by Neil Nicol

Created on: March 20, 2009

When an author writes a novel, it represents a great deal of investment in terms of their time and effort. A full length novel can easily be a year or more in the writing so when it is finally published, it is essential that it be properly and effectively promoted if it is to know the success which the author hopes. Traditionally, much of the marketing and promotion of novels was undertaken by publishers and although this is still the case, the advent of the Internet has opened up a whole new world of opportunity for the author to set about promoting his or her own work.

When a novel is published, it is commonplace for it to be reviewed by professionals in such as newspapers and trade magazines. These reviews can of course have a huge bearing upon how successful the novel will be as there are a lot of people who read and trust the opinions of these professional reviewers. There is not a great deal which the writer can do to influence these reviews. The process is largely one of crossing their fingers and hoping that the critics will view their novel favourably.

What has happened in recent times, however, with the explosion of online writing sites is that ordinary people who have read novels are now reviewing them on sites such as this one, Helium, or Bukisa, ReviewStream, or any one of hundreds of others. Again, the author of the published work can only hope that these reviews are favourable but where they are, they represent a fantastic opportunity for the author to exploit them to fantastic promotional effect.

Every author in the present day should have his or her own website and blog. Failure to have same will mean a lot of lost promotional opportunities and potential sales revenue and royalties. What the writer should also do, however, is start a separate blog where they examine reviews of their own work. This will allow them to highlight said reviews in a very favourable way and by promoting the blog effectively, bring their novel and these comments upon same to a much wider audience.

The author of course has to find these favourable reviews in the first instance. This can be achieved simply by performing such as a Google search or even by searching the parameters of the most popular review sites. There are of course even occasions where the author will be contacted by the reviewer, drawing attention to the review. When such works are discovered, therefore, in whichever fashion, they should be linked to from the author's review blog and the author's comments on the review annotated.

It is worth mentioning one final point in this respect and that is the fact that the author should utilise the opportunity to sell the novel being reviewed from their blog. This can either be done via linking to their publisher's site if the book is available for sale directly from same or by becoming an Amazon affiliate and offering it for sale in this respect. It is important that when we are focusing on telling people how great the book is, that we at the same time afford them the opportunity to buy it.

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