Online Marketing Technologies

Let's make this discussion forum a place to share, highlight, and critique the growing number of new technologies that are available for marketing and selling your book online.

To start, has anyone heard of www.bookbuzzr.com?

In their own words it's primary service provides:

"A portable author website in the form of an embeddable book-widget that's shareable across multiple social networks. And with book-pages
that look and act like pages from a real book.""

Their is also a version of the widget that can be embedded on an author or publisher's website, and it looks like they are working to expand their free product offering as way to be as useful to authors as possible.

Has anyone used this? and if so what do think? Is it helping you to sell books?

Tags: Marketing, Online, book, bookbuzzr, sales, technology, tips

Promote

0 members promoted this

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Deborah McCarragher on August 12, 2010 at 4:01pm

Yes, I have used BookBuzzr and posted the widget on my Blog http://www.Godmissionpossible.blogspot.com -just scroll down below blog posts . It's a great way to let prospective readers take a peak at your book. You determine how many pages they read for free. I personally don't know how many people have purchased my book from their website, but I'm sure it's been useful for a basic book preview. I have a direct link on my Blog to my website for book purchase http://www.Godmissionpossible.com .

I have also used MyEbook with similar results. Both offer the look and feel of turning real pages in a book.

Deborah

Permalink Reply by Bradley Flora on August 12, 2010 at 4:45pm

Deborah,

Thanks for your reply. I have a few questions for you, if you that time to answer them.

Does BookBuzzr provide statistics on reader views, and time spent reading?

Do you have the BookBuzzr widget on your website, and if you do have you considered placing it or a link to it in a highly visible location on your homepage?

In regard to MyEbook, have you found their service valuable? Is it helping you to sell eBooks?

Thanks again for your time, and any answers you maybe be able to provide in regard to my questions.

Permalink Reply by Deborah McCarragher on August 12, 2010 at 6:58pm

Brad,

MyEbook does not provide statistics - only book order numbers. I have had (1) book sale on MyEbook, however, there have been over 50,000 views of my book. Here is the URL for the Religion section - in the Most Viewed Books (mine is top row, 2nd book) http://www.myebook.com/index.php?option=browse&next=21 . MyEbook is on my website under A Look at Featured Book Tab.

As far as BookBuzzr goes, the widget is on my Blog, not my website. I might have my web designer put BookBuzzr on the Homepage of my website as you have suggested. I already have my book trailer video and an image of the book, etc. on my Homepage.

BookBuzzr gives you details about Full-Screen Views and Widget Views, including number of views and it displays a graph by date of the activity. Other than that, there is no other information that I can find for statistics on book sales.

Both of these book preview sites are free - so I figure I didn't lose anything by trying out both of them, even if it's just for promotional purposes.

Deborah

Permalink Reply by Bradley Flora on December 3, 2010 at 2:34am

Deborah,

With a few months having passed. I would be happy to hear if your current thoughts on BookBuzzr.

Any more eBooks sold? In August you had 50,000 views, how many total book views do you have now?

Thanks for your time!

bradley flora

Permalink Reply by Deborah McCarragher on December 3, 2010 at 9:08am

Brad,

So far MyEbook up to 67,853 views. I don't think it's doing much for my book sales. I basically have the widget on my website so people can preview my book. Here's the link to one of the sections where my book is listed...

http://www.myebook.com/index.php?option=browse&A=tf

I've dropped the price down to $3.95 for Ebook download. There is still the link to my website. I've never received any money from them yet...

Still - for no cash outlay - I like the widget & exposure.

I also have Bookbuzzr on my Blog & website. I haven't had sales on that one either. I guess people just like looking at the widget and hopefully they go to my website to purchase. The only Ebook retailer that sends me reports & actual deposits is Lightning Source. Of course, the same goes for Amazon Kindle.
Deborah

Permalink Reply by Bradley Flora on February 8, 2011 at 8:05am

Deborah,

Two months since your last post, what are your thoughts today? Has dropping the price of your ebook increased sales? And have the sales from Amazon and Lightning Source continued to out perform sales on your website?

