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

As a MySpace member you're able to publish a blog linked to your profile. Here you can include content too lengthy for your messages or bulletins. Blog posts are searchable through MySpace and regular search engines like Google, so naturally you'll want to include plenty of information about your book.

If you're already publishing a blog on your own domain, you don't necessarily have to reinvent the wheel on your MySpace blog. Simply repurpose some earlier content from your own blog, posting it on your MySpace blog for the benefit of your new friends.

Ask your friends to "subscribe" to your blog by clicking Subscribe to this Blog while they're visiting. Then they'll receive e-mail alerts of your new posts.

To add a post to your blog, click Manage Blog from the menu just to the right of your main profile picture, then scroll down to the box labeled #My Controls# and click Post New Blog.

MySpace blogs contain a handy way to link to your book on Amazon. Just below the box named #Body#, where you enter your blog text, is a box labeled "Tell us what you're reading, viewing, or listening to." In the pull-down box, select #books#, then in the search box, enter your book's ISBN. This will add the link buy now from Amazon to the bottom of your blog post, along with an image of your book cover. You can forward the same link to your MySpace friends, who can post it on their blogs, adding to your exposure.

Contests and giveaways are reliable ways to promote your book on MySpace too; the only limit is your imagination. Offer a monthly drawing for a free copy of your book, awarded to one of your new friends. Just the act of offering a free drawing for your book will encourage others to buy it--they won't want to wait to see if they've won the contest.

Joining various MySpace "groups" is perhaps the best way to find new friends. From MySpace.com, click Groups on the top navigation bar. On the left, you'll see a link for Search Groups, where you can search for your genre, topic area, favorite authors, etc. Join groups that reflect the type of books you write or like to read, or other topics that interest you.

Joining groups is a better way to connect with potential readers than just randomly sending friend invitations to any profile that you happen to see. Some groups allow you to post bulletins where you can mention your book. But check on this: It's important to know the group's terms of use, and you don't want to be accused of spamming the group.

You can create your own MySpace group, giving members several more avenues to discover you. You can attract a wider readership by forming a group dedicated to your subgenre or topic. And by doing a good job of running the show, you'll establish your credibility as an expert in your field.

If you already have a big, dedicated following, you can make it all about you, starting a fan club Group for yourself on MySpace. Or you can enlist one of your friends to do it.

Some authors create a separate MySpace profile dedicated to each new book they write, using the book title as the profile name. After creating the profile, these authors often send bulletins to all their friends, requesting that they add their new book's profile to their friends list, getting more exposure. For fiction authors, creating a MySpace profile for a fictional character can be an attention grabber.

In 2006, MySpace created its own music-recording label following the success of many unsigned bands on its site. Creation of a book publishing subsidiary could be a logical next step.

MySpace created a special section devoted to books in 2006, which includes rankings on several hundred books by popularity--how many times the book has been linked to on Amazon by a MySpace blog.

You can find MySpace's book section by going to www.MySpace.com and clicking Books from the upper left navigation box. The area also features a "books" blog, three genre-based book groups--such as Writers Lounge, Classic Literature Lovers and Mindless Creativeness--and a list of several "featured books."

Certainly MySpace's books section will grow as the site matures. MySpace was bought in 2005 by the media conglomerate News Corp. Like Amazon, MySpace is well positioned to provide micro-publishing and vanity publishing services to its millions of members.

Video is a great way to promote yourself and your work on MySpace. People respond more when they can associate a face and a voice with the words.

Lots of new companies have popped up recently to provide authors with video content to promote their books. If you don't have the resources to hire a video producer, it's fairly easy to create your own video. A simple question-and-answer session can provide video content to publicize your book. Position yourself in a chair in front of a bookshelf or potted plant and have a friend ask a series of questions about you, your book, who it's written for, and why you wrote it. If you're on a budget but aren't able to shoot your own video, solicit volunteer film students from a local college. Students are usually willing to work on such projects, which provide experience and something to show on their resumes.

And here are several more rules of thumb for using MySpace as a publicity tool: