Book Promotion on the Web - Recently Updated Pages

Tips

GregoryK. — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:24:10 CDT

General Tips

Are there other high profile blogs/sites where your book is a natural fit? Think of all the communities you're involved in or would like to be. For example, If it's a children's book, think about moms and dads who blog. If it's the kind of thing that's likely to appeal to geeks -- try to get it on Slashdot. The "/. effect" is huge, and translates to visitors and sales.
Use Google Alerts to help find places where you, your book, or your area of expertise might be a natural fit.

Facebook

Please see our Facebook page

Twitter

Coming soon

MySpace

post about it in the Book Warehouse group ("we encourage blatant capitalism!")
Using MySpace as an Author Promotional Tool by Rick Reed.
when you get a friend request, look at who is asking and see if there's any information you should send them. Many bookstores, libraries, librarians, and book sellers are on MySpace and would actually appreciate good information. Use the opportunity to offer something of value.
use the MySpace blog as a means of communication -- put in information your readers would want/be interested in, remind folks of events, make it interactive by answering questions, and update often enough to keep the story (your book!) interesting. A good example is here on author Jay Asher's MySpace blog and how blog info is highlighted on his profile.
if you have written a work of fiction, create a profile for your main character(s) or a page for a band featured in your book (for example, Metal Assassin from Mark Haskell Smith's book Salty) or any other variation you come up with that ads value and fun for the reader and potential reader.

Almost everyone at LinkedIn wants to hear about jobs. The easiest way to send all your LinkedIn Contacts a note is as a job offer: "Promoter for my new book." When Adam Shostack published The New School of Information Security it went above #5,000 on Amazon using this technique before any other press, reviews, or PR.

Xanga

Ira Socol suggests building a network of subscribers for your Xanga blog; this has been his biggest source of sales so far for The Drool Room.

Yahoo!

don't forget about Yahoo! Groups.
if there are beautiful or interesting images in your book, get them on Flickr. Consider Creative Commons licensing them to make them easy for others to reuse -- and credit
it works for Oprah, so why not give it a try: post questions on Yahoo! Answers and encourage participation.

Twitter

Squidoo

Build a "lens" on Squidoo. You can include links to your blog/webpage and syndicate your blog here as well. Also, Squidoo is set up nicely for selling your book via links you provide.
Seth Godin, one of Squidoo.com's founders, says that Squidoo is working on some tools for this area. Watch the SquidBlog for details.

Amazon

Authors can blog on Amazon.com via the Amazon Connect program. If you already blog, you can use your blog's RSS feed within the Connect program.

if you self-publish, how do you get your book on Amazon?

Success stories

How to create a liberal bestseller describes how Glenn Greenwald's How Would a Patriot Act? "rose from obscurity to number one on Amazon largely because those initial blogs ignited a wildfire of mentions and purchase links throughout the blogosphere."
Bloggers Expose and Sell the “Real McCain” describes how Cliff Shechter's book The Real McCain reached #6 on the Amazon biography list with no advertising and no TV appearances, but active promotion in the blogosphere
Leinad Zeraus' (aka Daniel Suarez) self-published thriller Daemon grew sales through blog buzz and word of mouth before eventually selling to Dutton... with a sequel also purchased.

Book clubs and salons

book-club-resources.com's General Interest Online Book Clubs and Web-based Book Discussion has links ot about a dozen, as well as resources for starting your own

Blogs

Firedoglake's book salon, featuring online "chats" in blog threads.
TPM Cafe's book club has week-long discussions with invited participants commenting as well as the author
Particpate in or host a blog tour. Host Your Own Event: Take a Blog Tour by Alyice Edrich

VoiceThread

Easy way to create a short audio file about your book. Link the audio file to an image, such as your book cover, and to a sales source, such as your local bookstore. Then share it anywhere, just like a YouTube video.
Big in the education community, with many, many reviews of books by kids.
Viewers of your VoiceThread can comment with their own audio tag and/or share it virally.
To read aloud more than an excerpt, you might need to check on your audio rights.
Examples here.

EverNote

Clip all your web reviews to a notebook. Make it public and share one neat file instead of separate links.
Great because it preserves all the copyright and author credit for the blog reviewers.
More info here.

