Darla G. Denton | Author Platform Coach

Below is a list of 40 Successful Online Book Marketing Ideas.

Whether you go the route of a traditional publisher or you self publish you will need to promote and market your book on your own. Rarely does a publishing company spend the time and money to do it for you unless you are celebrity or best selling author.

So, quit freaking out about it and start coming up with a kick ass plan!

Today I’ve listed some creative online ideas. Keep an eye out for my post of Successful Ideas To Market Your Book Offline coming soon!

1. Create an RSS Feed for your blog and burn it on Feedburner.com.

2. Create an Amazon and GoodReads Author page and make sure it has all the appropriate links.

3. Connect all your social media accounts and author pages to your website and make sure they are easily found by the readers.

4. Submit your website link to websites in your genre and niche that have a website directory or a link list.

5. Submit your blog link to blog directories related to your genre and niche.

6. Always answer all comments and questions readers post on your website, blog and social media outlets and do it in a timely manner.

7. Find niche and genre specific groups/forums and engage with the people on them building connections and relationships.

8. Research of the most popular websites and blogs in your genre at Alexa.com and chose ones from the top 50,000 to interact and build connections with. This way, when it comes time to promote your work, you will reach as much readers as possible.

9. Comment regularly on the websites, blogs and forums you belong to. This helps with your exposure and will make it easier to convince them to help promote you if they already have a relationship with you.

10. Build your email list and openly communicate with the people on it.

11. Make sure to send out an email to everyone on your list letting them know you have a new book coming out. Don’t forget to include pictures, early reviews, books description and the links to buy it.

12. Create a media kit to dispense to websites, bloggers, forums, book reviewers, podcasters, etc…

13. Create a personal # for your book and let all your readers know what it is so that whenever they talk about it, it can all be found together.

14. Update your email signature to include info on your new or upcoming published work and a link back to your website.

15. Send articles from your blog that pertain to your work to link round-up sites.

16. Create blog articles that link your book to trending topics for maximum chance at being seen. Just make sure the trending topic and the blog article go together and pertains to your career, your writing, or a theme in your book.

17. Put Tweetables (Click to read an article by Delia Rusu from Blogformating.com) into your blog posts. They can be sayings from the book, quick description of the book, or a catchy phrase pertaining to your blog post. Tweetables makes it easy for your readers to share a witty tweet with just a click. The best part is it can be linked back to you so you can interact with that reader once they do that.

18. Use Pinterest to create boards that represent your book. For instance, include in the board pictures of people that represent characters, pictures of places that represent places talked about in the book, pictures of scenes that represent a scene in the book, and posters with sayings that coincide with the book and or a character. Find a way to link to your Pinterest boards in your website, your blog, and all your social media accounts.

19. Give each book or published work a Bit.ly vanity URL

20. Make a book trailer.

21. Create a slide show of pictures, descriptions and reviews of your book. Include the links to buy it. Post it on your blog and all of your social media accounts.

22. Record short videos of yourself talking about topics that relate to your book and post it on YouTube. Make sure to link it back to your website, blog, and social media accounts.

23. Create a Vine video of behind the scene glimpses of your book, your writing process, your brand and your personality.

24. Find blogs that belong in your genre and ask to be a Guest Blogger.

25. Find bloggers, authors, and writers in your genre and offer them spots to Guest Post on your Blog.

26. Do a podcast tour with podcasts that cater to the readers in your genre. Advertise it on your blog and in your social media and give the podcast owner your media kit so that they can easily promote you.

27. Do a virtual blog tour, blog hop and sharing contests. Advertise it weeks before on your blog and social media accounts and give all the participating blogs your media kit so that they can easily promote you.

28. Host twitter chats with readers and with authors in your genre. Promote and connect.

29. Host Google hangout sessions and then post the hangouts on youtube.

30. Do a Q + A sessions on Google+ for your readers and then post it on YouTube.

31. Have a Google+ launch party where you invite a group of authors in your same genre and you all talk and promote your work.

32. Promote other Authors and Bloggers that work in the same genre as you and has the same readers base as you by featuring their work and linking up to them through social media.

33. Purchase advertising with Google Adwords and Facebook.

34. Encourage your die hard fans to market your book on their own websites/blogs by enrolling in Amazon affiliate program and adding links to your books.

35. Talk to your fans through a chat on a forum or social media, or through a blog post and declare that you will do something (dance, sing, etc..) record it and post it to youtube if you reach a certain amount of reviews or purchases. Once it happens and the video is uploaded your fans will do the work of helping it go viral. Make sure your website links and book buying links are easily accessible on the youtube video page or at the end of the video.

36. Look around for the best reviews you have received and add them to your website on the home page and the book selling page.

37. Ask fans to post their reviews of your book on their social media accounts and link it back to you.

38. Ask fans to post pictures of them reading your book or with any of your merchandise and have them link it back to you.

39. Ask fans to create their own book covers, book trailers, fan art, etc… of your book. You can hold a contest and let them decide who did the best job and use it in your marketing campaign. You can even go as far as paying the winner for the use of their product or giving them something else in return.

40. Look into Fanfiction for your genre. Consider letting your fans know you encourage them to produce fanfic of your work. People who write fanfic and the people who read it are often die hard fans of the work they are “fanficing”. Meaning, they will always be ready to read your next piece of work and promote it through their fanclubs.

Check out the following articles for more Book Promotion and Marketing Help.

• 5 Tips for Promoting Unpublished Works on Your Author Website
• A Book Marketing Timeline