And in that regard, do you have any analytics data that gives the source for traffic to your Amazon and/or Lightning Source pages? In other words, do you know empirically if it is possible for buyers to be buying your book with "Az" or L.S. after first visiting your website"

bradley flora

SPANnet.org

Permalink Reply by Deborah McCarragher on February 8, 2011 at 6:08pm

Hi Brad,

This is a brief recap of where it all stands now:

I mainly use Twitter, FB and Linked In to get info out about my book. I send out Tweets about my Ebook w/ links to Amazon (kindle), Smashwords, Lebrary, Bookbuzzr, I don't have any data to support where the buyers are coming from.

Lightning Source has my Ebook out on several online retailers - I don't do any promoting for those. I do receive a quarterly report from LS and I have direct deposit for sales. Overall, Kindle & Lightning Source appear to be the main sales points, however, my Ebook on Smashwords is starting to slowly take off. I am also a participant in the Operation Book Drop (free download to troops).

I am up to my ears in accounting work right now - so maybe in a couple of months I'll have a little more time to investigate. As far as my website goes, I have a direct link to Amazon for the Kindle, and also a link to Smashwords.

I'm not sure where else to advertise my Ebook. That seems to be the $1,000,000 dollar question. I keep asking for Reviews and Guest Blog spots. It's a jungle out there... (LOL)

Yes, I believe dropping the price of my Ebook is helping. I've got it listed at $3.95 on Kindle, Smashwords and LS retailers.

Thanks for the follow up. Blessings,

Deborah

Permalink Reply by Sherry Ellis on February 25, 2011 at 7:48pm

Online book tours are a great way to get the word out about your book. What are online book tours? They are tours in which the author is the featured guest on various blogs and websites. These usually run for about a month. Every day, the author is featured on a different site.

How does one arrange this? There are two ways. You can do a lot of homework and contact sites to see if they'd be interested in having you as a guest. Or you can do it the easy way, and have the whole thing set up by a second party. Either way, you have to do some work. You will be expected to answer interview questions. You will also have to write a lot of articles on topics related to your work as an author.

I'm a children's author, so I opted to do a tour with Stories for Children. My tour will be in March of 2011. Here's the link: http://storiesforchildrenpublishing.com/SherryEllis.aspx . If you choose to have a second party set up your tour, there is a cost. I think it's well-worth it though because it's a way to reach a lot of people quickly.

I will blog about my tour and share my experiences so that if you choose to do one of your own, you will have a good idea of what to expect.

Permalink Reply by Brad Poulson on March 17, 2011 at 3:56pm

Sherry’s tour is going well! For reports on her success, visit her SPAN Blog feed at: http://www.spannet.org/profiles/blog/list?user=1blzxyl5ex210

For future reference, the SPANpro education library has this great article on Tips for Coordinating a Successful Virtual Book Tour, by Cheryl Mal....

For additional information about SPANpro Educational Resources, visit: http://www.spanpro.org/about-education

Permalink Reply by Amanda Dowdy on April 25, 2011 at 12:47pm

BookMasters has partnered with NetGalley as a way to market and sell books (see post about it on SPAN here). He have just been welcomed to the NetGalley community, and our catalog is up for you to check out.

We anticipate a lot of advantages with this relationship. We can work with our publishers to save them money on printing, shipping, and handling costs for galleys. You can be very specific of who you target with your galleys. You can post entire books, chapters, excerpts...whatever works for the book you are promoting. And all of this is done with DRM.

We just got started now, so we don't have much by way of feedback of how it is helping us to sell books. We look forward to seeing results develop.

Everyone talks about using the net to market their books, but a lot of times it is hard to pin down how best to do it. NetGalley is a great tactile way to reach a target reviewing audience.

Permalink Reply by Brad Poulson on August 17, 2011 at 8:22am

In his Blog, Cool Tool - Promote Your Stuff - Pay With a Tweet!, SPANnet member Larry James, introduced us to another social media book marketing tool and I thought there should be a reference to it in this discussion thread.