Articles and discussions

Web Sites Let Bibliophiles Share Books Virtually. Are there ways to use new book-focused social networks like Shelfari, LibraryThing, and GoodReads for promotion?

Other resources

Dennis Cass on Book Launch 2.0

Twitter

GregoryK. — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 23:16:37 CDT

Different people use Twitter in different ways: a news source, a chat room, forwarding interesting links, crowdsourcing information like Twitter Vote Report, staying in touch with friends, meeting fans and potential fans, and so on. It can all be a bit bewildering at first.

A couple of good starting points:

Deanna Zandt's Why Twitter, anyways? and A non-fanatical beginner's guide to Twitter. David Pogue's Twitter is what you make it Howcast's video How To Use Twitter (to the right): Twitter also offers a FAQ and a help page of their own.

Deanna Zandt's Why Twitter, anyways? and A non-fanatical beginner's guide to Twitter.
David Pogue's Twitter is what you make it
Howcast's video How To Use Twitter (to the right):

Twitter also offers a FAQ and a help page of their own.

Terminology Basics

@ replies

Use an at sign (@) in front of a Twitter username to reply to someone, to refer to them, or direct a new message to somebody. So, for example, the tweet

@gregpincus check out the new page @jdp23 has up at http://bookpromotion.wetpaint.com/page/Twitter

tells gregpincus to look at jdp23's page.

You can see all the tweets directed to you by clicking on the @yourusername link when you are signed in and on your "Home" page.

Retweeting (RT)

Retweeting is the act of sharing someone else's tweet with your followers - spreading the word wider. To identify a retweet, the Twitter convention is to put RT at the start of the retweet and to include the Twitter username of the person you are retweeting (like attributing a quote). So...

RT @SCBWI Our summer conference is August 7-10.

would be retweeting an @SCBWI tweet announcing conference dates.

Hashtags (#)

Use the sharp sign (#) as part of a "hashtag" to organize and categorize your information. For example "skittling and fiddling" sweeps poetry awards despite not rhyming! #poetry Whether or not you've got an account there, Twitter hashtags are an easy way to follow conversations about different topics. You can follow them via Twitter Search, RSS, Friendfeed, or clients (see below) like twhirl and Tweetdeck. "An Introduction to Twitter Hashtags" has more, as does Mari Smith's video on the right. Book-related hashtags include ...

Use the sharp sign (#) as part of a "hashtag" to organize and categorize your information. For example

"skittling and fiddling" sweeps poetry awards despite not rhyming! #poetry

Whether or not you've got an account there, Twitter hashtags are an easy way to follow conversations about different topics. You can follow them via Twitter Search, RSS, Friendfeed, or clients (see below) like twhirl and Tweetdeck. "An Introduction to Twitter Hashtags" has more, as does Mari Smith's video on the right.

Book-related hashtags include ...

#kidlit - for children's literature

#YA - for young adult literature

#poetry - for poetry

#writing - for writing in general (resources, tips, questions)

Clients

Instead of using Twitter.com or their phones, many people use "clients" - standalone applications like Tweetdeck, twhirl, Seesmic Desktop, tweetie, or many others - to tweet and read others' tweets. Clients offer different user interfaces designed to make things like tweeting and retweeting easier, and some offer different ways to group the tweets you read. Once you are up and running in Twitter, it is worth checking out a client or two to see if it will make the experience more fun for you.

You can find links to many of clients (and other programs) at the Twitter downloads page.

#followfriday

Every Friday (and sometimes other days), it has become a Twitter "tradition" to recommend users that others should follow by including their username and #followfriday or #FF in a tweet. Sometimes you'll see a tweet full of usernames with no specific reason for the followfriday recommendation whereas other times you'll read a "why" as well as names. Looking at the recommendations of people you enjoy on Twitter is a good way to find new people to follow. Likewise, recommending tweeters you enjoy helps them get more followers.

