Yet, if you are truly interested in giving your book the best online marketing opportunities, you need to have your own book author website.

To begin with, if you use social media networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to promote your book, you will want to include a URL link that sends people to a dedicated website to show that you are a serious author.

And this is especially true because you don’t want to use a URL to a shared site where people can get distracted with the other books available and forget about checking out your book.

Second, you want to be able to offer a sample chapter on your site in order to entice potential purchasers to buy the entire book. This sample chapter can also be used to encourage people to give you their name and email address.

Thus, if you have this information, you can keep yourself in front of people who might not have bought your book the first time they visited your site. Now you can send emails with updates of your writing.

Another important reason to have your own website is to be able to include book club discussion questions on the site. Plus you can also include videos and audios.

Then there’s the advantage of having your blog on your website. With the constant addition of fresh material, you make the search engines happy with your site. The result of this is to help your site come up higher in the organic search results when someone is looking for a book related to the topic of yours.

Of course, you can add your own book signings and event dates to let your fans know when and where they can meet you in person. And you can add reviews and testimonials to encourage potential purchasers.

The bottom line is that, if you have your own book author website and you can control it yourself, you can greatly increase your online marketing opportunities.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of the social media marketing company www.MillerMosaicPowerMarketing.com and the company has a collaborative program with WordPress website builder Doron Orenstein at http://www.magneticwebworks.com/services/ultra-pro-websites/ Doron builds WordPress websites for clients and Miller Mosaic provides how-to videos to help these clients effectively use their WordPress websites/blogs.

Movie trailers probably work best when they include footage of a film star that we all want to see in a movie. We may not even care what the movie is about because the film looks like good entertainment and all that is required of us is to sit in a dark theater and watch the film.

Yet, when using book trailers to motivate people to buy books, we need to consider what we are asking these people to do. We are asking them to spend more money than the price of a movie ticket and work at reading the book because, yes, it is work to read a book even if you love reading.

And on top of that these book trailers don’t have any film stars to entice us to the movie theater. There’s usually not even the added bonus of the familiarity of a sequel.

Then should book authors abandon making book trailers? Should they focus their book marketing on other venues and leave the trailers to the film industry?

Hold on! Isn’t there another way that uploading videos to YouTube and other free online video sites can be utilized to promote books?

Here’s an alternative approach:

Book authors can make short videos (three minutes maximum) of topics in their nonfiction books and related subjects in their fiction books.

Let’s imagine that Valerie has written the mystery “Jonas in Mexico City.” In her mystery she features a great deal of the ancient and modern culture of that sprawling metropolis. What if she makes a short video on preparing a Mexican dish that her protagonist eats in the book?

The video should be entertaining and informative, and it should feature Valerie herself talking about the recipe. At the end of her description of the recipe, she adds that the protagonist in her book “Jonas in Mexico City” enjoys this dish very much. Doesn’t this sound like a more interesting video that watching pictures and film clips of Mexico City while a voiceover talks about the plot of “Jonas in Mexico City”?

Now let’s imagine Melvin has written the nonfiction book “Cacti of the American Southwest.” Instead of a video describing what the book is about, what if Melvin is filmed in his cacti garden sharing fascinating tidbits about these plants. And at the end, of course, he mentions that, if you want to learn more, get a copy of his book “Cacti of the American Southwest.”

These are only two examples of the kinds of “book trailers” that can get your creative juices flowing. If you’re a writer, you should be able to come up with a series of videos that entertain, inform and pitch your book.

Leave the clips and voiceovers to movie trailers. You use the visual medium to create a personal bond with potential readers of your book while providing them with information of value. Then upload your newest masterpieces to the internet and who knows? Maybe your innovative book trailers will go viral.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of the social media marketing company www.MillerMosaicPowerMarketing.com and you can see her example of a book video at http://www.mrslieutenant.com/book-discussion-questions/

You’re a book author and you want to promote your book. You have a website where you have downloads of your first chapter or chapters. Have you also made available discussion questions for book clubs to use?

Book groups can be a good target market for your book, especially if it’s fiction. But given how busy people are, it’s helpful for readers to know that if they suggest a book to their reading group they won’t have to struggle to come up with questions. All the work has already been done for them by the author!

If you haven’t yet provided downloadable questions off your website, do so now.

Here are 6 tips for creating these discussion questions:

• Direct your questions at the appropriate age level for your book. If you’ve written a children’s fiction or non-fiction book, questions should be targeted at the reading level of your book’s market.

