Self-Promotion And The Independent Author - By Steven J Davies

The biggest hurdle you will face as an independent is marketing your work, and believe me when I say that you are going to need to work hard at it. There is, unfortunately, no quick solution to this kind of thing without spending a large amount of money on advertising.

The things that you can do though, to promote yourself and market your work can be done very cheaply or, a lot of the time, for free.

Social networks are great for this kind of thing; Facebook, Twitter and Google + in particular are fantastic places to leave links and descriptions of your work and book pages on Amazon and other vendor sites.

Another obvious way to get your name ‘out there’ is to create a blog. I have been involved in something of an on-going argument with a publishing organisation, they will remain nameless in order to save their deserved blushes, who have said that authors creating their own blogs are not only wasting their own time, but are wasting the time of their readers and should stick to established forums and sites like this one.

I won’t go into just how arrogant that train of thought, and the idiot behind it, is because I have covered that elsewhere. But what I will say is that he is dead wrong, I mean come on – an author must have a unique presence on the internet and that isn’t going to happen without a blog of your own.

Forums and author sites, just like this one, are very important to writers but they should not be the only place that you promote yourself. Do not limit yourself to just one platform – use as many as you can.

The best blogging platforms are probably WordPress and Blogger. I personally recommend WordPress as it offers the most customisation options but you should research both and pick one that you are most comfortable with. Whichever one you choose you do not have to go the self-hosting route with your own domain name, but let’s be honest here – it looks much more professional if you do.

If you go with WordPress, or another platform that isn’t Google’s Blogger, you must make sure that you enable Google Authorship if you have a Google + account. If you do not have a G+ account, I strongly recommend that you get one.

Google search results are now starting to favour websites and blogs, even individual posts, whose ownership can be verified. Why? Because authors willing to link their content to their online profiles, are more likely to produce quality content. And it is quality content that matters the most now, not keywords. Google rates verified content much more highly than content that isn’t.

If you search for something on the web and you see a little photo of the author next to it, you are much more likely to click through to that site. That is why you should enable Authorship for yourself and anyone else that writes for your blog – it is better search result placement for both of you.

One last thing about blogs as marketing tools before we move on, make sure you blog often and consistently. If you only write posts twice a week, make sure you post on the same days each week. This helps search engines rank you accurately, and also helps to retain readership.

So, you have the forums and author sites nailed and you contribute to both regularly (making sure to provide links to your books too, not just descriptions and picture). You post about your masterpiece on social networking sites, and you have a blog with Google Authorship enabled (remember, you also need a G+ account to link it to). What else can you do? I’m glad you asked, and this part is real easy.

Update your profile information on every account you have, provide links to your work, your blog and author profiles. Also state that you an author in your ‘About me’ section.

Lastly, change your email signature to include a link to your blog – that way every time you email somebody, your link is right there ready for them to click on.

Do you have any tips or ideas of your own? Let us know in the comments.

Steven J Davies