The Fail Whale

Twitter sometimes reaches overcapacity and you cannot tweet or read tweets. When that occurs, users of Twitter are taken to a screen that includes this graphic (by Yiying Lu) of a whale, now referred to as the Fail Whale:

Twitter sometimes reaches overcapacity and you cannot tweet or read tweets. When that occurs, users of Twitter are taken to a screen that includes this graphic (by Yiying Lu) of a whale, now referred to as the Fail Whale:

URL Shorteners

Because of the 140 character limit of each tweet, it can be difficult to include full URLs in a message. Even this page has a URL that contains 45 characters... or nearly 1/3 a full tweet! Luckily, there are many services that can take a long URL and give you a shorter one, usually under 20 characters, to use instead.

Two of the best known sites are Bit.ly and tinyurl. To use either, you go to the site, paste your long URL in a box, click the "shorten" button, and get a new, shorter URL that you can then paste in your tweet or in e-mail or wherever you want. As an example of how it looks and works: http://bit.ly/8w5VR is a shortened link to this page.

This post on Go2.me offers up over 130 URL shortening sites, as well as a lot of information on how and why to use them.

Useful Lists of Twitterers

These lists are not likely to be complete resources but are presented as a reference:

YA Authors on Twitter (from @mitaliperkins and @readergirlz)
Middle Grade Authors on Twitter (from @taralazar)
Picture Book Authors on Twitter (from @taralazar)
100 Authors on Twitter (from @mashable)
70 Non-fiction Authors on Twitter (from @mashable)
Poets on Twitter (from @collinkelley)
...

Accessibility

The issues with twitter.com are not as crippling as an “all flash” site but these small details show when developers understand accessibility and have an attention to detail. Don’t get me wrong, twitter.com is far more accessible than a great deal of sites out there.

-- Nick DeNardis' post on eduGuru discusses some of Twitter's issues with accessibility,

Accessible Twitter is an application (still in the "alpha" stage) written by Dennis Lembrée that provides web accessibility for Twitter that works with or without Javascript. Items currently implemented include making all links are keyboard accessible, large default text size and high color contrast, and forms marked up for optimal accessibility. Follow @AccessibleTwitr for more.

Coverage

Anonymous — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:13:11 CDT

Poetry Chat

Anonymous — Thu, 21 May 2009 19:48:44 CDT

Let's use Twitter as a place to talk about poets and poetry, share poetry, share poetry links and resources, and, in general, put the verse in Twitterverse.

Every Thursday, 6 p.m. Pacific/9 p.m. Eastern

Using TweetChat: http://tweetchat.com/room/poetry
Using Twitter Search: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23poetry

The Plan

Let's all talk poetry on Twitter, and all use the #poetry hashtag as an identifier so we can find each other and follow along in a Twitter client like Tweetchat (or any other variant). All future chats will be Thursdays at 9 PM Eastern/ 6 PM Pacific.

The first schat was Friday, April 10th. The second chat was Thursday April 16th at 9 PM Eastern/6 PM Pacific.

Again, all future chats will be Thursday at that same time unless and until we discover a reason to change.

We'll shoot for an hour chat again knowing that it will likely go longer. Please invite others to join us! Again, I know this time won't work for everyone, but it seemed to be the best for the gathered crowd.

Why?

Why not?

But more specifically....

it will be fun
it's not easy to get people together to talk poetry... but Twitter has millions of possible chatters unbound by geography
lots of poetry fits in 140 characters
there are great resources to share
we might find or create new poetry fans
it really will be fun

In April, in particular, there would also be something poetic about #poetry becoming a trending topic on Twitter. Mind you, it would be poetic any time, but during National Poetry Month (in the U.S. and Canada, anyway), there might be more people thinking poetry already, so it might be easier to get the chat up to critical mass.

Does the Chat Need a Format?

Should this be a free flowing chat or does it need any sort of format -- time for sharing poems, time for conversation on a specific topic, time for sharing links, etc?

Does there need to be a "moderator" of some sort? Someone to announce official times if we think there should be topics, etc.

This may become apparent as we try a few chats, of course. We don't want structure to get in the way... but then again, structure and poetry aren't necessarily at odds, either!

There's a Feedback thread below, and I'd love to know what you think.

Questions/Ideas/Feedback

Feel free to tweet me - @GregPincus
Add to the wiki!
Comment in the thread below.
Spread the word!

