The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil (Penguin Portfolio); available on Amazon

When I started this book blog almost two years ago, in June 2005, I wrote about topics that writers and authors wrestle with:

• Tips for a first-time book author
• Choosing a book title with a matching URL
• Crafting a sub-title (this was hard and I still don't love the one I ended up with)

Ya gotta learn how to promote your book

But what I didn't do (and what most first-time authors don't do) was give enough thought to how I was going to promote and publicize my book.

It's a process that should start many months before a book's publication date (six to eight months in advance, at least). And there are dozens of things you need to know to promote a book properly.

Bella Stander's Book Promotion 101

Over the weekend I had the chance to attend Bella Stander's Book Promotion 101 workshop here in Washington DC. It's an informal, hands-on event that was stupendously useful.

And even though it's eight months since my book was published (August 2006), there are still many things I can do to keep the buzz going.

She forced us (there were just eight participants) through the tortuous exercise of crafting a 30-second elevator pitch explaining why a reporter/editor/producer - or anyone - should care about our book.

She also invited several publicists, two authors and a media trainer as guest speakers to the day-long workshop. They were terrific.  

I especially enjoyed meeting Kenneth Ackerman, author of Young J. Edgar, due out in a few weeks. He explained how he wrote his own jacket copy as well as the copy for Carroll & Graf's book catalogue.

His copy emphasized a key selling point of the book: his biography of the young J. Edgar Hoover is extremely topical, as it ties into 9/11 and the kinds of civil liberties issues we're facing today.

Book Promotion Resources

Be sure to check out Bella's Resources page for tips on Recommended reading, book blogs, etc. My favorite book on book publicity (first recommended to me by my agent, Elizabeth Wales), is Lissa Warren's The Savvy Author's Guide to Publicity.

If you're on the West Coast (and even if you're not), Bella's next workshop is in L.A. on June 16, 2007. 

Just noticed this on my Amazon page. It seems very cool. Click here to see how it works.

The article is about individuals whose blogs get noticed by recruiters. But it could just as easily be about companies. As I said to reporter Sarah Needleman:

"Job seekers who blog increase the odds that a potential employer will find information online that the candidate wants to be seen, says Debbie Weil, a corporate blogging consultant in Washington and the author of "The Corporate Blogging Book," which was published last summer.

Everybody has an online identity whether they know it or not, and a blog is the single best way to control it," [Debbie] says. "You're going to be Googled. No one hires anyone or buys anything these days without going online first and doing research." — Wall Street Journal (April 10, 2007)