Courtesy of: CreditDonkey

If a picture can tell a thousand words, then an infographic can tell 10,000 words.

If you haven’t seen the term before, an infographic is the visual display of numeric information. USA TODAY has been using infographics for years as they show results of polls or sales trends or housing sales and the like.

In the last few months, many businesses on the web have been using infographics to make information come alive.

One of the best examples comes from my client, CreditDonkey, a consumer credit card comparison and education site. Charles Tran, founder of Credit Donkey was nice enough to answer a few questions for me about how they use infographics and I’d like to share that information with you. To see great examples, go to http://www.creditdonkey.com/happy-holidays.html

Dan: Do you do the infographics in house or do outsource it? What tips do you have to manage the process?

Charles Tran: For our infographics in general: we used to outsource it, but for the last 6 months or so, we’ve done it all in-house.

Their team came up with the topic, researched it, crafted the story and designed it.

We’ve decided to bring it all in-house as of late July. Content is too important for us to outsource and we’re all about brand journalism — a good consistent editorial voice is important to me. Plus, by having it in-house, we have more control of the research, design, copy edit, writing, etc and feel more comfortable with the data quality.

My personal recommendation, if you want to go down the outsourcing route, is to craft the story and research the data in-house… and outsource the design aspect only. Then make sure you run the infographic through an in-house attention-to-detail copy editor, as you’ll be surprised by the number of minor copy-related errors designers often introduce unintentionally (designers aren’t writers!).

My general position is that everybody should do what they do best — and for your case, you’re the storyteller… so it doesn’t make sense for you to outsource the storytelling aspect. At the same time, you’re not a designer, so it makes no sense for you to draw chicken scratch for 10 hours… as eye candy is equally important — just look at how eye-candy made USA Today into a national powerhouse.

Dan Janal helps small businesses get publicity so they can sell more products. My clients get terrific results from my coaching, consulting, done-for-you services and do-it-yourself tools. For info, go to www.prleadsplus.com or call me at 952-380-1554.

The week between Christmas and New Year’s can be a virtual dead zone.

I can’t tell you how many of these weeks I’ve puttered around my office, “trying” to do something but never getting far. I’m not meeting with clients and no big deadlines are looming, so it’s easy to end up browsing the web for hours, or playing the latest computer game.

After New Year’s Day you don’t feel either relaxed or fulfilled because you’ve accomplished nothing worthwhile.

So what are the alternatives?

1. Really relax and take a vacation. Sleep in late, eat at your favorite restaurants, get together with family and friends. And don’t think about work for one minute. Don’t even check your emails, and remember to ditch your smart phone.

This is what a vacation is for – to vacate! And you’ll return to work more energized and excited about the New Year than ever before.

2. Do just the opposite. Work on a huge project just by yourself and accomplish more in a week than you’d accomplish in a month. You might be working at your computer, but check your email and voice mail minimally and focus on four to six hours of solid work every single day. (Yes, you can do a little Holiday stuff in the evenings.)

What could you accomplish in this time? Here are a few:

a) Completely rewrite your website from beginning to end. You know it needs it anyway, and you keep telling yourself that you’ll do it when you have the time. Well, here’s the time.

b) Reorganize your office from top to bottom. Throw out a ton of stuff, paint, organize and trim down your paper and computer files. There’s nothing like getting the year started with a totally functional office where you can find anything you need in less than 10 seconds.

c) Do a planning retreat, perhaps with a close business associate. Brainstorm, develop big goals, write plans. And then challenge each other to think outside your respective boxes. Every evening make sure to go out or have a nice dinner and keep the conversation going more informally.

d) Write a book. As I told you last week, that’s what I’m doing this year. Yeah, it’s taking a little longer than a week, but it’s only taking about three weeks total. I got started before Christmas, even when I was meeting with clients, and then cleared my schedule for ten days to write a chapter a day.

You know what? I’ve done all of these. And I’ve also spent Christmas with my family and done no work at all. It’s your choice.

But please don’t putter your Holidays away. You’ll never get that time back.

By Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing. Please visit Robert’s web site at www.actionplan.com for additional marketing articles and resources on marketing for professional service businesses.