30 Poets/30 Days

JonPincus — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 10:07:08 CDT

	30 Poets/30 Days is a celebration of children's poetry taking place at GottaBook during National Poetry Month in April 2009. From Greg Pincus' announcement post: Every day in April, I'll be posting a previously unpublished poem by a different poet.... We'll launch on Tuesday, April 1, with former Children's Poet Laureate Jack Prelutsky's new “A Little Poem For Poetry Month.” We’ll end April 30th with “Books & Me” by Pat Mora to help celebrate El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Children's Day/Book Day). And every day in between will bring something new. You can follow along here and via 30poets30days on Twitter. 30 Poets/30 Days is also part of a project to use Twitter to bring together the children's literature ("kidlit") and poetry communities. Greg's Twitter, #poetry, and #kidlit ... and an invitation and #poetry!, and Just One More Book's podcast have more. For an overview of the strategy, see What rhymes with Skittles? These pages discuss both the overall "kidlit and poetry on Twitter" project, and the promotion of 30 Poets/30 Days.

30 Poets/30 Days is a celebration of children's poetry taking place at GottaBook during National Poetry Month in April 2009. From Greg Pincus' announcement post:

Every day in April, I'll be posting a previously unpublished poem by a different poet....

We'll launch on Tuesday, April 1, with former Children's Poet Laureate Jack Prelutsky's new “A Little Poem For Poetry Month.” We’ll end April 30th with “Books & Me” by Pat Mora to help celebrate El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Children's Day/Book Day). And every day in between will bring something new. You can follow along here and via 30poets30days on Twitter.

30 Poets/30 Days is also part of a project to use Twitter to bring together the children's literature ("kidlit") and poetry communities. Greg's Twitter, #poetry, and #kidlit ... and an invitation and #poetry!, and Just One More Book's podcast have more. For an overview of the strategy, see What rhymes with Skittles?

These pages discuss both the overall "kidlit and poetry on Twitter" project, and the promotion of 30 Poets/30 Days.

To follow along

Via Twitter

The easiest way to keep up with everything that's going on is using Twitter search. Try one of the following links:

all discussions about #poetry, #kidlit, and National Poetry Month
discussions about #kidlit
discussions about #poetry
discussions about National Poetry Month (#NPM, #poetrymonth and NaPoMo)
discussions about #kidlit #poetry
discussions about 30 Poets/30 Days

Also, you can check out the Tweeting points here

In the blogosphere

... link out to various blogs ...

Goals

establish a community of poetry-lovers on Twitter using the #poetry hashtag
working with the bloggers of the Kidlitosphere, establish a community of people interested in children's literature on Twitter using the #kidlit hashtag
have fun talking about a subject we're passionate about -- and meet some new people along the way
broaden awareness of poetry, the Kidlitosphere, National Poetry month and all the great projects associated with it -- including 30 Poets/30 Days

Tweeting points

JonPincus — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 09:21:16 CDT

Here's a few of the tweets that people have sent about #kidlit #poetry and 30 Poets/30 Days ... use these as inspiration or cut-and-paste them yourselves! To see all the poetry and kidlit-related tweets, use this link.

Rockin illustrator Lane Smith video (part 1 of 3) today on JustOneMoreBook.com http://tinyurl.com/ctsu2s #kidlit #illustration

Originally tweeted by JustOneMoreBook. If you've got something on your blog or site that others would be interested in, please share it! The strange-looking link is a "shortened" URL which saves valuable characters. To create one for any URL, you can use http://tinyurl.com, http://is.gd, or a bunch of other sites.

delzeydouble poetry treat: Rebecca Kai Dolitch in 2 places! http://tiny.cc/4SNwG and http://tiny.cc/TokFt #poetry #kidlit

Originally tweeted by Delzey . It's amazing how much info you can pack into 140 characters!

RT @Delzey: delzeydouble poetry treat: Rebecca Kai Dolitch in 2 places! http://tiny.cc/4SNwG and http://tiny.cc/TokFt #poetry #kidlit

Originally tweeted by jdp23. The RT @Delzey at the beginning means for "rewtweeting what Delzey said". Some people prefer to put the retweet information at the end or use lower case. Experiment, and discover which works better for you!

