With over 19 million books cataloged and nearly 300 thousand members, LibraryThing claims to be the world’s largest book club. This popular online book cataloging and social networking site can help you further your online presence by connecting you with fellow book lovers with similar tastes.

It’s quite possible that your author page has already been created if a member has added your title to their library. Once your page is up, you are allowed to add a photo and links to your website, blog, or fan sites. With a free account, you can add as many as two hundred favorite or comparable titles to your profile, which allows readers to find you through similar interests. The process is easy, and the site has a lot of cool bells and whistles like blog widgets, Amazon linking, cell phone access, and more. As an independent publisher, you can even sign up for the Early Reviewers program that gives members a chance to receive a free copy of your new book in exchange for a review.

Check now to see if your author page already exists, then sign up to become an official LibraryThing Author and make your book sing!

Wouldn’t it be nice to pen a brilliant book and have the world instantly adore your genius? It doesn’t work that way, of course: “The End” means the beginning of your transformation into an industry-savvy member of the writing community. You’ll take away huge benefits if you are aware of the myriad available resources for independent authors like yourself. Here’s some advice to help you take advantage of them:

Become a member of guilds and other associations: Don’t be a starving artist type, beleaguered with the financial repercussions of your writing profession. That’s so cliché. These groups can get you discounts, health benefits, and free stuff:

• MediaBistro’s AvantGuild – As if MediaBistro wasn’t resourceful enough, its AvantGuild membership gives you access to a wealth of additional tools. For $49 for a year membership or $78 for two years, you get access to “Pitching an Agent” articles, discounts to writing and publishing courses and workshops, free magazine subscriptions, and even discounts on yoga and acupuncture–you know, stress relief for all of that writing, rewriting, editing, and rejection.
• Authors Guild – Established in 1912, the Authors Guild provides health insurance, legal services, and advocacy for authors of all types. Dues for the initial year of membership are $90; after that they are calculated by the member’s income from writing.
• PMA, The Independent Book Publishers Association – Dues for membership to this organization start at $160 for non-publishers, and the benefits include (among many others) discounted shipping and ad rates, health and liability insurance, discounted access to Neilsen Bookscan, and participation in Publishing University Online, which offers interactive Web/phone seminars.

Read blogs: There’s a wealth of blogs out there offering news and more with fresh voices and uncensored opinions. By reading a sampling of these, you’ll have a finger on the pulse of the book biz, catching the latest trends, news stories, and advice. Explore the book blogosphere and navigate blogrolls to find something you like. Some of our favorites:

• MediaBistro’s GalleyCat – The self-described “First Word on the Book Publishing Industry,” GalleyCat blogs all day about industry happenings, authors, and the scandals that occasionally arise in the industry.
• Book Slut – Interested in hearing what literary luminaries, agents, and editors have to say? Book Slut interviews some of the latest, greatest minds in literature and publishing and posts the interviews for all to read.
• Grumpy Old Book Man – Is publishing a very friendly business? That’s the title of a post by the Grumpy Old Book Man, an English writer who blogs about his experiences in the industry.
• The Millions – Blogger C. Max Magee and a host of contributors have kept The Millions up-to-date for well over four years, making this site respectably middle aged in blog years. Bibliophiles will salivate over entries like “Hard to Pronounce Literary Names Redux” and “Pagination Blues.”

And if you think you’re addicted to coffee, just wait until you get hooked on a morning injection of publishing news via a daily email. Sign up for Shelf Awareness and PW Daily to ensure you’re in the know.

Know how to find an agent: If you’re going through an agent, you’re surely tired of boilerplate responses from literary agents that “regret to inform you that unsolicited manuscripts are not reviewed.” Try here:

• Litmatch – Like eHarmony for unpartnered authors, Litmatch not only provides comprehensive profiles but will list agents looking for books just like yours!
  
• AgentQuery – Another database, but also features a conference listing and MySpace-like author/agent networking site.
• Everyone Who’s Anyone in Adult Trade Publishing – A long list of literary agents, interspersed with the compiler’s eccentric but often illuminating correspondence with them as he tries to find representation.