1. Mobile marketing will take off in ways you never imagined.
2. People will be saying, “Visit my app,” in addition to – or instead of -  “Visit my website.” The app will be the brochure, website and starting point of interactivity.
3. Small businesses on Main Street will have apps that provide basic info and coupons – even if they don’t have a website.
4. Doctors, dentists and other appointment-based businesses will rely on text messages and other mobile communications to confirm appointments so they don’t lose money on no shows.
5. Your prospects will think all types of written or spoken intellectual property –ezines, books, articles, webinars, teleseminars – ought to be free.
6. You will think that all information ought to be free – except your information, of course.
7. It will be harder and harder to convince people to pay for intellectual pr operty that is available online. They will pay for customized services specifically for them. Start planning your services menu accordingly.
8. Entrepreneurs will finally heed Michael Gerber’s mantra to work on the business, not in the business. But they will take action by HIRING outside professionals who can do the work for them instead of waiting to do the work themselves. Productivity and profits will increase while procrastination will decrease.
9. This phrase will be on everyone’s lips and t-shirts: “If you get something for free, then you aren’t the customer. You are the product.” I didn’t make this up. I wish I did. Think about it. We aren’t Google’s customer, or Facebook’s customer. We are the products they are selling to advertisers. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like being considered an “eyeballs.”
10. Spam will invade social media sites in overt and covert ways, making visits to those sites less enjoyable.
11. There will be more people showing you how to sell speaking services than there will be companies who can hire speakers. Okay, that one was low.

What are your predictions?

Dan Janal helps small businesses get publicity so they can sell more products. My clients get terrific results from my coaching, consulting, done-for-you services and do-it-yourself tools. For info, go to www.prleadsplus.com or call me at 952-380-1554.

Clearly, she’s had great success self-publishing her e-books. So, it was a surprise when Hocking decided to sign with St. Martin’s Press, which is a very established publishing house.

Hocking has openly explained that she suffered from depression for the vast majority of her life and turned to writing as a sort of escape. She finished her first novel at 17, titled “Dreams I Can’t Remember” and was turned down by each of the 50 agents to whom she’d sent her work.  Not long thereafter, she caught a clip on YouTube of the band Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus encouraging American youth to make their dreams come true. Hocking admits having a sort of “aha” moment and realized that she could not wait for her dreams to come true. She had to put forth the effort and make them come true.

In 2009, Hocking began to treat writing as a job rather than something she did for entertainment. She wrote a few more novels, sent them off to agents, and still received only rejections. In April 2010, Hocking uploaded her novel “My Blood Approves” to Amazon, then later to Smashwords, then directly on Barnes & Noble’s site. Hocking started selling books, first a few a day, then as she uploaded more of her work, she managed to sell 26 books in one day in May. These days, the author is selling 9,000 books a day.

Just how did she do it? Well, the stories she writes are an obvious piece of her success. Her novels combine action and romance with a dash of quirk and topped off by Hocking’s creative style of writing. Additionally, by selling e-books, Hocking was able to sell the books for far less money compared to a traditional bookstore book. Therefore, people were more inclined to spend the 99 cents or $3.00 to read her work instead of dropping upwards of $15.00 for a book off the shelf of a trendy bookstore. Hocking has a very blasé attitude in regard to her success and rapid writing. When asked just how she manages to complete her work so quickly, Hocking responds on her blog, “I don’t know. I just write a lot and drink a lot of Red Bull.”

Hocking also suggests that writing paired with reading more than she writes, was instrumental in her success. She made sure to edit her novels a great deal in order to get them just right. Learning to take criticism was useful to Hocking’s success because she was able to understand that although her books weren’t for everyone, they did have an audience.

Taking a look at her blog, Hocking describes herself as an, “Obsessive tweeter. John Hughes mourner. Batman devotee. Muppet activist. Unicorn enthusiast. Fraggin Aardvarks guitarist. Author of the USA Today Bestselling Trylle Trilogy & the upcoming Watersong series.” She actively updates her blog, so her fans always have something new to read. This past October was Hocking’s second annual “Zombiepalooza!” on her blog, which ran for the entire month of October. Hocking explains that while she especially enjoys zombies, Zombiepalooza is really a celebration of all things horror and Halloween. Throughout the month, there were guest posts, giveaways, and other fun goodies, such as the “ultimate Halloween Playlist.”