• Questions for adult fiction or non-fiction books should include a range of questions so that different levels of book groups can find questions that appeal to their groups.

• For fiction books, are there any current or historic events that impact the story you’ve told? If so, create questions based on these events

• As people often read discussion questions before reading the book, be careful about accidentally revealing a fiction book’s surprise plot points in the questions. With careful consideration, you will usually be able to find a way to discuss a question topic without revealing these plot points.

• Before making available your discussion questions, test them on friends who haven’t read the book yet. Check that the questions mean to others what these questions mean to you.

• Offer the questions to anyone who might be interested besides making the questions available as a free download on your website or other author platforms.

By making available good discussion questions for your book, you’re providing book clubs with the resources for a better discussion. And, with any luck, the better the discussion the more buzz will be created.

For an example of book discussion questions, check out the questions at http://www.mrslieutenant.com

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of the social media marketing company www.MillerMosaicPowerMarketing.com as well as the author of the novel “Mrs. Lieutenant.”

Effective branding of yourself or your book online takes repeated exposure to your target audiences. And continually tweeting “Buy my book” on Twitter or writing this same thing for your Facebook updates is not an effective way to build a relationship with people who might then buy your book. If anything, constantly “pushing” your book can turn people off.

How do you get repeated online positive exposure without blatant advertising? You use your non-fiction or fiction book in the service of a good cause or to help someone else.

Here are examples of how this works:

Case A: A new website for women has recently launched, and the power behind the website wants members to write 500-word personal essays and submit these essays to the site. You offer you book as a prize for a winner to be selected by random.org from the women who submit an essay. The website creator is thrilled to have a prize that fits the interests of her members and you’re thrilled that your book is going to be promoted as the prize.

Case B: There’s an online campaign to raise funds for a good cause, such as breast cancer. But the campaign organizer is concerned, as the fundraising deadline nears, that not enough money has been raised. You offer a copy of your book to each of the top five donors (again picked by random.org). The fundraiser organizer announces this prize to spur higher donations and you’re again thrilled that your book is promoted as the prize.

Case C: You’re on a virtual book tour and a blogger who will review your book tells you that offering a free copy of the book encourages comments (incoming links for her blog) because to be eligible to win a person must enter a comment. You’re thrilled that the contest will go on for two weeks after your book is reviewed, keeping your book’s name in front of the blogger’s audience for two whole weeks.

Now obviously you have to be willing to give out free copies of your book whenever such a cross-promotional opportunity presents itself to you. But these free giveaways can get more positive exposure than if you were to give a free copy to a reviewer who never gets around to reading your book. Or give a copy to a reviewer who does “read” your book and then writes a “review” that could have been written by reading the back cover.

In addition, one of the unexpected things that can happen when a blogger gives away your book is that the person who wins often may be someone with his/her own blog. Then that person reviews your book, and you offer a giveaway book for that person’s blog contest. And that leads to …..

Everything in this book marketing strategy is connected to the concept of viral marketing – getting people to spread the word for you about your book. And when you can get that viral publicity while helping with a good cause or helping someone else, that’s doubly terrific.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of the social media marketing company www.MillerMosaicPowerMarketing.com and her company is currently working on the good deed of helping get the word out about the upcoming PTSD Walk Across America (see www.facebook.com/PTSDWalk)

Hotel: The decaffeinated coffee packets in the room had very small white type on silver background – almost impossible to read no matter how I held the packet to the light.

Web site: Many people have Web site type that is too small to read comfortably.  When I pointed this out to someone with a new Web site, her reply to me was: “Standard Web site type is 11 or 12 point and this is 11 point.”

So what?  If I can’t read the type on a Web site or the instructions on a hotel coffee packet, it doesn’t make any difference that this is standard-size type or that the designer of the packet thought white type on a silver background is cool-looking.

Hotel: I looked everywhere on the large bathroom counter top for the tissue box.  When I found none, I concluded that the hotel was saving money by eliminating the tissues.  The next day I discovered that the small tissue box was on the top of the toilet tank.  As it was outside my area of expectation, I did not see it.

Web site: I have often been on Web sites and interested in buying the book offered on the site or another product offered on the site and have been unable to find the BUY button.  In one case the book author was emailed to ask where the buy button was.  He admitted that he had only included a tiny button in an unlikely place on the site.  Enough said about this.

