Effective Internet Presence: Now required for success in business and life
What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting, Real-Life Advice from 101 People Who Successfully Leverage the Power of the Blogosphere
Book Blogs for Marketing Books
Book Blogs for promoting and marketing Books
"It's a low cost high impact marketing tool you've got to have," and "you shouldn't do without it," says Michael W. McLaughlin, co-author of Guerilla Marketing for Consultants. Michael is specifically referring to a book blog, a companion blog to a book. He promotes his book at the Guerilla Consulting blog where he extends the conversation in his book.
I recently had the pleasure to interview Michael on blogs and get his insights.
Blogging has been so effective he says, "my sense is it works better than anything else," and Michael and coauthor Jay Conrad Levinson are no slouches when it comes to promotion and marketing! They did all the usual book promotion type things including hiring a publicist.
Although he has no hard statistics, he thinks his Amazon sales ranking for the book, something many authors obsess over, is higher when he is blogging more frequently – "there seems to be a direct relationship."
What would Michael recommend to a new author?
1) Success is driven by what you do – don't count on your publisher
2) You want to build staying power for your book and push hard initially
3) Take advantage of the intellectual capital in the book. Expand, update, and take it in other directions, and do something with all the great material you wrote that didn't make it into the book
Blogs help with all three of these suggestions!
Bogs can also help book authors sell additional products: ebooks, audio products, consulting, etc., although these were not among Michael's goals -- just extending the conversation in the book and thereby promoting it and selling more copies.
What would Michael do differently if he were starting now?
He might skip the website and just have a blog. As for blogging, he modestly says he doesn't know enough to know what he might he better or differently. Anyone who reads the Guerilla Consulting blog already knows Michael is doing a great job.
Addendum: Mike Loukides, an editor at O'Reilly, says:
"It's certainly true. Books from active bloggers sell better."
I've had several publishers, authors, and editors tell me similar things since posting this!
Maybe not a blog, but podcast interviews about the book? See our Middle Chamber Bookstore, where we are conducting podcast interviews with authors to promote their books. More cost-effective than SMT.
Posted by: Steve Lubetkin | 18 April 2006 at 12:13 PM
Hi Steve,
I'm more than happy to be interviewed for your podcast!
Posted by: T Demop, Blogging for Business | 18 April 2006 at 04:47 PM