Promote Your Book

Promotions for your book begin long before you come close to hitting that "Publish" button. In fact it should get rolling before the writing is finished. It starts with blogging and using social networks. There are also many worthwhile organizations for authors. Then there are a few good practices for pre-launch.
Open a blog, if you haven't already. You can put a free site together on Blogger, or use Word Press on a hosted website. Word Press offers more features for writers, but many of us are okay with Blogger- including me.
Your entries will help establish your brand or essentially tell people who you are and what it's like to read something you've written. Use your persona as a humorist, sports nut, evangelist, conspiracy theorist or whatever kind of writer you happen to be.
You can make entries about the steps you take toward publishing, as I have. You can highlight some of your research. You can also use posts to promote and tease your material. Just be sure to give those you learn from due credit with links and references.
Join social networks. Set up a profile on every major network. My current list of must-do networks includes Goodreads, Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In, Google Plus, Pinterest, Tumrblr and Instagram for your mobile devices. It's important to have a web presence anywhere someone may look for you. As other network sites become more popular, I'll join them as well. Mind you, I don't expect to be active on all sites. I favor Twitter, but I've listed Goodreads first due to it's importance to authors. This is an exclusive hub for readers and writers. You can use it to discuss the books you like with fellow readers and promote fellow authors in the process. You also have the option of promoting your own books directly to readers and get their reviews. Goodreads helps show off your events, such as new book releases, and gives you options for contests and other advertising.
Despite the fact that you are always marketing in one way or another, I believe it's a mistake to use networking sites purely for advertising your blog and books. They're called social because people use them to communicate. Take time to go through your messages and answer them. Look over other people's posts and chime in with the discussions. Make some friends. It never hurts to pass along something that someone else is promoting.
Join the appropriate author organizations. Select those that educate, provide resources and help promote your type of writing. This may involve more than one genre or condition. I keep active memberships in the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, the American Christian Fiction Writers and the Alliance of Independent Authors. The icons on the right provide links to these. Note that some organizations are not open to self published authors. That may change over time. Meanwhile many such publish their educational information for everyone.
Send your book to the appropriate review sites and review blogs in advance of the release date. Follow the posted outlines for submitting and put your best professional foot forward. Please realize that it is not considered ethical to pay for favorable reviews, or to review your own works.
You have a multitude of options in paid advertising for releases, but don't overlook the free ones. Use Goodreads promotions for new books and make mentions on all your other social networks. Check into the promotional opportunities for members of your author organizations. Alli does international promotions for its members. The Awesomegang website is dedicated to free advertising platforms for authors. In addition to running their own ad pages on facebook and Google Plus, they also list all known free advertising sites and ask visitors to include any they haven't listed. Some of the sites are genre specific.
I wish you the best of results with your promotions. See you on the social sites.

Thanks for stopping in
 - Jonra Springs