Hotel: The shampoo bottle next to the conditioner bottle had white type on a clear plastic bottle of gold-colored liquid.  No way could I read this – especially as I didn’t have my glasses on in the shower.  So which bottle was which?

Web site: This may seem the same problem as in the first example, except in that case I was talking type size and in this case I want to talk reverse type, the term for having white type on a dark background.  Yes, this is readable as a headline in large type.  But you never, ever what to use reverse type for large blocks of type, particularly on the Web when it is so easy to click away from difficult-to-read text.

No matter how cool you think reverse type looks, get rid of it.  The purpose of an effective Web site is NOT to look cool.  The purpose is to make it as easy as possible for people to say yes to the brand, book or business you are promoting on that site.

Hotel: The only soap in the bathroom was scented, which affected my allergies.  Why not have no-scent soap and be user-friendly for everyone?

Web site: All the other “little things” that make a site difficult to navigate, including the little details that are missing.  (See my Examiner.com article “Sometimes it’s the smallest detail – or the lack thereof – that can really trip up your Web site.”)

If there’s anyone from Hyatt or other hotel chains reading this, I hope you’ll now look around your hotel rooms with the perspective of the guest.  Just because the coffee packets have a cool design does that mean this is good for the guests.  (And, oh yes, I had a hard time tearing the packets open — another usability problem.)

And for those of you with Web sites instead of hotel chains, look around your Web site with the perspective of a new visitor and make sure you really have made it easy:

•    for a visitor to be motivated to stay on your site rather than clicking away
•    to find things on your site — especially how to buy your book

If you want to learn more about effective Internet marketing, listen to the recorded interview Drew Gerber of PitchRate.com did of me and my business partner Yael K. Miller — http://cli.gs/BYP3pS

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Phyllis Zimbler Miller’s company MillerMosaicLLC.com launched www.WeTeachWebMarketing.com to help people promote their brand, book or business online.  She’s also a National Internet Business Examiner at www.InternetBizBlogger.com.

In my opinion one of the most overlooked book promotion strategies is what I call “persuasive selling.”  It’s putting yourself in the potential buyer’s mind.

In other words, instead of saying what you want to say about your book, you say what the potential buyer needs to hear to be motivated to buy your book.

Let’s imagine this scenario:

I’ve written a fantasy novel complete with fairies and elves.  And I meet you in the grocery store and tell you I’ve just had a fantasy novel published.  You say: “What’s it about?”

And I say: “It’s about a whole invisible village of fairies and elves.  They have an over-population problem so the town elder calls them to a meeting and they …”

And you suddenly remember you forgot the sugar four aisles back and you’re out of there.

Now let’s rewind and try this conversation again.

You say: “What’s it about?”

And I say: “A 12-year-old boy suddenly learns he has 48 hours to save his village of fairies and elves, and he must do this even though the evil overlord is gunning for him.”

And you say: “Do you have a card with the book’s website?”

In reviewing these two scenarios, what’s the difference?

In the first one I the author want to tell you all about my story even if you could care less about the town’s problems, etc.  In the second one I the author tell you what will most likely interest you – a David-and-Goliath story of good against evil.

If you want to motivate people in person or on your website to buy your book, practice drawing them into your book’s story with a very short and pointed hook – something that will interest them.

Of course, the same recommendation goes for a nonfiction book.  You don’t want to start with describing how many people you interviewed to find the secret to living longer.  You want to simply state that the book offers seven secrets to living longer – secrets that are easy to do if you only know how.   And your book reveals how.

With a little practice you should be able to use persuasive selling to help sell more of your books.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller’s company has just launched the Miller Mosaic Internet Marketing Program to help people promote their brand, book or business at www.WeTeachWebMarketing.com and she’s a National Internet Business Examiner at www.InternetBizBlogger.com.  She’s existed about her new video that explains why her novel MRS. LIEUTENANT is excellent for book club discussions.

Why is this?

On the Internet people are usually looking for relationships (connections) before buying something. Even if the book author has an effective website – one that makes it immediately clear what’s on offer and provides an easily visible BUY button, this effective website is often not enough by itself to motivate buying the author’s book.

