It’s important to have a strong foundation in place for promoting your book.
The first step is to start “building your author platform” – in other words you need to develop a reputation, connections, and online followers.
Building a platform takes time, so it’s best to start as early as possible (ideally when you decide to write a book). Here are some essential steps to platform building:
- Decide how to brand yourself and your business. (I use Dana Lynn Smith and Savvy Book Marketer.)
- Write a strong author bio and get a good author photo made.
- Create accounts and profiles on all relevant social networks.
- Buy the right domain name(s) for your website.
- Build an author website. It can be improved and expanded over time, but it’s best to at least get the home page up early.
Buying your domain names and creating social network accounts as early as possible increases the odds of you getting the names that you want, and it allows you to coordinate the branding across networking platforms.
Once you have these pieces in place, begin developing your platform by networking, commenting on blogs and forums, and writing articles for blogs and publications. Over time your reputation and following will grow.
Once your book is published, be sure to write compelling sales copy (the book description), optimize your Amazon sales page, and continue to improve and add content to your website.
With this strong foundation in place, your book launch and ongoing promotions will be much more effective.
If your book has already been out for a while, review these steps and see if there are any areas where you might make improvements. And remember to do something every day to promote yourself or your book!
Photo courtesy of RBerteig on Flickr, via Creative Commons License.
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