How to use this Page

Expert: Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or partnering with your publisher
(updated and expanded to 416 pages!)

As the author of The Frugal Book Promoter and other award-winning books in the HowToDoItFrugally series of books, I probably shouldn’t have made any mistakes with the online launch of the second edition. And I probably wouldn’t have if I had been taking my own advice.

In the first edition of The Frugal Book Promoter I warned people that it’s never too early to begin promoting a book. That was years ago! Sometimes we need a boot in the pants to remember what we already know. I shouldn’t have waited so long to begin making lists and checking them twice!

And since that first edition was published I had built a great platform that I thought would be sufficient. And that brings me to my biggest mistake. Hubris. We authors who have been around awhile are often sure that we can rely on what we have done and who we already know. My contact list included Denise Cassino, an online launch specialist (www.mybestsellerlaunch.com), and I knew I could rely on her. I have a huge contact list I had been collecting assiduously. What more did I need?

Well, The Frugal Book Promoter also warns authors to categorize their lists. Which I did. But I didn’t have a specific category for the kinds of writers and people who run writers’ services I could ask for bonuses. Bonuses are those things that we offer people when they buy our book on a certain day to try to raise our sales rank. I pulled together a great bunch of bonuses, but after the fact I kept remembering folks I could have asked so it wasn’t nearly as long as it could have been and these bonus partners help an author get the word out (online) about your book.

Further, I took a vacation just before the launch so I hadn’t given myself much thinking time. Again hubris. I reiterate in my book that getting publicity and doing promotion is a partnership. The people an author or publisher hires to help them can’t do it on their own. They need both ideas and cooperation from the author.

Hubris. I had launches before. One for my novel at the Autry Museum of Western History. One for my book of creative nonfiction at my home. Several at bookstores for chapbooks of poetry. But they were realtime launches. This online launch was different. Launches designed to raise ratings at online bookstores are done online and needed lots of techy expertise. At least I knew that I needed Denise!

Services for online launches are like a bowl of minestrone. They come in different sizes, at different prices. The different ingredients are designed to do different things for the health of your book. The more you know about them before you start, the easier it will be to make choices based on the time you have, the money you have and the needs of your particular book.

I knew that when you hire any publicist, you aren’t just buying services. You’re buying their network, their conta

: A Book Review by Vikram Narayanan (CEO BookBuzzr)

I recently had an opportunity to review the book “How to Sell More Books on Amazon”. This book is short at less than 40 pages. But it is packed with actionable suggestions which, if implemented diligently, can yield significant results to an author. Here’s what you’ll find in the book:


1. A check list of essential and optional activities that you can do on Amazon to promote your book.
2. Strategies for increasing your visibility on Amazon to draw people to your book page.
3. Tactics to get more reviews for your book on Amazon.
4. A guide to conducting effective “Amazon Best Seller Campaigns.”
5. Tips to drive traffic to your book page through the creation of “Listmania” lists and “So You’d Like To” guides.
6. Ideas to maximize your book’s profit potential by utilizing the Amazon Marketplace feature and the Amazon Associates program.
7. Insights into the self-publishing and Kindle book publishing worlds

Throughout the book, Dana adds in helpful advice, opinion or commentary which she refers to as “Savvy Tips”.

Overall, this book is a valuable starting point to help you make sense of the overwhelming amount of information and opportunities available on Amazon.

Vikram Narayan is the founder of BookBuzzr Book Marketing Technologies. (Twitter – @bookbuzzrCEO ) Vikram is a graduate from Carnegie Mellon University. Prior to starting BookBuzzr, Vikram founded another software company that has been successfully serving clients from all over the world since 2001. When he is not dreaming up ways to help authors accelerate their earnings and book sales, Vikram spends his time playing the guitar, practicing Aikido and spending time with his family.

Guest Expert: Aggie Villanueva

Amazon is much more than just the world’s largest bookstore.

As an author you’ve made sure your book is listed on Amazon.com because everyone in the writing/promotion fields says you must. So what’s the big deal? You’ve actually made more sales to family and friends on your own than through Amazon.