Did thy looks please so but/Then will forget constant love so/Who want breathe #poetry
Did thy looks please so/Then will beautys constant love see/This beauty bestowst all worth #poetry

Originally tweeted by netgrrl. A good example of the "Twitter verse for the twitterverse" Gregory K talks about in #poetry! Sometimes 140 characters just isn't enough :-)

Hope Anita Smith is Thurber Writer in Residence this summer! http://tinyurl.com/dfcm8r #poetry #kidlit

Originally tweeted by MaryLeeHahn. Twitter's a great way to spreading news like this

Past tweeting points

April 1

My Poetry Month Speed Haiku: It's Poetry Month; Hmm. . . Syllables in poem?; I'm going with two. #poetry #haiku

Originally tweeted by carliz, a good example of the "Twitter verse for the twitterverse" Gregory K talks about in #poetry!

Hope Anita Smith is Thurber Writer in Residence this summer! http://tinyurl.com/dfcm8r #poetry #kidlit

Originally tweeted by MaryLeeHahn . It's amazing how much info you can pack into 140 characters! The strange-looking link is a "shortened" URL which saves valuable characters. To create one for any URL, you can use http://tinyurl.com, http://is.gd, or a bunch of other sites.

Jack Prelutsky's new A Little Poem For Poetry Month kicks off 30 Poets/30 Days! http://tinyurl.com/ce349n #poetry #kidlit

Originally tweeted by 30Poets30Days. Anybody who recognizes Jack Prelutsky's name or likes the title is likely to click on the link.

Reading first poem at GottaBook to kids http://tinyurl.com/ce349n #poetry #kidlit Great way to #Read Together http://tinyurl.com/ccd3st

Originally tweeted by jenndon. Two links in one tweet, impressive!

March 26-31

I've installed Twitter on all of my blogs, just in time for Poetry Month! #kidlit #poetry

Originally tweeted by asuen1. Twitter's a great way to let other people who share your interests know what you're up to.

Children's poetry book reviews for National Poetry Month from SF Chronicle - http://tinyurl.com/ca6df6 #kidlit #poetry

Originally tweeted by 30Poets30Days. The strange-looking link is a "shortened" URL which saves valuable characters. To create one for any URL, you can use http://tinyurl.com, http://is.gd, or a bunch of other sites.

RT @brownbookshelf Spreading the word on kiddie lit authors of color is...well, spreading http://tinyurl.com/dnlb9h #kidlit

Originally tweeted by Devas_T. The RT @brownbookshelf at the beginning means for "rewtweeting what brownbookshelf said". Some people prefer to put the retweet information at the end or use lower case. Figure out which you prefer.

discovered 2 new blogs of interest from @justonemorebook! http://tinyurl.com/dhb8ja & http://tinyurl.com/c2e5hs #kidlit #poetry

Originally tweeted by DebWhite. Including @justonemorebook lets people know where this useful information originally came from!

Draft of What rhymes with Skittles

JonPincus — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 23:03:39 CDT

Draft! Work in progress! Feedback welcome, here or to @jdp23 on Twitter!

Final version to appear on The Seminal (and potentially elsewhere)

If you’re joining the series already in progress:

Lessons from Skittles for poets and activists introduced the series, briefly described how Skittles’ Twitter-centric viral marketing campaign caught fire, and concluded that Activists and poets — and anybody else who wants media attention without spending a lot of money — should consider including Twitter in their plans.
Mr. President, do you like Skittles? and Activism at the speed of Skittles, looked at how a small group of activists used Twitter to highlight a question about homeless vets and it was answered on the White House blog less than 48 hours later. The conclusion: Things happen very quickly in the Twitterverse

This week, it’s the poets’ turn.

The opportunity

There are millions of users of Twitter … but only a few of them are tweeting about #poetry and #kidlit. National Poetry Month seems like a good time to change the former, and Poetry Friday, all the great children’s poetry blog projects this month, and the growing Kidlitosphere make it a great time to change the latter, too. But why? Well…

One thing I re-learned when Fibs were spreading around the web is that there are poetry lovers in every walk of life. They may not write or read poems regularly, but they love to be reminded of it… and get re-invigorated. They’re on Twitter. Parents are on Twitter, too, maybe not spending enough time thinking about kids’ books… or maybe looking for information.

