It’s important to link to your book’s web page as much as possible.  This isn’t just to get traffic from the pages that link to the book, but to increase the likelihood that your book’s page will come up in Google when someone plugs in a search – as inbound links increase a page’s rank.  If your book’s page is housed within your website, this additional link will increase the page rank and traffic to your site.  So ideally you want an author’s site to look like this:

Authorsite.com
Authorsite.com/bookpage
Authorsite.com/blog

The last two open up new ways to bring links to your domain.  The point of doing this isn’t always immediate sales, but visibility – they say people might not buy a book until they’ve seen it mentioned at least 5 times.  This includes posting in the Self-Publishing Review forum, which allows you to link to your book within the forum (hint hint).

Some of these listing sites won’t allow an external link, or will link to an Amazon page, which are both useful for visibility.  If you can’t get into the newspaper, as is the case with most self-published writers, you need to be creative about how you market a book, and the web is opening up new marketing avenues every day.  Here are websites that allow you to place a book/description/and reviews (updated 10/11/11).

1. Published.com
2. Book Hitch
3. Authors Den
4. Slake
5. Writers.net
6. Sharing-Books
7. We Read
8. Discover a Book
9. Writers Cafe
10. Nothing Binding
11. Reader 2
12. Goodreads
13. Bibliophil
14. Shelfari
15. Library Thing
16. The Polka Dot Banner
17. Red Room
18. GuruLib
19. Shelf Centered
20. aNobii
21. Internet Book Database
22. The Shared Self-Publishing Experience
23. Axis Avenue
24. BookRix
25. Authors Bookshop
26. Jexbo
27. Breakthrough Bookstore
28. Coalition of Independent Authors
29. Self-Publishing Review

Who said there weren’t avenues for a self-published writer to promote a book?  There are plenty, but you’ve got to put in the time – to register, but also to participate, especially on the library-based sites, like Goodreads.  In this case, you want to link to other books in your library, not just your own, and add friends just as you would with any social network.  Many of these sites aren’t just about adding a listing and leaving the site, but actively networking with other readers.

About the Author: Henry Baum

I’m the author of The American Book of the Dead. The novel won Best Fiction at the DIY Book Festival and the Gold IPPY Award for Visionary Fiction. Largehearted Boy says it's "reminiscent of Philip K. Dick and Haruki Murakami, a book that boldly explores the future and defies genre." I'm also the author of North of Sunset, winner of the Hollywood Book Festival Grand Prize, and The Golden Calf - first published by Soft Skull Press, with editions in the U.K. (Rebel Inc.) and France (Hachette Littératures). Visit henrybaum.com for more information. I’m the editor of Self-Publishing Review.

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