John Kremer recently mentioned Amanda Hocking in a seminar about blog tours. Amanda Hocking inspired him to name a particular type of blog tour a Blogpalooza. John got the name from Hocking, after her first Zombiepalooza in October 2010. In his seminar, John also explained a few of Amanda’s stats, which were affected dramatically by Zombiepalooza. Before Zombiepalooza, Amanda had been selling about 3,000-5,000 copies of Kindle eBooks each month. She sold about 20,000 total before October 2010. In December 2010, after Zombiepalooza, she sold 100,000 copies in the month of December alone. In January, she sold 450,000 copies of her Kindle eBook novels.

In February of 2011, she made the USA Today best-seller list. By the end of February, she had sold 900,000 copies of self-published Kindle eBooks. In March 2011, her book sales totaled over 1 million copies, and she subsequently sold the rights to four of her books to St. Martin’s Press for $2 million. Some were surprised by her decision to sell her book rights, but Hocking has explained that in order to be a billion-dollar author, she needs people to buy her books at Wal-Mart. In order to get her books onto shelves, she had to partner with St. Martin’s Press.

Says Hocking, “I’m a writer. I want to be a writer. I do not want to spend 40 hours a week handling emails, formatting covers, finding editors, etc. Right now, being me is a full time corporation.  I am spending so much time on things that are not writing.”

“I like writing. I even like marketing, especially when it comes to interacting with readers. And I don’t mind editing. I just don’t want to run my corporation, because that takes away from writing and everything else that I actually enjoy doing,” concludes Hocking.

After gaining so much success, Amanda has been able to seize unique opportunities. For example, she was a featured speaker at Comic Con in San Diego. Additionally, she was able to buy a life-size Han Solo figure from Star Wars, which was encased in carbonite. The life-size figure is rare and was something Hocking had her eye on for quite some time. The unique purchase was due in great part to the success of her Zombiepalooza.

The way Hocking executed Zombiepalooza is what earned her such success. She invited people to guest-post on her website, offer free copies of their books, and contribute stories to her blog. Simply put, she asked people to come to her blog and blog. Those guest bloggers, in turn, brought their fan clubs to Amanda’s website, earning Amanda’s work more exposure and causing her to gain even more fans. Zombiepalooza was an event blog tour that really got people talking and excited about the event, making it extremely effective.

In addition to her own blog, Hocking has separate blogs for her book Virtue, My Blood Approves, The Hollows series, as well as a blog dedicated to soundtracks for her various books. Hocking follows dozens of blogs herself. Having been blogging since April 2009, Hocking has had nearly 2 million page views.  Check out Amanda’s blog to learn more about her, her work, and to see release dates of her upcoming books at http://www.AmandaHocking.blogspot.com or her facebook fan page. http://www.facebook.com/amandahockingfans

The bottom line: Amanda Hocking is an incredibly talented author. She has achieved great success in her career, largely due to marketing her novels so effectively. Amanda began writing e-books and now has a multimillion dollar book deal. Her talent for both writing and knowing how to market her books has enabled her to become a wildly successful author. Amanda Hocking has helped pave the way for authors to follow in her footsteps without the traditional ‘gatekeepers’ of publishing being involved.

Book publicist Scott Lorenz is President of Westwind Communications, a public relations and marketing firm that has a special knack for working with authors to help them get all the publicity they deserve and more. Lorenz works with bestselling authors and self-published authors promoting all types of books, whether it’s their first book or their 15th book. He’s handled publicity for books by CEOs, CIA Officers, Navy SEALS, Homemakers, Fitness Gurus, Doctors, Lawyers and Adventurers. His clients have been featured by Good Morning America, FOX & Friends, CNN, ABC News, New York Times, Nightline, TIME, PBS, LA Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Woman’s World, & Howard Stern to name a few. Learn more about Westwind Communications’ book marketing approach at http://www.book-marketing-expert.com  or contact Lorenz at scottlorenz@westwindcos.com or by phone at 734-667-2090. Follow Lorenz on Twitter @aBookPublicist

Here are some ways you can make your book a hot gift idea for the holidays:

Hold a sale. Everyone loves a bargain, especially around the holidays. Discount your book for a limited period (e.g., a day or a week) to create excitement and a sense of urgency.

