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. 

Michael McLaughlin, author of Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants, offers great tips on the new must-have for authors - a companion book blog. Looks like he updates his companion Guerrilla Consulting blog frequently (sometimes several times a week). A key tip for new authors: blogging a lot may improve your book's Amazon sales rankings.  

From an interview with another blogging book author, Ted Demopoulos.

OK, this is happening live. Sarah Lewis, my Web designer, and I are doing a live demo of WordPress to fool with this blog!

Here’s the list from The New York Times. Includes Freakonomics, Harry Potter, Blink, The World Is Flat, etc. Would be fun to make next year’s list. I’m hoping the timing won’t be off. Will “corporate blogging” have peaked by mid-2006?

Umm, no, I don’t think so. Actually that’s part of my thesis. Most people are just getting into what blogs and blogging and the blogosphere will mean for business. Yeah, I know for those of us inside the blogosphere this topic is old news. It’s loud and echo-y inside here. Everyone knows about it. It’s all been said. Blaa, blaa, etc. etc.

But most business folk, certainly corporate types, aren’t hanging around the blogosphere. They’re surely not reading the drivel I’m posting here. But I hope they’ll read The Corporate Blogging Book!

Also, worth a read - Pamela Paul’s NYTimes essay on book blogs. She starts out:

ALMOST every author I know with a new book does it - the embarrassing, nearly irresistible, ritualistic dip into Internet-assisted narcissism. I know I do. Prodded by a combination of curiosity and dread, I’ll scour the Web not just to ascertain sales (impossible) or check out the press coverage, but to get a sense of what ordinary readers are saying about my book when they think I’m not listening.

So waddya think? I kind of like it. There’s been some discussion about whether "Hello" is the right word for the thought bubble.  I think it’s open-ended and neutral enough that it’s fine. Kudos to Penguin Portfolio’s designer!

Click image to see it full-size.

You gotta have a book blog to create buzz around your book. I knew that when I set up this blog. But it’s confirmed in yesterday’s New York Times in an article, Dear Blog: Today I Worked on My Book. The article quotes three nonfiction authors on their blogs and their books-in-progress: John Battelle ("The Search"), Chris Anderson ("The Long Tail") and David Weinberger ("Everything is Miscellaneous").

The article wisely points out:  "Authors’ blogs also change the solitary mission of writing into something more closely resembling open-source software."

My favorite quote: Battelle "calculated that last year he wrote 74,000 words for his book, and 125,000 words on his blog." As he puts it: "It is very satisfying to write something and get an immediate response to it." Yeah, I know what he means. I’m awfully simple minded that way. A blog is so, well, satisfying: scribble your idea, read it over, edit quickly… and click Publish Now. Then hope you get some Comments. Positive or negative, doesn’t matter. It’s the feedback that writers crave.

So… why a book blog? It’s a way to draw on the
"collective intelligence" of your readers to get feedback, ideas, tips on who to
interview, pointers to articles to read, etc. It  can build buzz for your book after it’s published. See Seth Godin’s All Marketers Are Liars and Susannah Gardner’s Buzz Marketing with Blogs.

However, a book blog may or may not mean that you are inviting readers into the writing process. Some authors are more willing than others to post drafts of chapters. Robert Scoble and co-author Shel Israel have been postings drafts for months to Naked Conversations (the blog for their book about business blogging). In contrast, David Weinberger, a co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto and author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined, tells the NYTimes reporter that he’s not going to seek so much input from readers this time around. It made the rewriting process cumbersome and time-consuming.

Count me in the "a bit shy" category about this. I’ll see as I get further along…

If you know of other "book blogs" by all means add them in a Comment below.