BOOK MARKETING – BLOGS & NETWORKING

© Ernie Johnson 2009 all rights reserved

Ever since becoming a published author, I found out just the extent of what other authors endure as part of the publishing process – book marketing.

Many authors, myself included, go the route of personal blogs to promote their written words. Blogs, much like personal websites, are only as good as the quality and quantity of traffic you get to visit them. In essence, you don’t try to attract car buyers to a blog about baby clothing. That may be a bit extreme, but think about it. You’re an author of a western saga. Your blog caters to that theme. You want to attract readers who love westerns. The more people you can attract, who love western novels, the better chances of seeing sales of your book.

My blog, Authors And Their Books, caters to authors and book lovers of all genres – both fiction and non-fiction.. Authors get to showcase one of their published works. Their book’s cover, the author’s picture, the genre, the website link where the book can be purchased, and a synopsis of the book, is all included for each author showcased. I started this blog with my own published novel DESTINY OF THE DIVAS, a paranormal/suspense/mystery about kidnapped kids. To find out more, visit the blog, or go to my website at http://www.freewebs.com/erniesbooks

Networking is a horse of another color. There are literally thousands of networking websites out there in cyber space, covering just about every subject known to man. As authors and writers, it’s our desire to network with other authors, writers, and hopefully readers who will spend their money buying our books.

Speaking for myself, I’m an avid networker and am presently involved with around a dozen writing/author/reader related networking websites. Why do you need to network, you might ask? Let’s use a different case scenario. Let’s say you’re a carpenter and you’ve built the ultimate in backyard patios for your home. To promote what you can do, you invite some friends and neighbors over for a backyard barbeque. Now these people get to see what you’ve accomplished. This is networking. As authors, we love to show the world what we’ve written. By joining these networking groups, and making friends with other authors and book lovers, we are doing the very same thing. We are showing the world what we’ve written.

It costs nothing but our time to upload our book’s cover, put in a synopsis of our book(s) and any other promotional related items, like book trailers, photo slide shows, website links, etc. and then invite others, within that network, to be your friend. You never know which friend just might buy your book, so the more friends you have, the better, specially when you know they are book lovers.

Some networking groups have chat rooms and have scheduled chats with authors. These groups are more effective, because they showcase different authors in their chats, and they get to chat about their book. One of my favorite networking sites is the Author and Book Event Center.

In closing, everything you do, to help promote your book or books, is a plus. Today, with the upsurge in internet savvy book readers, it’s almost mandatory that you both BLOG and NETWORK, online to attract readers you’ll most likely never ever get to meet face to face.

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Ernie Johnson started writing in the mid 1980’s, before the luxury of home computers. Back then it was nothing more than an electric typewriter, lots of paper and typewriter ribbon. He first wrote for a friend, who didn’t know how to type, nor did he know how to write either.

After finishing his project, Ernie was unable to locate his friend. He’s fallen off the face of the earth. Ernie searched for over eight years, and moved from New Hampshire, to Cleveland, Ohio, back to Massachusetts. He ended up discarding his work, for as an honest man Earnie refused to steal it, even though he'd brought his 750 written pages to a 1500 d/s typewritten novel.

It was during the time Ernie wrote for him, that a desire burned within him to write for himself. Ernie started with OVERTURNED and he's never looked back. He now write novels and also screenplays from his own books. He has, at present, four published novels, a novella, and a published book of short stories for 10 – 15 year olds, called THE MISADVENTURES OF THE DIVAS BROTHERS.