Build a gift basket. Are there other products that are a good match for your book? For example, a cookbook could be packaged with food and cooking supplies. Other how-to books could be bundled with materials and supplies readers will need to do what you teach them about. But be a little creative and you can probably come up with gift basket ideas for any type of book. Package your romance novel with a selection of teas, chocolates and other treats, or with bath products and candles.

Offer autographed books. An autographed book makes a special gift, particularly when it is personally signed to the recipient.

Combine the previous two suggestions by offering a set of autographed books. If you have a series you might offer all of your books, personally autographed of course, for one price. Even better, get a group of authors to create a package and market it to all of your fans. Not only will it help each of you to sell more books this holiday season, new fans will discover you and buy past and future titles.

Use your annual Christmas letter to remind friends and family that your books are available as gifts. Offer a special “friends and family” discount.

Think outside the bookstore. This is a good suggestion all through the year, but it can be especially effective when everyone is actively shopping in the stores. Where will the people who should be buying your books be shopping? Can you get your books in front of them there?

Are there businesses that could purchase your book as a gift for their employees or clients? Contact them to suggest your book as the answer to their gift-giving dilemma.

Set up events where shoppers will be. That means bookstores, craft shows, the mall and elsewhere.

Plan for after the holidays. Many people will be getting ebook readers as gifts, and they will be looking for ebooks to buy. Plan some book and ebook promotions for late December and January to catch these new e-readers.

Copyright 2011 by Betsy Lampe

The learning curve for publishing and marketing a book can be tremendous, and no matter how much research is done before a book is published, most authors find that publishing and marketing a book is a “learn as you go” educational experience. Some of the best tips about publishing and marketing are derived from fellow authors, while others are happenstance and learned from trial and error. Here is a compilation of tips in no specific order, from simple common sense ones to secrets that will help you sell large quantities of books.