-- Gregory K, Twitter, #poetry, #kidlit… and an invitation!, Gottabook

If you check out our Twitter profiles (1, 2), you probably won't be surprised to hear that Greg and I are, in fact, brothers. Mom always likes it when we work together, and it's a lot of fun: a few years ago I helped him a little as Fibs (fibonacci poetry) made the jump from his blog to Word Freaks on tribe.net, Slashdot, MSNBC.com, CBS.com, the New York Times the Washington Post -- and a book deal. And conveniently enough, the Lessons for Skittles series is perfectly timed to overlap with National Poetry Month!

Poets and activists have some very similar challenges, for example a lack of mainstream media coverage. How often is there anything about poetry on network or cable TV? How much poetry and discussion is there in newspapers and mass-circulation magazines? And yet the world is filled with people who like poetry. Social network sites like Twitter offer them the possibility of connecting with each other directly.

The same's true for children's literature: minimal media attention, a heck of a lot of people who care about it. Children's literature bloggers (aka the Kidlitosphere) have made a lot of progress here with projects like Poetry Friday (memorably described by Susan Thomsen on The Poetry Foundation as "a weekly online literary happy hour without the drinks") and an annual bloggers' conference. Twitter offers the opportunity for deepening the community.

Can Skittles help?

30 Poets/30 Days

Our goals for the month (from the Book Promotion Wiki's planning page, which also has our current thinking on strategy, and tactics):

establish a community of poetry-lovers on Twitter using the #poetry hashtag
working with the bloggers of the Kidlitosphere, establish a community of people interested in children's literature on Twitter using the #kidlit hashtag
have fun talking about a subject we're passionate about -- and meet some new people along the way
broaden awareness of poetry, the Kidlitosphere, National Poetry month and all the great projects associated with it -- including 30 Poets/30 Days

30 Poets/30 Days is the celebration of children’s poetry Greg's organizing at his blog GottaBook. Each day in April, he'll be posting a previously unpublished poem by a different poet. The 30 participating poets have published over 700 books for kids, teens, and adults and includes many of the best known names in children's poetry.

It's a great idea, and I’m not saying that just because he’s my brother. Everybody he’s talked to about it has been enthusiastic. His blog has gotten over 50 links so far including in Becky’s National Poetry Month 2009: EssentialPleasures on Farm School, the “additional resources” section of the New York Times‘ 30 ways to celebrate national poetry month, and Amazon’s Omnivoracious. Exciting stuff!

We'll be using Twitter to help get word out about 30 Poets/30 Days. At the same time, we'll also try to spark more discussion on the #kidlit and #poetry hashtags. So as well as encouraging people to tweet about 30 Poets/30 Days, we'll be encouraging them to tweet about other projects related to National Poetry month, as part of the Kidlitosphere's weekly Poetry Fridays, and more.

If you want to get involved

We’ll launch on Wednesday, April 1, with former Children’s Poet Laureate Jack Prelutsky’s new “A Little Poem For Poetry Month.” We’ll end April 30th with “Books & Me” by Pat Mora to help celebrate El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Children’s Day/Book Day). And every day in between will bring something new. You can follow along here and via 30poets30days on Twitter.

– Greg, on Gottabook

Wednesday is the launch for 30 Poets/30 Days and National Poetry Month. If you want to get involved, here are a few things you can do:

As you see National Poetry Month events announced, tweet about them. Remember to include the #poetry hashtag so that it's easy for people to follow along.
Watch @30Poets30Days and GottaBook for former Children’s Poet Laureate Jack Prelutsky’s new “A Little Poem For Poetry Month,” and tweet about it to let others know. One easy thing to do here is to retweet 30Poets30Day’s announcement tweets.
Share a poem with a kid, and tweet about their reaction. Please try to include the #kidlit and #poetry hashtags.
Tweet your own poetry blog post, news, or link - share what you love!

The Tweeting Points page on the Book Promotion Wiki will have some other suggestions and example tweets throughout the day.

And if you can't make it on Wednesday, no worries: we'll be continuing to tweet throughout the month. Gottabook will have updates, and we'll also put them on the Book Promotion Wiki.

See you on Twitter!

