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Midwest Book Review offers resources that will prove helpful to self-published authors, regional presses, specialty publishers, academic houses, and the small press publishing community.

Writing-World has compiled a great list of resources for self published authors.  I really love the fact that they created a button to give you a version suitable for printing!  You can see the list here.

The SlideRocket blog has a fantastic freebie that is great for authors.  They are giving away a free, customizable social media marketing plan template.  If you don’t have a social media plan for your book you need one.  This template will help you get off on the right foot AND keep you there!

Mashable is sharing their presentation “Top 10 Tips for Social Media Engagement” on Slideshare. If you already know Mashable skip the introductory slides and go right into the meat of the presentation.  Our favorite slide is “10 Commandments Of Twitter Etiquette”.  We wish the world would read and follow this list!  You can see the presentation, and that slide, here.

Salesforce/Radian 6 has a nifty presentation on Slideshare called “30 Ideas For Your Social Media Plan”.  Salesforce went through their most popular posts from 2011 and came up with 30 ideas that you can use for your author social media campaign.  This not to be missed presentation is here.

These days readers consume books in various formats.  Some prefer paperbacks, others won’t touch anything that isn’t on their Kindle and others like to read books in PDF on their computer.  When you set up your sales page for your book make sure you tell your readers how and where they can buy the book in any format you offer.  For example, put a buy link for physical copies and link to the Kindle and Nook.  Make it easy for your readers to buy your books no matter how they intend to read them.

Before Kindle and before Nook publishing a book yourself was considered the height of stupidity.  Publishing houses did not believe that any self published book had value to anyone but the author.  Thanks to electronic readers opening the doors to all kinds of self published works we now know that there are many more talented authors out there than previously thought.  Apple is climbing on the self published bandwagon by bundling self published books together and highlighting them on the iBookstore main page.  This is a great idea whose time has come and we give kudos for Apple finally realizing that everyone has a story to tell.

From “Birds On The Blog” we have a clever blog post about “pinning” your ideal client to a Pinterest Board.  We like this idea because you can tweak it to focus on your ideal reader.  Pin pictures of people that represent your ideal reader and, as the article suggests, add demographics, psychographics and infographics of all sorts… You can read the entire article here and put your own twist on your Pinterest board!

Author Jennifer L. Jacobson shares an excerpt from her book “42 Rules of Social Media for Small Business” that is great advice for authors who blog:

While blog types vary, here are a few points to remember when writing a blog for your business:

• Keep your entries short. Generally, a blog entry is no more than a couple of paragraphs in length.
• Keep your entries focused. Find one subject and stick to it.
• Keep it consistent. Blog readers expect consistent content, so I suggest blogging anywhere from once a week to once a month.
• This way your readers keep coming back, and they generally know when you’re going to add a new blog entry.
• Keep it personal. Blog entries are a “behind the scenes” look at your business. Find a way to let blog readers and potential customers see the inside of your business, without giving away trade secrets, and you will find a balance that is worth treading.

A blog is a very personal thing and, if you have one, I suggest keeping in mind the persona from which your blog is written. Is your company a snowboard manufacturer, that has an edgy, super-cool blog voice, designed to glamour teens into thrashing the slopes through a wave of pure white powder? Or, perhaps your organic wine company is looking for the Über-Neo-Foodie voice entrenched in pagan culture, and opposed to anything that may block the very karma that holds all life forces together. Regardless, write your blog for your audience and expect that it will be read.

You can purchase the book “42 Rules of Social Media for Small Business” by clicking the link!

Here is another great article about marketing your book by Melissa Breau.  Melissa is a copywriter and editor and clearly has a lot of experience working with authors.  Read “How To Market A Book In 3 Minutes Or Less” here.