1. Make Your Business Cards Make You Stand Out. Have a professionally designed business card with your name and/or company name on it as large as possible. Make it colorful and unique so it stands out—so that it becomes more than a provider of information—it becomes a conversation piece among people. And carry a plastic nametag holder with you and slip your business card inside it. While everyone else at a conference will have one of those silly sticker name tags with a name written in marker, you will have a nametag that might include your logo or other branding marks for your business that make it memorable.
2. Hospital Gift Shops. Few authors I know have their books in hospital gift shops. This much overlooked venue can be a great place to sell books because you have a captive audience at your fingertips. People find themselves often unexpectedly stuck in a hospital for a long time, either as a patient, or as the patient’s friend or family member, and they need something to read. If your book is one of the few in the hospital gift shop, you’re likely to make a sale. Furthermore, hospital gift shop staff have told me that many hospital employees prefer to shop in the hospital gift shop over any other place because the gift shops have unique gifts, and because they are too tired after working long shifts to run to the department stores.
3. Book Delivery. When delivering books with your car, fill the backseat and the trunk, but never, ever put two boxes of books on your front seat. One author I know did so, only to turn a corner, have a box topple onto him, and nearly cause an accident. Books can be hazardous when not transported properly. Also, buy a small fold-up dolly to carry in your car in case you have to park far away or deliver multiple boxes. Trust me; you’ll be glad you did.
4. Sign up with Alibris. This site was unknown to me until another author told me about it. Rather than individually trying to list your book at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books a Million, and several other sites, you can do it all in one shot at Alibris.com. You can also manage your sales through its system so you don’t need to log into each individual site. The convenience and extra listings at multiple stores is worth the small fees.
5. Be an Amazon Seller. If you decide to list your book at Amazon individually, have a page created for the book but list it as not available. Then rather than shipping your books to Amazon and giving them a significant cut, list yourself as an individual seller and mail the individual copies yourself. Amazon takes a smaller cut of your money when you list yourself as an individual seller and still reimburses you for postage. The only disadvantage is purchases of your book are not eligible for Amazon’s free shipping, but you’ll definitely make more money selling your books this way.
6. Google Alerts. Are you wondering whether word is getting out about your book? Are you constantly Googling your name or your book title to see what’s being said about it? Sign up for Google Alerts and enter in keywords such as your name and that of your book title and you’ll get a list of the latest updates of where they are mentioned online in your email to save you time. If your book is about current events or other topics of high interest, you can also enter keywords into Google Alerts to get alerted whenever the topic appears in the news. For example, if you’ve written a book about whether Noah’s Ark ever existed, then you can use that as your keyword and whenever Noah’s Ark is in the news or a new book about it comes out, you’ll get an alert—you then will be on top of the latest news and can capitalize on the opportunity to contact the media or send out press releases on the topic whenever it becomes popular and newsworthy again.
7. The $30 Page. Most authors have at least once had their hands slip while signing books, or they misspell someone’s name. When Eric tells you his name isn’t spelled “Erik,” you smile, put aside the copy with the error, and give Eric a new book with his name spelled correctly. But you don’t have to throw away that other book. When you print your books, put an extra page in the front with just your book title on it, while your next page has the title and your name on it. Then always sign the first page, but if you screw up, you can tear out that page (but not in front of Erik) and sign your name on the next page and send it out to someone else. Whether your book sells for $5 or $30, that extra page just saved you money—that’s why I call it the $30 page—it’s worth $30 not to waste a book you could sell.
8. Waiting Rooms. Waiting rooms in doctors and dentists’ offices, hair salons, and other places where people may have to sit and wait are perfect places to market your book to a captive audience. Bring a free book to your dentist, your optometrist, your hairdresser, your local car garage. Tell them they can have the book for free and they are welcome to take it home to read, but you would then like to have it left in the waiting room for people to look at. The doctor or dentist will be excited that you are giving him or her something for free, and the patients or customers will be sure to see it and be able to read just enough to wet their interest so they will want to buy the book later.
9. Build Your Customer List. Some of this may be obvious, but not all of it. Put on your website an option to join your email newsletter. Collect email addresses so you can keep people updated on your events and future books. When you have a book signing, have a sign-up sheet for your email newsletter; be sure also to collect names and addresses if people want to be on a snail mail list. When people buy from you via credit card or pay with check, collect their addresses from their orders and off their checks for your mailing list. Mail out postcards to them when your next book comes out. If people are on both your email and your snail mail list, don’t hesitate to contact them both ways. An email may not go through. A book may only mildly interest them on the first notice, but peak their interest with the second.
10. Christmas Cards. Have special Christmas cards designed with an appropriate quote from your book or your book cover on them. Send them out in early December as thank you notes to the stores carrying your book and a reminder of your product, as well as to all your friends and family as a way to tell them about your book while giving them a few weeks to order copies for themselves or as Christmas presents.

Great tips for book publishing and marketing are everywhere. I’ve shared a few of mine with you. Now share yours with other authors and ask them to do the same. Then get out there and sell those books!

Irene Watson is the Managing Editor of Reader Views, where avid readers can find reviews of recently published books as well as read interviews with authors. Her team also provides author publicity and a variety of other services specific to writing and publishing books.

1. Start promoting to your niche business market first: Have you written a finance book? Start by promoting your book to finance media. Is your book a ‘how to’ for small businesses? Begin by pitching your book to small business interest media. The key to publicity is to build awareness in your niche market before you target mainstream media. By contacting media specific to your business genre, you’ll establish recognition among the groups that matter most. Once the ‘buzz’ sets in, then you can test out the waters in the mainstream business market.

2. Write by-line articles: Write what you know! Your by-line articles should be an extension of your expertise and your book. Each main point in your book can be a topic for an article. Another ideal source for by line articles comes from tracking industry news. Writing and pitching articles that tie in to current business events will help brand you as the ‘expert’ in your field and keep your book timely since publicity for you will encourage publicity for your title. If you’re ever struggling to think of article topics, go back to your table of contents and extract the main idea of each chapter. Sometimes you have to go back to the beginning to get a fresh start!

