Hi Carolyn. I tried to email you and take advantage of your offer for one of the handouts you give out at UCLA. I don't have Outlook and when I tried to configure, it asked for my password, which I was uncomfortable inputting. Is there another way to contact you other than what I'm doing at this moment?

Carolyn, what's your opinion on book trailers for promotion?

Here's something on Promoting on Amazon to get the conversation started. (-:

Use Amazon to Build Loyalty to YOUR Business, YOUR Book, to YOU

I rarely talk sales when I can talk about more important things like cross promotion and branding."

Still, I thought I'd I'd like to talk to you about how Amazon may be used to Improve Your Amazon Ratings. That, of course, is tantamount to improving your sales but you benefit in other ways, too.

A drop in the promotion-bucket that Amazon offers you, can move those Amazon ratings drastically! Here are some ways to do that:

1. Use Listmanias on Amazon and, along with your own book, sprinkle in the titles of your author-friends. If you're a reader, do your favorite authors and your fellow offers and bukld a Lismania to share what you like in reading. After your Listmania appears, let authors and your fellow readers know you just posted a Listmania. That's a way to make a new promotion friend and keep an old one.. There is a chapter in THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER that tells you how to use this free promotional perk along with a lot of other free tools on Amazon.

2. When you read a book by an author you know (or even one you don't) do yourself and them a favor by adding a review to Amazon. It takes but a minute and YOU and your book get exposed too, if you use a promotion-savvy signature.

3. Tell other people about the books you've just read in your Amazon plog. Another name for this plog/blog is AuthorConnect ™. You're reading one right now. You do have one don't you? You should, even if you aren't an author. It's a great way to let friends know what you want for your birthday! Ask your friends to pass on the word about your plog/blog. This is known as viral marketing and it works.

4. Wanna know more about making Amazon part of your community? Check out Janet Elaine Smith's PROMOPAKS, Fran Silverman's BOOK MARKETING FROM A TO Z. and my THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER. We all love Amazon.

5. Check out my audio classes at www.tri-studio.com. Click on the button on the right for Audio Classes. Notice we offer a FREE one called A Do-It-Yourself Guide To Promoting Easy And Cheap! That freebie offers other Amazon tips. You can find more marketing, writing and tech tips at http://www.double-dragon-ebooks.com/search.asp.

6. If you're an author, flesh out your book's page on Amazon. If you're a reader, add tags to the books you've read and enjoy the book pages where the author has taken care of their readers by adding more information to their pages. Use the Wiki to add info on awards, other publishing you've done or what you might know about a particular book or author (judiciously, of course! (-:. Add pictures. Have some fun.

7. If you have a book suited for it, you can even add pictures to your book's page. Check out my "Promote or Perish" picture on The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won't page. Readers can put pictures here, too!

8. Don't get caught up in sales to the detriment of exposure on Amazon and other online stores. The Amazon publicity is invaluable.
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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Author
THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER:
HOW TO DO WHAT YOUR PUBLISHER WON'T,
Winner USA Book News' "Best Professional Book 2004"
#1 Bestselling E-book at: http://starpublish.com/starbooks.htm

Carolyn- After doing a ton of research on marketing (including your book) and platform building, I created a blog and a myspace page. I use the tags whenever and wherever I can. How important is a typical website? And for a starving artist, is there a webmaster you can recommend. When I've looked into it I got discouraged because it seems you need to know "computer talk" to create a page. To begin with, I would like to have a page with "about the author" with links to my other writings, links to information on creating your own family history, and an exerpt from my book...things like that. Any suggestions?

Karen

Karen, if you are a member of the NABBW, www.nabbw.com, we offer 20% off Web design. Just thought I'd let you know.

Karen, all my websites use pre-loaded software templates -- no coding necessary. Both Freewebs and Tripod offer free websites with templates.

You don't need to know much of anything to create those sites.

Karen asked me:

"How important is a typical website? And for a starving artist, is there a webmaster you can recommend. When I've looked into it I got discouraged because it seems you need to know "computer talk" to create a page. To begin with, I would like to have a page with "about the author" with links to my other writings, links to information on creating your own family history, and an exerpt from my book...things like that. Any suggestions?"
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I finally gave up on a webmaster and am now doing my own webiste. For a whole slew of reasons. I find FrontPage is quite user friendly and a friend helped me get started. I think I'd rather pay someone for a get-started lesson though (you know Frugal me!) than suffer with a slow or poor webmaster, and how do you know? References, I guess. Dotsie seems to have a good one (-: .

Also, I'm finding my blogs are getting more hits than my website so that might be an alternative. I now have three and they are user-friendly to install. I do strong suggest you use blogspot.com. For too many reasons to reiterate. You don't want a whole book. Ha! And, yes you could do something like the simple idea you outlined very easily.

Best,
Carolyn

The only thing with doing your own site is that I'm not sure you can tag words and get picked up by major search engines. Does anyone know the answer to that?

Dotise, you use metatags for that. I also think (though I don't do it) that you can use some of those services like Delicious, etc. But it still has a drawback when compared to blogs. It isn't as interactive. And it's all about connecting, isn't it. I mean, look at this great forum. Guestbooks just don't cut it next to blog comments. (-:
Best,
Carolyn

Anyone want to talk fiction? I did a great seminar on writing dialogue at the Las Vegas Writers' Conference a couple of years ago. Or so the audience told me. Ha! And much of that subject fits with The Frugal Editor.
Best,
Carolyn