Thanks go to Angela Wilson for her interview of SPR at Market My Novel. Questions include: “As an author yourself, what do you hope to ultimately do for self published authors through your site?” and “There is a certain stigma still attached to self published works. Why is that? Do you think sites like yours can help improve the image?”

If you don’t know Angela Wilson’s site, check it out. What makes Market My Novel particularly useful is its emphasis on internet marketing, as well as straight book marketing. We’ve covered the similarities between book marketing and search engine optimization in the past, but on Angela Wilson’s site, she talks about Twitter marketing, Friend Feed marketing, blogging tips, and the like, in addition to topics like providing a good author photo and other book-centered topics.

Really, all authors should be thinking this way, but particularly self-published authors whose books may be sold entirely online. Still a lot of authors are think online marketing consists of having an Amazon page and leaving it at that. The number of ways you can market a book online may be daunting and time-consuming but it’s vital if you’re serious about selling your book – or at least increasing your name recognition for each successive book that you release.

Some of the topics covered on Angela Wilson’s blog include:

Create an Effective Media Kit
Make Myspace Work for You

And guest authors like:

Top Five Ways to Drive Targeted Traffic to a Blog by Wade Lowrey
Using Facebook to Your Advantage: An Interview with Mari Smith

Authors should be thinking about marketing a blog as distinct from marketing a book. If you get traffic to your blog, interest in your book will follow, but there are different marketing avenues for marketing a blog than there are for marketing books. Some of the worst blogs are those put out by companies or some authors: the blog doesn’t allow comments, or the posts are merely about company news and promotion, rather than writing about topics that may be interesting to the larger community. Everything can’t be a sales pitch. So if you’re not thinking about blogging as distinct from book promotion, you’re not going to get a lot of readers.

Market My Novel covers these types of issues. There are a lot of SEO blogs out there or “make money online” blogs. There aren’t many blogs that cover both book marketing and blog marketing as both inextricably linked and distinct projects. So check out Market My Novel to learn about ways to spread the word online and find new readers.

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