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Joanna Penn has a guest on Jane Friendman’s blog about selling more books by optimizing your metadata.   Metadata is information like categories and keywords on a book sales site.  Jane recommends the book “Let’s Get Visible” by David Gaughran.  The description on the book page of Amazon.com says:

“Take your sales to the next level! The author of the award-winning, bestselling Let’s Get Digital is back with an advanced guide for more experienced self-publishers.

There are over 1.5 million books in the Kindle Store, with thousands more added every day. How do you get yours noticed? Visibility isn’t a challenge that can be bested once – it requires continual work. But there are tools and strategies to do much of the heavy lifting for you.

In Let’s Get Visible: How To Get Noticed And Sell More Books, you’ll discover how to:

• Leverage Amazon’s famous recommendation engine to take advantage of the various opportunities it provides for exposure
• Position your books for discoverability on other sales venues
• Minimize the time you spend promoting so you have more time to spend writing
• Promote in a cost-effective way that actually works

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The Monkey’s Paw bookstore has created and is using a machine that dispenses old books.  The Biblio-Mat is a coin-operated machine that allows readers to pay  with a $2 coin and receive a randomly selected book.  The Biblio-Mat was designed and constructed for the Monkey’s Paw by animator Craig Small.

This fun machine vibrates and make noises after being fed a coin.  When the book is delivered the buyer hears the ring of an old telephone bell.  What we want to know is how can our bookstores get their own copy of the Biblio-Mat?  Can you think of a way to use this fun idea to market your books?

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Courtesy of Indie Author Counsel we have a free book marketing checklist.  Six pages long this handout includes building your expert author platform, find friends and readers with social networking, garner book reviews, take a virtual book tour, utilize Amazon’s selling tools, get the word out with free publicity and up your visibility with advertising.  Download this book marketing deliciousness right now!

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Authority Publishing has published a great article about social media by Stephanie Chandler.  Chandler points out exactly what we’ve been saying all along… social media isn’t the cure all for your marketing woes.  She says “Recently I was talking about social media with a friend, who happens to be an executive for one of the largest PR firms in the country. He said, “Social media is not transactional. We tell our clients not to expect social media to be about generating sales. It’s about so much more.” I couldn’t agree more, yet I speak with authors frequently who want social media to be the solution to their marketing woes.”  Read the full article to learn more.

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Penny C. Sansevieri of Author and CEO, Marketing Experts, Inc. discusses the ins and outs of selling your book in bulk in the article “Courting Catalogs and Bulk Sales”.  What we got out of the article is that to sell your books in bulk you need to think creatively.  The other issue to keep in mind is that bulk purchases can take time so be patient.  To read the entire article yourself click “Courting Catalogs and Bulk Sales“.

Join Nick on Write Hacked (formerly Live Hacked) as he shares his marketing plan for a self-published book.  There is quite a lot of detail in the over 4,000 words so you can save it to your computer or register for the newsletter and get a ready to read downloaded copy.  The best thing about this marketing plan is not only the detail but the emphasis on starting your marketing plan before your book is published.  You can read the entire post here.

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The Writer’s Block: Living a Writer’s Life blog has a mini Q&A with author Wendy Call from the upcoming book “Everyday Book Marketing“.  Wendy discusses her book, book promotion and gives advice for new writers.  Our favorite quote is “This is no time to be shy. Nor humble. Put yourself out there; push yourself a bit past your comfort zone.”  All writers should heed this advice and learn to become their own best supporter.  You can read the Q&A here.

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Another really useful site for authors is World Literary Cafe.  Join the World Literary Cafe community and find opportunities for author interviews, editors, reviewers, book giveaways, beta readers and more.  One neat feature is that you can hold and host a book club discussion of your book.  You will also find all kinds of writing and publishing advice.  Pop over to World Literary Cafe to look for yourself.

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Here’s a brilliant idea we had for promoting fiction books.  There are so many fiction authors out there and more joining the market daily that it makes one wonder how can you stand out from the crowd?

Certainly there are many marketing tasks you should be doing, and we cover many of them in this blog, but aside from marketing how can you give your potential readers a taste of your writing?  Give them a taste by giving them a taste.  Write a short story or two featuring the characters of your book and give it away to potential readers.  There are so many places on the web where you can post your short stories for free that we won’t list them all there but Wattpad is a good place to start.

Your short story may be a prequel to your novel or perhaps a sequel.  It could be an expansion on a plot device in your novel or it could introduce a new character.  Use your innate creativity to create this short story and then promote the heck out of it.  This is a great way to grab the attention of potential readers by giving them a “taste” for free!

Addicted To E-Books offers e-book authors two ways to promote your book.  If you are running a free promotion on Amazon.com or Smashwords you can submit the free promotion here.  If your e-book is priced at $5.99 or less you can submit it to be featured on the home page.

The rules:  you must create an account to post your book and each book can only be listed once.  There are many books on the list so be patient.  No Erotica or offensive material will be accepted as this is a family friendly site.  Be sure to submit only books that have at least 5 reviews on Amazon.com.  To submit a book to this promotion click here.