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Plug Your Book!
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Book promotion with e-books
So far, electronic books, or e-books, haven’t gotten much traction
with consumers. Until an excellent, inexpensive reader gadget becomes
available, e-book sales probably won’t be significant. In the meantime,
though, e-books and downloadable excerpts are a good way to generate
awareness of your book and to distribute spin0ff products like special
reports.
Amazon Shorts
Authors can use Amazon Shorts as a vehicle for publicizing new
books or promoting backlist titles. Readers pay 49 cents to download the
Short in plain text or PDF format.
For example, historian David McCullough used an Amazon Short to
build awareness of his 2006 hardcover 1776. His Short was a 1,700-word
essay titled “Faces” on how Revolutionary War leaders are perceived
today. The Short included links to 1776 and nine previous McCullough
works sold on Amazon.
Each Amazon Short includes an author biography and photograph,
and links to their other books sold on Amazon. Shorts are a good way for
readers to try new authors because the low price encourages reader
experimentation and impulse buying.
Some authors have used Shorts to serialize works, or to update
readers with extensions of their books, or an entirely new story with
familiar characters.
Some nonfiction authors have used Shorts to generate new
customers for other products. In one longtime bestselling Short, Why
Authors Are Cranky, author Bruce Holland Rogers promotes his own
Web site, where readers can purchase a one-year e-mail subscription to
Rogers’ short stories for $10. The Web link in Rogers’ Amazon Short is
live, so readers can click right to the site:
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