3. Monitor the news: By tracking industry news trends, you’ll be able to respond more quickly to ongoing business developments. With news – and with business – it’s important to have the edge and staying on top of ongoing trends allows you to position yourself for interview and commentary opportunities before your peers.

Tip: Set up Google Alerts for key phrases in your industry. You’ll be quickly notified of breaking news and can pitch your media contacts to offer insight into appropriate issues and trends.

4. Make your own news. Some of our best material to pitch comes from business authors who created their own surveys, statistics, or identified trends in their industry. Your information and your results become “news” and when it is covered in an interview, article, feature story, you are continuing to build your brand and name as a thought-leader.

5. Set up speaking engagements: There are a few business-oriented groups that provide business professionals with great places to network and grow their brand.

• Register your company with your local Better Business Bureau: An organization founded on “advancing marketplace trust,” your local BBB will introduce you to other organizations within your industry. You may contact these organizations and offer to hold a presentation about a topic in your book.
• Don’t plug your book during the presentation but do let your audience know that they can learn more about the topic in your book before you close. For information Join the National Speakers Association: Membership to the National Speakers Association (NSA) allows you to expand your client list service and reach a wider audience through your message all while generating awareness about your book. Their annual convention is a great place to network! Believe us, we’ve been there. For more information about NSA, visit: http://www.nsaspeaker.org/.
• Now that you’re starting to present, make sure your speaking practices are top notch with Toastmasters International: “is a non-profit organization that teaches public speaking and leadership skills through a worldwide network of meeting locations.” For more information about Toastmasters, visit: http://www.toastmasters.org/.

Corinne Liccketto is the Sales & Marketing Manager at Smith Publicity, Inc. Beginning in 1997, Smith Publicity is one of the world’s leading promotional firms, specializing in book publicity. Fueled by a passion for making good things happen for clients, the company has worked with over 900 individuals and companies–from authors and entrepreneurs to publicly-held companies and businesses representing a wide range of industries. The Smith Publicity reach is international with offices in New Jersey, New York City, Los Angeles, and London. For more information about Smith Publicity, Inc., please visit www.smithpublicity.com.

• Weird But True is an app developed by the creators of National Geographic that will keep you entertained for hours. Packed with interesting facts that will allow you to impress your friends and colleagues with newly acquired knowledge of the natural world.

• Green Eggs and Ham provides children with picture/word association and other features designed to promote early literacy. Winner of the 2011 Parents’ Choice Award, its an interactive approach to learning hidden beneath a Dr. Seuss Classic.

• 3D Classic Literature Collection lets readers enjoy their favorite American classic stories in a 3-dimensional context. Complete with high quality animation and audio, this interactive app is sure to bring your favorite stories to life to let you experience them in a way you never imagined.

• Fahrenheit 451 brings Ray Bradbury’s sci-fi story off the page and into reality with narration, puzzles, auto-bookmarking, and book references to help you find your next favorite read. Enjoy this timeless classic all over again like never before.

• Pocket Cocktails serves as a complete archive of all your favorite drink recipes. Entertain your friends, or just make yourself the ideal martini on your night off. Complete with how-to photos and festive holiday drink recipes, you’ll be the life of any party this season.

• Jack and the Beanstalk is the perfect app to keep your kids entertained whenever you need a minute to yourself. Filled with interactive games, activities, artwork, and read-along text, it’s the ideal children’s app with an educational twist. Unlike other book apps, every page has a different surprise that will keep kids engaged and involved, all at a price that won’t break the bank.
• Wizard of Oz 3D, The Experience puts a new spin on the timeless classic of Dorothy’s adventure. Enjoy L. Frank Baum’s novel in an engaging 3D interactive experience. With pop-up animation, rediscover the story and share it with friends, family, and children. Bring an old classic to life and enjoy it all over again.

• Comics is a free app that lets comic fans keep up with their favorite strips from Marvel, DC, The Walking Dead, and many more. Kill some free time in between errands or make an evening out of it while watching your favorite superhero movies.