Let’s look at 10 ways that fiction and nonfiction authors can share free content:

1. Offer a free sample chapter on their websites and on other sites around the Internet.

2. Write a blog with information based on their book or on another interest.

3. Provide book group discussion questions.

4. Leave thoughtful comments on other people’s blog posts.

5. Participate in conversations on Twitter.

6. Write articles and upload these to article directories such as Ezinearticles.com.

7. Participate in groups on Facebook and LinkedIn.

8. Write book reviews on Amazon.

9. Write brief book review comments on Glue.com.

10. Upload several chapters or the entire book to fReado.com.

Now let’s discuss what all this free content sharing does:

• Perhaps most importantly, it demonstrates that you can indeed write well – that your book is probably well-written.

• It also demonstrates that you’re not just out to sell your books. You’re interested in engaging with readers. In fact, readers can contact you directly at social media sites such as Twitter.

• Third benefit? You may have just written enough new material to compile into an ebook that you can sell off your website.

• And, finally, it does help you sell your books because people are reminded of you and your book at different places around the Web. How many times have you decided to buy something and then forgotten to buy it? With your name and writing examples all over cyberspace you’ve provided potential fans with subtle reminders about your book.

Some writers are concerned that others will “steal” their material if that material is so easily accessible. I believe you have to be willing to take this slight risk in order to reap the greater probability of having people become interested in your writing.

Although some writers are happy to write only for themselves, most writers would like as large a reading public as possible. Being willing to share free content on the Web can help book authors attract a wider fan base.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller’s company Miller Mosaic LLC just launched the Miller Mosaic Internet Marketing Program to help people promote their brand, book or business — http://budurl.com/marketingonweb

Let me show you what I mean:

We’ll start with a nonfiction book we’ll call 15 WAYS TO START AN ONLINE BUSINESS.  And we’ll agree that:

•    The book has been published (whether from a traditional publisher or self-published doesn’t matter).

•    Each of the 15 ways has an individual chapter.

•    You have a website for your book.

Now you take those 15 chapters – and you plan and record a one-hour teleseminar around each one.  Voila!  You now have 15 teleseminars that you can sell off your website.  And as easy as this you now have an internet business.

Of course, as your mindset focuses on having an internet business based on your nonfiction book, you’ll begin to see other opportunities.  Perhaps there’s an expert in a related area who you would like to interview and then sell that interview.  Or perhaps you’d like to offer one-on-one coaching through the internet or telephone.

Once you’ve done all the heavy lifting of creating a good book, don’t stop there.  Keep looking for how you can build on that basis.

And what if you have a fiction book?  Yes, it isn’t quite as easy as a nonfiction book to use as a basis for an online business, but we’re writers – let’s use our imagination to think of a possible scenario for this endeavor:

Let’s say your novel, like my novel MRS. LIEUTENANT, takes place during the Vietnam War.  There are many people alive today who are too young to have any knowledge about this war.  What if you wrote ebooks about the war from the point of view of the people in the different countries involved in the fighting?

You could do research and write an ebook about the United States’ role in the Vietnam War and include the U.S. military point of view as well as that of the U.S. war protestors’ point of view.  And then you could do research and write an ebook about Australia’s role in the Vietnam War and include the Australians’ opposing viewpoints.

Okay, maybe this isn’t an exciting example.  How about – if you’ve written a romance novel – doing research and writing ebooks about dating relationships?

One ebook might be “The 7 Ways You Can Blow a Relationship in Only 10 Minutes.”  Would people buy that ebook?  I think so.  And I also think people might buy a series of teleseminars that you host with different dating experts.

Now does this romance/dating example get your thinking cap fired up?  It does mine – if only I could write a good romance novel ….

Step back from being the author of your published book and instead think about how you can develop your book’s “brand” into an online business.  You’ll probably be surprised how many good ideas you can come up with.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is a National Internet Business Examiner at http://budurl.com/internetbusiness as well as a book author, and her company http://www.MillerMosaicLLC.com provides internet marketing information with easy-to-implement solutions to promote your brand, book or business. On July 1st her company launched the Miller Mosaic Internet Marketing Program.

But in December of that year I had an epiphany.  I was about to reach a “significant” birthday and I couldn’t wait any longer for someone to say yes to me.  And at that moment I was finally open to hearing what my colleague had been saying for months:

Self-publishing today takes many forms but it is definitely not restricted to the old vanity press model where you paid for thousands of books that you then stacked in your garage.

Today one of the easiest options is a print-on-demand (POD) publisher – only the books ordered are printed.  That’s right – even one book at a time I learned.