Become a regular at a relevant forum: Online forums are a great way to network and learn from the successes—and harrowing failures—of your fellow authors. Don’t be a lurker, flamer, or troll. Be active, make connections, and get the inside scoop on a wide range of industry topics with these communities. And don’t forget to take what you read on message boards with a grain of salt. You may run into a crazy or two.

• Absolutewrite.com forum – Want some pre-submission advice from writers who have lived to tell the tale? Check out the “Bewares and Background Checks” section in AbsoluteWrite’s Water Cooler discussion forum, where authors exchange advise and issue warnings about their experiences with certain literary agents. Other forum sections include “Networking: Sharing Leads,” “Grammar for Grasshoppers,” and “Rejection and Dejection.”
  
• Yahoo Publishing and Promoting group – Learn how to beef up your readership with promotion and publicity tips other authors have used.
• Yahoo Self-Publishing group – Sponsored by SPAN, you can find spirited discussions here from self-published authors and small presses about how to publish and market your own books.

Launching your own publicity campaign can be a daunting task. You’ve spent years writing your masterpiece, and now you’re faced with writing a killer press release the gets the media’s attention. Here are a few press release writing tips:

• The most important piece of a press release is the headline–make it count with a hook that has bite! Look for news headlines, events, holidays, seasons, comparable movie or book titles, and attention-catching happenings that you can tie your book to. Be creative, and try to send out a new release every 4 to 6 weeks.
• Make it newsworthy, objective, and accurate.
• In the body of the release, include the most important information (who, what, where, when, why, how) in the first two paragraphs and the least important information at the bottom, in the “inverter pyramid” style.
• Explain the relevance and benefit of your book to the intended audience.
• Make sure it is not self-centered and does not sound like a sales pitch–it should read like a newspaper or magazine story.
• Use relevant keywords that the search engine spiders will latch on to for increased visibility.
• List your book’s bibliographic data (ISBN, pub date, price, page count, cover, etc.).
• Be sure to include your contact information for the people who want more information.

Give your release some teeth!

According to a recent article in the New York Times, 48 percent of Internet users–about 87 million people–use widgets. Widgets were first introduced to the World Wide Web in 2001, but they have recently joined the ranks of the hot new Web 2.0 tools that can help push your message to the masses.

The technical definition of a widget is a chunk of code that can be embedded within a page of HTML. For those of us who aren’t technologically savvy, a widget is basically a small application that you can add to your blog, social networking page, or your book’s web page to help increase its interactivity.

Now, you may be thinking that widgets don’t really fall into the realm of social media, but I would like to think that they do. Increasing your interactive presence online will enhance a visitor’s personal experience on your Web site, and widgets can enhance the social media programs you are already utilizing to increase your visibility online.

Here are a few widgets you can add to your web page to dress it up a bit:

• Google’s Book Bar Wizard is a simple and customizable shelf that is extremely easy to set up. Enter the information about your book and Web site, and Google will generate the code for you. The Book Bar will allow your visitors to click on your book and preview it using Google Book Search.
• Twitter Widget keeps your fellow Twitterers and your other web followers constantly updated on your travel schedule. Add this widget to your MySpace profile page and combine two of your social media efforts.
• The Flickr Slideshow is highly customizable and allows you to post a slide show of all the wonderful pictures you took on your book tour onto your Web site.
• You can browse for more widgets at WidgetBox.com.

800 CEO READ, sister company to Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops in Wisconsin, announced the creation of a new business book award program this month. The program will recognize the best business books of 2007, with fifteen individual categories and an overarching award for Best Business Book of 2007. Publishers, authors, and contributors can nominate books; the judging will take place in November. All entries must be postmarked by October 30, and winners will be announced on January 15. Nominate your business book today and give it a chance to get the recognition it deserves.

\ˈbukˈkro-siŋ \ n: the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise.

