Online Marketing

A friend of mine asked me the other day if I knew anything about viral marketing. First I had to laugh out loud, then I answered, "If I had known anything about viral marketing, would my book be still languishing in a hair's breadth above obscurity?"

In the last week, I've gotten a couple of emails and a phone call from someone who wants to help me market my book. I've ignored the emails and he finally called me. The thing was...when I started asking him questions, he could barely answer my questions in English. He kept referring me to a website and wanting to schedule an appointment with a senior consultant. I declined because I thought if this website or whatever couldn't even find someone who spoke English fluently to talk to writers (who tend to use words well and probably love words in general), there's absolutely no hope of this thing succeeding.

So,after the phone conversation, I checked the website out and it seems like it charges money for what's readily available out there as far as marketing through a website or having your own website. It also charged money (more than iUniverse does) for mass press release emailings of your book (my previous readers will know what an utter failure this is. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY THIS WAY. If you want to see what I got for my money, go check out my previous posts. I think the title is something like...What I got for my $300 or something like that).

I don't know about viral marketing and I am trying to figure that out, but I do know of a couple of websites that I think are awesome as far as getting your free "author" page.

1. Amazon.com's author central. I think this is great because this is where the book lovers come to buy their books. If a lot of them are like me, they'd check out the author pages, too. So, I think it's definitely worth checking it out.

2. Did I tell you I LOVE goodreads.com. Besides giving authors a good "author" page, you can list your books under their giveaway section. This always draws a lot of attention. I know. I don't know how many of these convert to actual sales, but I love this site and you should check it out.

3. You could buy your web domain for pittance. I bought mine for waitingforappa.com and jenniferrkim.com. Haven't done much with it, yet, but they are mine.

4. Your name. Your book. Your image. You are a brand. You are valuable. Brand it well. Safeguard it and protect it.

5. For me, I'm not sure how effective social networks are. I don't know. Maybe I'm not that social....

I know there are many other good book sites, but I haven't had the time to check them out. I need to. Once I do it, I'll let you know. It's the full time mom thing that gets in the way of working on these more, but I'm not complaining. I just try to pick my battles or pick my low hanging fruit.