To be a successful author, you have to know what resources you have available to you and be able to capitalize on those resources. One of the great marketing possibilities for authors is social networking, but many authors don’t touch this avenue of marketing. If you think Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and the dozens of other sites are just for keeping in touch with friends, you could be missing out on generating thousands of extra dollars in book sales every month.

Here is a good quick tip: Set up a Twitter account and use the third party applications like monitter.com to find customers. Be sure to have a separate twitter account for both personal and business use. With Monitter.com you can type in various keywords to find what people are tweeting about. For example, if your book is on military basic training, you can use various keywords like basic training, boot camp, drill sergeants, etc. When someone tweets with those phrases, you can see the tweet in real time and begin to communicate with that potential customer.

Michael Volkin is the author of the new book Social Networking for Authors-Untapped Possibilities for Wealth. Check out his book and book marketing services at www.SellaTonofBooks.com.