Creating Online Buzz for Your Book

By Stew Magnuson

Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Goodreads, Linked-In, YouTube: the list of websites where you can publicize your book is long and ever growing.

I’ve had some success using a handful of these websites since my book, The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder, came out in August.

Here’s a quick rundown of what I have used and some examples.

MySpace. For authors, the best advice is to keep your MySpace page as clean and professional looking as possible. The key difference between MySpace and Facebook is that one can be anonymous on MySpace, while Facebook requires your full name in order to connect with friends, co-workers, relatives, and classmates. But you need to have your full name on MySpace in order to promote your book. I like MySpace because it is easy to blog there and you can add a link to your amazon.com page at the bottom of the entry under the “What I’m Currently Reading” feature. See what I’ve done at www.myspace.com/stewmagnuson

Facebook. With some 150 million users and counting, Facebook can’t be ignored. This is a great place to keep people you have a connection to informed about your book. You can create email lists, send short messages by way of updating your “status,” join or create groups related to your book and publicize events such as book readings. Another tool is the ad feature. With a credit card, you can start posting targeted ads within a few minutes. For example, I created ads targeted at people who say they enjoy “Reading” in Nebraska, who have a college degree and are over the age of twenty-two. The best result I had was when I simply targeted users who said they liked the book “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.” See an example of my Facebook events page at www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1347676076#/event.php?eid=66900006418

GoodReads. GoodReads is best described as a Facebook for people who like to read. So to my mind, the people you connect with here are much more likely to be interested in your book. For example, through a Native American book group, I made “friends” with a librarian in Lafayette, Louisiana, who ordered my book for his library, read it, then gave it a five-star review on my page. Once you’re approved as a Goodreads author, you can set up a really nice Author’s Page where you can post excerpts, blogs, and reviews of other books you like. Authors should be aware of what is going on GoodReads because users can review your book there whether you have signed up or not. See my page at www.goodreads.com/author/show/1732586.Stew_Magnuson

YouTube. Creating “book trailers” is growing in popularity. A more technically adept friend of mine helped me make a slideshow from ten-year-old pictures I took at a protest that wound up being a scene in my book. You can do much simpler videos such as taping yourself talking about your book and its topic for a few minutes. I’ve had almost 500 views during the last six weeks! Check it out at www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKDhiG9Xgcs&feature=channel_page