The easiest way to follow along is on Twitter. Use the links below for

See you there!

jon

Planning

JonPincus — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 13:43:30 CDT

	30 Poets/30 Days is a celebration of children's poetry taking place at GottaBook during National Poetry Month in April 2009. More context here. This page is the planning page, discussing goals, strategy, tactics, and timeframe.

30 Poets/30 Days is a celebration of children's poetry taking place at GottaBook during National Poetry Month in April 2009. More context here.

This page is the planning page, discussing goals, strategy, tactics, and timeframe.

Goals

broaden awareness of poetry, the kidlitosphere, National Poetry month and all the great projects associated with it, and 30 Poets/30 Days
establish a community of people interested in children's literature on Twitter using the #kidlit hashtag
attract new readers for the Kidlitosphere's "Poetry Fridays"
establish a community of poetry-lovers on Twitter using the #poetry hashtag

Strategy

start with a big bang for the launch [Children's Poet Laureate Jack Prelutsky's new “A Little Poem For Poetry Month”] and end with an even bigger bang for the wrap-up on April 30 [“Books & Me” by Pat Mora and El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Children's Day/Book Day)]
daily tweeting of 30 poets/30 days poems
work with kidlitosphere mailing list to promote poetry fridays
participate in recommendation traditions like #women2follow and #followfriday

Tactics

enlist poets, friends, and bloggers to tweet their poems and poetry-related blog posts using the #poetry tag
encourage supporters of Poetry Fridays to tweet poems and blog posts using #kidlit #poetry hashtags
encourage bloggers to put a "tweet this" link on their poems, and provide simple instructions how
encourage bloggers to tweet their poetry-related blog posts using #poetry
encourage people to recommend female poets/bloggers/reviewers on Twitter on Wednesdays, using #women2follow and #poetry
encourage people to recommend poets/bloggers/reviewers of all genders on Twitter on Fridays, using #followfriday and #poetry
use GottaBook blog threads for discussions of which tweets people do and don't like -- and what's getting retweeted. this will make things a lot less intimidating to new Tweeters

Book Promotion on the Web Home

JonPincus — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:47:15 CDT

Tips and experiences for promoting books on the web.

A work in progress, so come back every now and then to see if there's more!

Tips

Resources and suggestions for promoting your book in different ways

Experiences

example promotion campaigns, small or large, and their results

Facebook

JonPincus — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:39:51 CDT

10 tips for promoting your book on Facebook. Well, 9, actually but close enough.

Navigation:

Tips for general tips
Twittering tips

start a Page, instead of (in addition to?) a group. Unlike groups, pages can have applications. (What are the other advantages?)
use events for book readings, online discussions, and to coordinate and promote blogswarms and carnivals. Events are one of Facebook's most powerful virally networked mechanisms; as Gayle Laakmann describes, "On Facebook, people discover invites for (public) events through their friends - but without their friends inviting them, because of mini-feeds."
be on Facebook long before your book is out. Find friends and join groups where you will be an active participant before coming on simply to promote. Or, if you're a newcomer, partner with somebody who's been around for a while.
create videos and post on your book page: book trailers, read an excerpt, personalize invites to readings
when you send updates to fans, make sure to TELL them to click on the Share button to push the event or fan page out to their network
Make sure your blog feeds into your FB profile and book page. If you blog at multiple places, combine the feeds into a single one using Feedburner -- although keep Facebook's friendly advice in mind: "If you import too many blog posts in a day, you could be blocked from writing or importing new notes, and this could result in your account being disabled."
turn excerpts of your book into jpeg files and add your books as a photo album - it keeps it safe and is the only way to get your book onto facebook product pages at the moment.
use the status update on your personal profile to 'refresh your story'. In other words, don't say "hey, buy my book!" but mention upcoming book related events, exciting reviews, or anything else you want your Facebook friends to know.
use the Posted Items/Share an Item feature to share links about you, your book, or anything else you think people might find interesting.

Gregory K's pretty well connected

JonPincus — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 13:16:02 CDT

By Gregory K of GottaBook

ANATOMY OF A SMALL, FAST PROMOTIONAL BLITZ

On Friday, September 19th, I posted an original poem, I’m Pretty Well Connected, on my blog (http://gottabook.blogspot.com). The poem is about social networks and other Web 2.0 sites and concepts and seemed a natural for online promotion (with no selling). So:

WHAT I DID

1) I subbed my link to Poetry Friday (hosted that day at http://authoramok.blogspot.com).

