Plymouth, MI - (PromotionWorld) - October 28, 2004 - Any author who does their own book marketing should immediately go to Google Print. Do not pass Go. Do not pay $200. Why pay, because Google Print is free. And this new service is one of the quickest and most efficient ways for authors to promote their book.
In a nutshell, Google has offered to scan portions of an author's book and make those scanned pieces available to persons doing a Google Search. What more can an author want?
As a book publicist, the one thing that's very clear to me is that any serious promotional campaign must make serious use of the Internet. Remember that the number one reason (93 percent) people go online is to get information. And search engines are the first step taken by online researchers seeking information.
You have published a book on raising tulips for fun and profit. John Doe is looking for a special Dutch tulip bulb his grandmother once raised. John Doe turns on his computer, goes online, and ends up at Google where he enters the search term "Dutch harvest gold tulips." Because you earlier signed up for the free Google Print service, a match is made and John navigates to your web site and buys your book.
Here's how it works. Go to https://print.google.com/publisher/, sign up for the program. If Google determines you are eligible they will e-mail you information about your account, including instructions for shipping your book materials to Google. Eligibility requirements are that the book must have an ISBN number, must not contain illegal content, and must be in English. Once Google receives a physical copy of your book key portions are scanned and indexed.
As a result, when a user conducts a search with key words related to your book, a link appears in the Google search results. Each Google Print search result listing shows the books' title and author, a short excerpt containing the highlighted search terms and the excerpts page number. This information then leads users to a Google-hosted web page on which the search terms appear along with a scanned image of your book and publisher information and links to the online booksellers handling your book.
The Google-hosted web page is generated from information that is scanned from your book. Links on this page include "About This Book," "Copyright", "Index," and "Buy This Book." An image of the book cover appears along with the portion of your book related to the user's search terms.
Google protects the content of your book by preventing anyone from copying or printing selected portions or from downloading the entire book. Pages displaying your content have all print, cut, copy and save functions disabled. Authors will have the right to choose how much of their book users will be able to view over a 30-day period, from 20% to 100% of your content. The author also retains all content rights. Google Print is a book marketing program, not an online library, and so your entire book will not be made available online unless the author chooses to do so.
Google offers each author, if they choose, the opportunity of participating in its AdWords program. As a book marketer, I often have made use of AdWords for my clients and have received excellent results. AdWords allows advertisers to choose keywords with which to associate their ads. Google's technology examines the content of a book and determines what each book is about in order to match relevant ads to the page. Advertisers only pay when a user clicks on their ads and Google will share this revenue with participating authors. Payments are made when balances reach $100. The amount of these earnings may or may not be significant. The significant dollars are the new sales made by driving new traffic to your web commerce site.
Once signed up, you have your own account that will provide detailed book level reporting on page impressions (a viewing of one of your excerpt pages), ad clicks, "Buy This Book" clicks, and ad revenue generated on your account. Your reports are updated throughout the day as activity occurs, allowing you to track performance.
Amazon.com offers a similar book marketing program which you can check out by going to that web site or by entering "Amazon book marketing" in your search terms. I have detailed the Google Print program because Google is the number one search engine in America and any author serious about promotion will want to take advantage of this free offer.
If you don't have a web site to promote your book, you should create one as quickly as you sign up for Google Print. The key reason to have an e-book and sell online at your own web site (even if you are selling a hardcover edition through traditional distribution means) is that the author keeps 97 percent of each sale, avoids maintaining an inventory, has no distribution problem, is able to automate sales, can assemble a "sales force" rather easily through affiliate programs, and can generate repeat buyers by harvesting e-mail addresses of purchasers.
It's very easy to take your hardcover book, which was probably originally created in Microsoft Word or a similar word processing format, and convert it to a digital format such as .pdf to be sold as an e-book. Create a web site and when doing so remember that the web site is a marketing tool intended to generate sales. Traffic to your site is not the goal. Your web site should be an electronic marketing letter with a strong sales pitch and close. Always remember that words sell, not graphics. There are lots of ways to generate traffic to your site, including programs such as Google Print. Some of these means you can learn; others are easily done by professional marketers.
Many authors don't have the time or energy to market their own books and will turn that responsibility over to a professional. Public relations and media exposure are critical to a book's success. Unless an author has someone skilled in book marketing promoting their book, their potential best seller is just one of a million books lost on the shelves of Borders, Barnes and Noble, Walden Books, and in the "ether" of Amazon.com. Book marketing requires special skills that most authors simply no not have. That's why so many authors use the unique book promotion skills of professionals like myself when they are ready to enter the book market.
My company, Westwind Communications, targets book reviewers at magazines, newspapers and electronic media across the U.S. Because our contacts in the media are exceptionally good, we have a high success rate with frequent placements. Westwind Communications develops and nutures relationships with writers, editors and producers so they trust us when we give them a story idea. One of our authors had a 10-minute interview on The Howard Stern Show and that one interview caused a 1500 percent increase in traffic to the author's web site.
The importance of marketing to all authors is stressed by John Kremer, author of "1,001 Ways to Market Your Book," who states: "Eighty percent of all books are sold by word of mouth, but it's publicity that primes the marketing pump. Remember that you cannot do everything, so hire the right person to do the things you can't do. If you are not comfortable doing your own publicity, then hire someone who does it for a living."
Anyone interested in learning how Westwind Communications helps authors get all the publicity they deserve and more, contact e-mail protected from spam bots or call 734-677-2090. For information go to www.westwindcos.com/book
About Scott Lorenz
Scott Lorenz is President of Westwind Communications, a public relations and marketing firm that has a special knack for working with doctors, lawyers, inventors and authors. His clients have been featured by Good Morning America, FOX & Friends, CNN, ABC Nightly News, The New York Times, Nightline, TIME, PBS, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Family Circle, Woman's World, & Howard Stern to name a few. To discuss how Westwind Communications helps its clients get all the publicity they deserve and more call 734-667-2090 or email e-mail protected from spam bots.