opening statement, a short essay on the topic of your book. Then the floor is open for discussion.

Follow-up visits# for the next four to seven days to answer questions and comments from blog readers. Targeting host blogs#

Your first step in arranging a blog tour is finding potential host blogs. Find the most popular blogs read by your book's target audience. Some likely candidates may spring to mind, but new blogs can gain readership quickly, so it's worth surveying the field periodically.

Building your list of target blogs requires some legwork because there is no current, comprehensive directory of all blogs. To determine the popularity, authority and quality of blogs in your niche, you'll need to sample the content yourself.

Start your search here:

www.Technorati.com.# This blog tracking site lists the top 100 most popular blogs at #Technorati.com/pop/blogs#. But to find niche content, you'll need to look beyond these mainstream blogs. Consult the advanced search tool, #Technorati.com/search#, where you can drill down into specific topics. www.Blogsearch.Google.com.# Type in keywords related to your book. Ignore results from personal blogs that focus on the author and get little traffic. www.Forbes.com/bow/b2c/main. jhtml. # Forbes' "Best of the Web" directory reviews blogs with high-quality content.

Once you've identified a list of potential blog hosts, prioritize them by three criteria: activity level, reader involvement and traffic volume.

Activity level.# How frequently do new posts appear on the blog? Bloggers usually must post new content a few times a week to sustain a loyal readership. Scan the past few months of blog archives to determine the posting frequency. Reader involvement. # How often do readers chime in with thoughtful comments? The vast majority of blogs allow readers to follow up with their own commentary. The frequency and thoughtfulness of reader comments indicates audience engagement. Traffic volume. # Traffic is the natural result of audience loyalty and involvement, and it's an objective measure of a blog's impact. A handy yardstick for measuring blog traffic is #www.Alexa.com#, which provides estimated traffic reports on many Web sites.

At Alexa.com, click Traffic Rankings at the top navigation bar. Enter the address of the blog you want to evaluate and click Get Traffic Details. For most blogs, you'll see an Alexa rank from 1 (the most-visited site on the Web) to about 5 million, meaning very low readership. For the top 100,000 sites, Alexa provides detailed traffic estimates. Under the heading #Explore this site#, you'll see these links:

Traffic Details shows the blog's relative reach and number of page views, and whether traffic is trending up or down.

Related Links shows other sites popular with the same audience. Here you can discover more blogs frequented by your target audience.

Sites Linking In shows which sites, ranked by authority, have incoming links to the blog. Follow these links, and you'll find more sites targeting your audience.

Depending on how narrowly focused your book is, you may find only a few relevant quality blogs, and that's fine. It's better to focus on a small, well-qualified audience who will respond to your book instead of a general audience where you'll have little impact.

Alexa's reports aren't foolproof; they're drawn from a small sample of Web users who use its browser toolbar. Rankings for high-traffic sites are more statistically accurate than reports for niche sites. In any case, Alexa is a handy, free source of objective information about Web traffic, and is more accurate than anecdotal reports. Bloggers and Webmasters are notorious for overestimating their traffic.

Alexa, which is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, isn't limited to blogs, so you can use it to find all sorts of Web sites targeting your niche. Another good source of traffic estimates is #www.MetricsMarket.com#.

Google PageRank

Another way of determining how much juice a blog has is Google PageRank. It's a patented method Google uses to rank the importance of Web sites on a scale of one to 10 based on the authority of incoming links. Google offers a free toolbar you can use to check rankings:

http://toolbar.google.com#

Quality blogs and Web sites will have a PageRank of at least five. To determine PageRank, check the blog's main page or a Web site's home page; other pages often are unranked.

Building your excerpt#

Now that you've identified where you'd like to appear on your blog tour, the next step is creating your excerpt. The excerpt is an online document providing a description of the book, a passage from the text, cover artwork, and an author photo and biography. Your excerpt can resemble a traditional paper book flier but include more detail.

Your excerpt serves three purposes:

To convince the blogger to host your appearance.

To promote your appearance to the blog's readers.

To prepare the blog audience to discuss issues and ideas raised in your book.

Essential information like the author name and book title should be embedded and visible on the photos of the cover art and author photo. That way, if a Webmaster accidentally leaves out part of your text--or it's deleted at some point--readers will still have enough information to buy your book. If possible, combine all the elements of your excerpt into a single document to ensure it's displayed properly and nothing is omitted.

A typical excerpt includes these elements:

A brief setup to the book, describing its topic, audience and perspective.

Title, author name and retail price.

Blurbs and testimonials.

Credentials of nonfiction authors.