2) I emailed three listservs I’m on that are related to children’s literature. Since this poem was about online connectedness, and many on the list only know each other online, there was a natural reason to share it beyond it being Poetry Friday. There are a total of 641 members on the three lists, with probably about 10% -15% overlap in membership. Still, let’s call it 600 people.

3) I emailed specific people to say “hey, I think you might like this Web 2.0 poem.” Because, in fact, I thought they would (and thought they might not see my blog).

4) I posted a link to the poem on my status update on Facebook. My brother used the “SHARE” feature on Facebook.

5) I submitted the poem to Slashdot (www.slashdot.org) and BoingBoing (www.boingboing.net) as a possible story for them since it was tech/pop culture related.

6) My brother emailed the link to a few people, gave me a contact to email, linked to my blog from his (http://www.talesfromthe.net/jon/), and included a link to my poem in an email to one of his lists.

RESULTS (FROM FRIDAY THE 19th THROUGH MONDAY THE 22nd)

95 people entered my blog via a direct link to the poem (or a quirky link that ended up in one email). I also saw 9 other entries to the main page of my blog with the referral being listed as an email server within hours of my emailing. Over the prior seven days, no one entered any other new post directly. On the above points:

1) 12 people visited from the Author Amok site.
2) The bulk of the visits came from my email to listservs.
3) I’ve already heard back from 50% of these people. More on this below.
4) I got five hits via Facebook.
5) I did not get picked up as a story (though I did get two hits from Slashdot, where proposed stories wait in a queue and get voted on by readers).
6) My brother’s efforts resulted in a handful of visits that we know about (because they said so!), all from new-to-me readers.

Besides the Facebook and Poetry Friday links, I picked up five other links to the poem (and therefore my blog) that I know of, including one from the RateItAll.com blog. (RateItAll is a social networking site that was mentioned and linked to in my poem.) Per Feedburner, I had 10 more subscription readers compared to the prior Friday. There are 20 comments on my poem (two by me as part of the conversation) – for my blog, and my poems, that’s a large number. I also gained one new subscriber to my poetry subscription list and got many nice emails! Plus, I had fun writing, posting, and watching.

INTANGIBLES

Of the non-listserv emails I sent, one person said they’d Twitter my poem at some point. Another is interested in doing something about/with Poetry Friday. Others said “Thanks!” and more friendly-like stuff. These are all net positives with no downside.

If you Google “social network poem”, “web 2.0 poem” or just the phrase “pretty well connected”, my poem comes up in the top 10 (at least as of this typing). This will lead to hits over time. How many? Unknown. I get 22 Google-referred hits a day on average for my soccer poem. One day recently I got 8 hits for “vegetable poetry.” Don’t ask me why. The point is that I will likely get 200 new visitors minimum in a year from this poem and potentially thousands of new visitors who will see my name and work.

A very well known children’s poet visited my blog on Sunday the 21st, read this poem, and emailed me a nice note. The visit was not related to my blitz, but as a poet myself, having access to one of the top names in my field (potential blurber, potential source of information/advice) is invaluable to me. Having the poem up led to a happy accident.

LESSONS

On national Talk Like a Pirate Day, it’s probably better to post a pirate themed poem.

Beyond that, there would have been better times to post this poem. In National Poetry Month, for example, tech places might have been more inclined to feature a poem. Posting on the weekend of a major blogging conference might have been poor timing.

The listservs you’re on tend to be full of people predisposed to “like/listen to” you. Keep in mind that I post 40+ poems a year on my blog, but this is probably only the second time I’ve singled one out. I participate in these lists actively, so when I mention something like this, hopefully people believe there’s a reason I’ve done it. Remember, I was selling nothing, asking for nothing, and just having fun.

It is very hard to get attention whether you’re selling something or giving it away. But it’s definitely harder to get attention if you’re not out there in the first place. Also, don’t view a four day snapshot as the sum total of results for any action (to wit: I was Twittered about on Tuesday, gained two more links, and got 20 more hits to the poem).

Experiences

JonPincus — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 13:13:27 CDT

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