This is something that I’ve been recommending to authors for quite some time as another way to find new readers. Little did I know that there was an official word in the dictionary for it. Bookcrossing is a great way to selectively seed the market in locations relevant to your book, yourself, or your audience (coffee shops, waiting rooms, lobbies, etc.). It’s also a good way to get rid of those few extra galleys/ARCs that you never got around to using. And now there’s a way to add a little fun to the process!

With close to 600,000 members in over 130 countries, BookCrossing.com is the world’s largest free book club. The fun part: it allows you to track your “bookcrossed” titles and see where they travel around the globe. Simply register your book for free, place it around town, and wait for its journey to begin!

It’s a cliché of a cliché to talk about how bogus the maxim “don’t judge a book by its cover” is. But for literal-minded book marketers, there could be no worse advice. Strong packaging equals strong sales–and that goes for authors, too. Looking foolish on TV or sounding foolish in the paper or on the radio is a quick and easy way to have people lose interest in your writing. In addition to your physical appearance, you need to monitor how your message comes across in the media; reporters may cut quotes (sometimes altering the entire meaning of your statements) to find a hook. Here are some tips on how to play the media game and make your interviews work for you.

Dress the Part: Newspapers have a tendency to start an article with a description of their interview subject, and–if the reporter is the gossip-mongering type–your fashion faux pas will not go unnoticed. You may be critiqued from head to toe, right down to your socks. Speaking of socks, people will notice if you wear white ones with a black suit, or decide to go without them entirely. But don’t feel bad if the reporter describes your wardrobe malfunction in great detail: surely there was little of substance to deride you about. DO wear solid-color clothing; plaids, stripes, and white tees don’t show up well on camera. Dress as simply as possible. If you draw attention to what you are wearing, the viewer will be distracted from your message.

Don’t Let Them Smell Your Fear: This is more for the viewer’s comfort than for your own. DON’T sit in a swivel chair. It may tempt you to rock side to side, making you look nervous and the viewer feel nauseous. Also, DON’T stare at the camera; the photographer will position you beforehand, and you should listen to the professionals. Maintain eye contact with the reporter throughout the interview. Even slight glances out of the corner of your eye will be picked up by the camera and make you appear cautious or uncertain.

Lose the Lingo: We all know you’re an expert; that’s why you wrote a book on the topic. But DON’T use jargon. You don’t want your 15 minute interview to turn into regurgitation from Webster’s. Try to keep your speech on an eighth grade level. Not only will the reporter fully understand you, but you will also reach the widest possible audience.

Speak in Sound Bites: DO answer in complete sentences. This seems elementary, but the question will be edited out of the interview so it’s best to reword it into your response for clarity. If you’re a victim of stuttering, take a pause and repeat the entire thought again so the reporter has a solid sound bite. Speaking in sound bites will discourage editors from altering your words.

Make Them Love You: The idea is to sell yourself. If you are generally liked, people will be drawn to your book. By relaxing and allowing the conversation to flow, you’ll charm the audience. The reporter is going to answer the who, what, when, where, and why. It is your responsibility to make the interview worthwhile for the viewer. DON’T make something up just to be interesting, but if you have a story about why you wrote the book or how you developed the characters, it will engage the viewers.

Get to the Point: Be very straightforward. Lengthy answers get cut down because viewers, especially in the age if Tivo, have very short attention spans, and they don’t want to hear you rattle on for two minutes about nothing in particular. The air-able quote may have an entirely different meaning than what you intended, so keep things short and sweet. Know in advance how long the interview will last, and when it starts to wrap up, be sure you’ve touched on all the points you wanted to make. Also, remember to clearly state your Web site and purchase information for your book at the end of the interview.

Feel like you’ve got a handle on Internet promotion of your book? Well, check out Second Life. This isn’t your dad’s MySpace page. Widely touted as fertile ground for marketers of the future, hype over this 3D community has recently reached a fever pitch.