• Nancy Drew: Shadow Ranch Lite lets users follow their favorite teen detective on her latest investigation. Choose your own path through the story and solve puzzles to help Nancy crack her latest crime. Track your progress and backtrack when you receive new clues to get on the right path!

• Our Choice is an interactive app that covers the pressing issue of global warming. As viewed by Al Gore, Our Choice takes you through various charts, articles, diagrams, and other forms of media to help users grasp the seriousness of the environmental issue. Stay informed with everything going on and find ways to lessen your environmental impact. Check out the tour by Al Gore here: http://vimeo.com/22872218

Books have made a comeback in the world of entertainment with revelations such as audio versions, 3D supplements, and smartphone apps. Let me know your thoughts on these apps and others you find. Ever thought about developing an app for your book? It won’t be long until it’ll be common place. If you jump on the bandwagon now you’ll still early in the game.

Book publicist Scott Lorenz is President of Westwind Communications, a public relations and marketing firm that has a special knack for working with authors to help them get all the publicity they deserve and more. Lorenz works with bestselling authors and self-published authors promoting all types of books, whether it’s their first book or their 15th book. He’s handled publicity for books by CEOs, Navy SEALS, Homemakers, Fitness Gurus, Doctors, Lawyers and Adventurers. His clients have been featured by Good Morning America, FOX & Friends, CNN, ABC Nightly News, The New York Times, Nightline, TIME, PBS, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Family Circle, Woman’s World, & Howard Stern to name a few. Learn more about Westwind Communications’ book marketing approach at www.book-marketing-expert.com or contact Lorenz at scottlorenz@westwindcos.com or by phone at 734-667-2090. Follow Lorenz on Twitter @aBookPublicist. For iPhone app marketing check out: http://www.iphoneapppublicity.com

Create an Audience

This is why it’s important to begin creating your audience as soon as you can. This can start as soon as you have a reasonable idea of what your book will be about and when it will be released. Start describing your writing progress on your personal blog and encourage everyone you know to visit the blog, make comments and tell others about your upcoming book.

Procrastination is not an option here! By letting anyone and everyone know about your book, you increase the possibility that your fans will line up to buy it when it’s published.

Network Your Heart Out

Writers tend to be a cliquish bunch, with poets separating themselves from fiction writers, who in turn isolate themselves from nonfiction writers, and so forth. Thankfully, readers aren’t as finicky, often buying a wide array of writings. With this in mind, it makes sense to promote your work across all genres. Be shameless about this! Not only will you develop contacts who may help you further your writing, but you may gain readers who would have otherwise been clueless about the existence of your book.

Use Social Media to Your Advantage

The Internet has made marketing a lot easier than it used to be. Take advantage of technology by creating a website and opening accounts on various social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, DeviantArt, etc. This will increase your fan base exponentially, which will lead to more book sales. Not only can you update your fans about progress on your book, potential publishing dates, and so forth, but you can release “teaser” chapters to hook readers.

Integrate Search Engines into Your Efforts

One of the best ways to increase your fan base is to become visible in search engines. This can be done by incorporating specific keywords on your blog, such as the title of your work and a few descriptive words (e.g., “crime novel” or “young adult fiction”).

Also, visit Google Webmaster Central  to learn how Google crawls, indexes and ranks websites. By using specific keywords and submitting a sitemap of your site, you increase the likelihood that your site (and therefore your work) will be found through search.

Keep at It (But Maintain Balance)

When it comes to marketing your work, it’s important to remember the adage, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Even the most seasoned marketing firms know this is a nuanced process that requires time and patience. Make a habit of doing a little marketing every day, and you will eventually start reaping the benefits of all of your hard work. Be sure not to burn yourself out, though, or your victory will not seem nearly as sweet.

As you can see, marketing is mostly common sense with a little strategy mixed in. Why pay someone to do it when you can do it yourself? Not only will marketing your own work save you money, but it will increase your overall confidence and help you gain a deeper understanding of what it takes to write a great book. Best of luck!

Derrick Cruise is currently writing a book of poetry, and plans to market it himself using various strategies, including email marketing.