I signed up with BookSurge, the POD unit of Amazon, and away I went.

Now in fairness to the people reading this guest post, I’ve taught copyediting at the college level.  So I was pretty confident in my proofreading abilities.  But earlier I had hired a book consultant to find the missing element in my book.  (People read the manuscript and liked it but kept saying something was “missing.”)

He was expensive and worth every penny even though the basic problem was the confusion of the timeline of events.  I worked on fixing that, then rewrote once again, and proofread again.

The other advantage I had is that I’d studied advertising design a long time ago.  Thus I knew how important the cover would be.  And while I paid to have a cover designed by BookSurge, I had very strong opinions which were honored.  I wanted the faces of four very different women on the cover representing the four protagonists of the novel.

If you don’t have the background for your own proofreading and cover design, I strongly urge you to get professional help in both these areas.  I’ve read self-published books that haven’t had professional editing – and you can really tell!

Next then comes perhaps the hardest part – marketing your book.  I was lucky in this arena because, while my book was going through the BookSurge stages, MRS. LIEUTENANT was named a semi-finalist in the first Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.  We were each given a page on Amazon, and I spotted that another semi-finalist had a blog on her page.  I wanted one too!

That started my intensive quest to learn everything I could about internet marketing.  And the result of that intensive quest led me to becoming an internet marketer and sharing what I’ve learned with others.

And FYI – while some book reviewers still treat self-published books as a stepchild, other reviewers have embraced the wider diversity now available.  Plus the proliferation of blogs that review books means that there’s so much more opportunity to get your book reviewed than there was when print media controlled which books got reviewed and which didn’t.

If you’re a book author and you truly want to see your book published, do consider self-publishing – as long as you have your book professionally edited, get a good cover design, and are prepared to learn how to do the marketing yourself.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is a National Internet Business Examiner at http://budurl.com/internetbusiness as well as a book author, and her company http://www.MillerMosaicLLC.com provides internet marketing information with easy-to-implement solutions to promote your brand, book or business. On July 1st her company launched the Miller Mosaic Internet Marketing Program.

Now, though, many of us judge a book by first seeing it on the Internet — even if we ultimately buy the book in a bookstore using a 30% off coupon.

And on the Internet, especially on Amazon, the book cover is a tiny thing. And, yes, many books on Amazon have the LOOK INSIDE feature. Still, your book cover has nanoseconds to connect with a potential buyer before that person clicks away to another book.

Here are seven tips for a book cover that gets people interested in your book:

1. Decide on your book cover design by looking at it the exact size it will appear on Amazon. Yes. many books on Amazon have LOOK INSIDE. Still, your book cover has nanoseconds to convince someone to stay around and learn more.

2. Make sure your book cover clearly conveys what the book is about – is it a novel, a how-to book, a memoir? Yes, the title has the heavy lifting duty here, but our brains process pictures faster than words. Use the design cover to speak to our brains.

3. Make sure the title and your name can be clearly read against the cover art. Some books might, for example, use light blue type against a dark blue background. This is not the easiest to read, especially when reduced to a tiny photo.

4. Make sure the size of the title and your name are large enough to be read when reduced to a tiny photo. A great title does no good if it can’t be read when reduced in size.

5. Choose simplicity over complexity. You want the eye to be drawn to the title and a photo that makes an impact on the brain. You don’t want a cover with so many competing elements that the eye doesn’t know where to look first — so the person simply clicks away rather than suffer the confusion.

6. Graphic artists are not necessarily the best people to hire to design your book cover. There are specialists in book cover design who know the additional details that should be considered when designing a book cover.

7. Make sure the cover doesn’t mislead the potential buyer. No nude women on the cover of a how-to about growing roses in your garden. On the other hand, you don’t necessarily have to have a rose on that book’s cover. But the book’s cover should have the look and feel that is complementary with the tone of the book.

Bonus tip: No matter how good the cover is, if your book is filled with grammatical errors, incorrect punctuation and spell-check errors (such as their for there), people will be disappointed with your book. If you’re self-publishing, hire a professional copyeditor before you publish the book. Your reading public will thank you.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is a National Internet Business Examiner at http://budurl.com/internetbusiness as well as a book author, and her company http://www.MillerMosaicLLC.com provides internet marketing information with easy-to-implement solutions to promote your brand, book or business.  On July 1st her company is launching the Miller Mosaic Internet Marketing Program.