Valid question. But here’s a question more to the point: once your book is published on Amazon do you let it just sit while waiting for sales that never come? That may be why you’re not making sales to anyone but family and friends. You haven’t yet learned how to “work Amazon,”

Did you know they give you free marketing youcould never afford to buy? But only if you work their simple system.One reason you don’t make many sales through Amazon could be you haven’t yet discovered that your book’s catalog sales page is shrewdly structured to promote itself continually and on multiple levels, if you work it.

I’m a writer and author publicist and I know a good marketing setup when I see one.I’ve spent a lot of time researching the Amazon setup with no professional help except for calling their number and asking; which doesn’t always garner an answer. I’ve studied their setup from the purely non-techie author’s perspective, which is admittedly, what can they do for ME.

And the answer is a whole heck of a lot. A lot more than just listing my book in the world’s largest retail book store where it would otherwise get lost in the crowd, as it does at most online bookstores.

Other book sellers just aren’t set up the same way. That’s why the algorithms they use are a closely guarded secret. For example, I could not have earned the title “multiple category bestseller” so easily elsewhere. And I couldn’t have held that status steadily over the years, especially for self-published books, if I hadn’t made use of the free automated publicity engines in place for me at Amazon.

Supplyingthe means to earn multiple category bestsellers is just one of the site’s many paybacks. Unfortunately these promotional layers and automated systems are unknown to many authors. Also unknown is the importance of, and how easy it is, to ranktop 100in several high-profile lists, some without even selling one book. Yet being seen in these lists nearly always generates sales.

One of my books also made the reader’s choice Top Rated list in three Kindle categories simply because I paid just a little attention to the Customer Review section of my Amazon sales page. It also made the top ten in several Tag Communities.

And I’m just skimming the surface of the ratings you can earn and the lists you can top. Once there you may forever place those titles in your promotional material. Readers trust even an unknown author if you have rated highly in lists, and/or earned bestseller status, maybe trusting you enough to buy your book though they’ve never heard of you.

Amazon wisely structured their site for auto-promotion, promotion and more promotion for each and

Guest Expert: Phyllis Zimbler Miller

If you are traditionally published and your publisher hasn’t done this for you, or if you are self-published and didn’t know to do this yourself, take advantage now of an Amazon author marketing opportunity by creating an Amazon Author Page.

I just self-published my 86-year-old father’s comedy short story book (The Love Life of Howard Handsome and Other Short Stories) through Amazon’s CreateSpace. When the book was first displayed on Amazon, if you clicked on his name you went back to the book listing shown in search results for his name (the screen BEFORE you click on the book title and land on the actual book page).

Once I set up his Author Page, when you click on his name you now go there.

What is an Amazon Author Page?

An opportunity to let prospective book fans know more about you, the author.

On your Author Page, besides having a short bio and author photo, you can upload:

• Your blog posts (you can have feeds from more than one blog)

• Author events

• Additional photos

• Video

• Your latest tweet on Twitter

Of course all your books are there too.

To create an Author Page:

Go to Author Central at https://authorcentral.amazon.com/ and click on “Join Now” next to the home button.

Answer the questions and then get your confirmation email. Once you’ve done this, you can start adding info to your Author Page.

And while sometimes you may want to send people to a specific book page of yours on Amazon, other times you may want people to see everything you have on offer.

In this second case you can create a shortened URL for the link to your Amazon Author Page. (As an example see my Amazon Author Page at http://budurl.com/PZMAmazonPage ) Then you can give out this shortened URL when you want people to see all your books at one time.

Having a robust Amazon Author Page gives you an excellent opportunity for prospective book fans to “connect” with you. Make sure you take advantage of this opportunity!

Amazon Kindle tip: If you don’t have a Kindle, you can still buy Kindle eBooks and read these on your computer. Go to Kindle Support and you can download free Kindle software for a PC or a Mac.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of the marketing consulting company MillerMosaicLLC.com, which works with clients including book authors to effectively use social media marketing. Phyllis is also a ficti