by Stan Grimes

Created on: May 16, 2008   Last Updated: July 06, 2008

Books do not sell themselves. Sorry. Today's new authors must know how to multi-task. That is, they must learn how to market what they have written. Not an easy task you say. You are absolutely right. After all writers are in tune with putting their thoughts on paper and writing a story someone will readthey hope. However, with the advent of ebooks and the world-wide-internet, things have changed.

The doors opened by the internet have created opportunities for writers to write and to be published electronically. The problem? Most electronic publishers see the marketing side of the business as the writer's responsibility. Not good. Most writers neither have the financial resources or the time to market their books to booksellers.

Be not dismayed completely. There are avenues writers are able to follow, relatively inexpensive, in order to publish their works. One such avenue is creating a website and submitting it to search engines to attract web surfers to your book. On your website you can either sell the books yourself, with your publishers permission of course, or you can provide links to the publisher's own website where books can be purchased. The cost of having your own website ranges from "free" to three or four hundred bucks a year.

Another avenue is MySpace.com. Sign up for your own space and advertise your book. Remember, you must have time to do this in order to market your book aggressively, ie, join various groups on MySpace with your same interests and chat with fellow authors. In other words, get your name out there in cyberspace.

Yet another avenue is a video trailer for your book. Depending on your contact and relationship with techno wizards (or if you're a techno wizard), the cost of doing this could run upwards to twelve hundred dollars. Your video trailer could be ran on your own website, YouTube, MySpace, Gather, Authorsden, or other sites friendly to writers. Again, for most writers this is not a free service. It costs.

Also, you could write various articles for writing ezines or enewspapers and subtly advertise your books. Finally, you could go straight to self-publishing through a Print On Demand publisher, this will definitely cost you some bucks, and go from city to city and peddle your stories. If you are a starving writer, gas prices will take you to the cemetery for "ex-writers."

Most writers are not privileged with windfalls of money. In fact, many of the writers I have met are engaged in a day job. Do not quit your day job my friends unless you're rich. Otherwise you could find yourself living under a bridge with no plug-ins for your computer. That would suck.

Remember above all else that persistence is the name of the game. Knock on every door available. One of these days a door will open and someone will say, "Where have you been all these years?"

Learn more about this author, Stan Grimes.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.