Eyeballs have moved from print to online. Advertisers know this. They have moved their money to the Internet.
Send review copies to book bloggers, websites, forum leaders, and other opinion molders in your book’s category.
Start with the book bloggers.
Book Bloggers are the new book reviewers.
And there are 160,000,000 blogs on the Internet.
Send review copies to book bloggers and subject-matter-expert bloggers who focus on your book’s category.
For example, books on leadership should only go to blogs on leadership.
We’ve heard stories of book sales that have taken off after mentions by bloggers. So how can you make this phenomenon work for your book?
There are bloggers, bloggers on subjects and book bloggers. All are valuable to you but the book bloggers are the best because they write about books and are book-category oriented. Few read and comment on anything else.
95%+ of the book bloggers are female, young, a high percentage are moms, and most read and write about Young-Adult (YA) books. No surprise. But many focus on historical fiction, women’s studies, and all the other genres.
So how do you find bloggers who want to be notified of your books?
Make a Google search for “book blogger directory.”
Better yet, narrow your search. If you have a book on horses, search for “horse book blogger directory.” You will be amazed at what you find. Next, search for “Book Blogs” + horse.
Start with
A network of nearly 3,000 book bloggers and book reviewers
http://bookblogs.ning.com/group/dedicatedbookreviewers
and http://www.google.com/blogsearch
Now, the work begins: finding bloggers’ names, email addresses, and other contact details. Many do not even list their last name on their blog sites. But this work is well worth the effort. You will be contacting your new friends over and over.
Remember, these aren’t just any bloggers; they are those that love books in your category (such as horses). They are members of your tribe. They love the same subject you love.
Book bloggers are the new reviewers. Blogs are influential in their fields. Reviews and mentions sell books. Make up your list of bloggers now.
We like to enter the contact information into an Excel spreadsheet. That way, we can continue to add further contact details, such as street addresses, and the list becomes sortable. It is easy to add to and it's easy to pull off the postal and email addresses for individual and group mailings.
The list you assemble will be a valuable company asset and will be used over and over again.
The spreadsheet columns may be labeled: category, business name, contact name, email, website, blog, address (as in street address), city, state, zip code/country, telephone, mobile phone, fax, project manager, and comments.
The Category column is where you list whether it is a blog, forum, website, print magazine, etc.
The list you assemble will be focused on your category. General review publications, such as city newspapers, are not likely to reach a large number of people interested in your subject. You will use this list to send review copies, news releases, and other announcements on your subject and book.
Assembling this list will be both valuable and fun. You will discover people all over the world interested in your subject and eager to know about your book.
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Dan Poynter is an author (130+ books), publisher (since 1969), and a professional speaker (CSP). His seminars have been featured on CNN, his books have been pictured in The Wall Street Journal and his story has been told in The New York Times. The media come to Dan because he is the leading authority on book publishing.
Dan studies the industry and has been referred to as a Book Futurist.
A professional speaker, he travels more than 6,000 miles each week to share his book plan. Dan is a past vice-president of the Publishers Marketing Association. He lives in Santa Barbara.
See
Speaking: http://parapub.com/speaking
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Poynter
Aviation: http://www.slideshare.net/Dan_Poynter/dan-poynterparachutes-skydiving-av...