Basically, users download a client that allows them to enter an online world where they can interact in real time with fellow users. The first step is creating an avatar, which, thanks to the detailed appearance-editing options offered by Second Life, can easily turn into a day’s work of deciding things like how bulbous your nose should be or if your character looks good with turquoise skin. You can even try to make your avatar look like you, a great opportunity to drop a few pounds with the drag of a slider. Once you’ve designed yourself and chosen from a pool of whimsical last names, you’re ready to start exploring.

There’s no stated objective, no bosses at the end of levels. It’s certainly not a game (big SL faux pas). It’s a platform, a “metaverse” if you will. Second Life denizens (known as Residents) aren’t messing around–they’re spending Linden Dollars, which correlate to real, actual, spendable money (exchange rate: approximately 250L$ to each US Dollar). Fortune 500 companies, noting the astronomical success of phenomena like MySpace and YouTube, haven’t wasted time in buying islands and constructing product-themed paradises.

While it’s hard to imagine scores of visitors to places like Wells Fargo’s Stagecoach Island, Cisco Systems Island, or other SL corporate playgrounds (reactions to corporate marketing have been mixed at best), Second Life is shaping up to be a networking tool with a lot of potential, particularly for the publishing world. Last April, sandwiched between London Book Fair and BEA, the Second Life Book Fair took place, drawing an impressive 1,400 visitors and featuring 42 exhibitors and nearly 20 events. Residents set up booths for their wares and attended talks by prominent publishing avatars.

If you’re not getting how this works at all (don’t worry–it’s confusing), check out The Infinite Mind’s interview with Kurt Vonnegut. Those figures in the audience? They’re people in real life (”RL” in Second Life parlance) logged on to see Kurt speak through his avatar. After the interview ended, they probably all stoop up and chatted about the interview before flying away to another island. (You can fly in Second Life.)

Andrew Sullivan and Diana Hunter are two authors who have used Second Life to their benefit. This is a good profile of their efforts. Hunter (SL name: Diana Allandale) told us that she views Second Life as an alternative to other means of Internet visibility (chat lists, author blogs, etc.). For her, time is the main resource–time spent getting to know SL thoroughly and networking in-world. Hunter pays rent for several shops, but it’s considerably less than what she’d pay for an eighth of a page in a major magazine, and she gets to promote her twelve RL books. The free excerpts she offers to Second Life users are at a touch and contain purchasing information and links to her Web site. In addition to presenting workshops on writing, she can often be found in her shop, talking to curious passersby.

Should you be so inclined, you can buy land and start building your Second Life base. In-world building tools are provided along with classes on how you use them, and if you want to be really fancy about it, many companies offer full-service SL development.

If you’re not ready to take that step, Second Life can still afford great opportunities through pure networking. Visit Book Island on Media World, home to around 40 publishers and writers with a Second Life presence. Hang out around bookstores, and chat with other people. Talk to authors that do SL promotion and find out what worked for them.

Some book-related happenings and spaces on Second Life:

• Random House hosts a book club, which meets at the Rose Garden of the Elysian Isle. It kicked off last May with a discussion of Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife.
• Shakespeare & Co., name after–but not affiliated with–the famous Paris shop, holds weekly topical poetry readings in Mill Pond.
• Coelacanth Books & News Store in Chagmi explores text media in the virtual world with Second Life-themed magazines and books.
• The Second Annual Warren Adler Short Story Contest is seeking short story submissions that capture the essence of New York. The five finalist stories will be featured via “live” readings at Amazon’s Theater in Second Life.

-Image ©2007 LINDEN RESEARCH, INC. All Rights Reserved.-

Babysitting is arranged, dinner reservations are made, a five-star hotel room is reserved, scented candles and fancy lotions are in place, and your lover’s eyes have that faraway look—everything is set for the ideal romantic evening. But the night begins and dinner is overpriced, the babysitter calls with a minor emergency, and a bachelor party is taking place in the hotel room right next to yours. You planned the perfect romantic event, but it gradually became an unsatisfying disappointment.

Book signing events can turn out the same way. You can handpick the best bookstore in the market, schedule the perfect event date, get lots of copies of the book on hand, and coordinate publicity and promotional collateral for the event, but none of that guarantees the desired result. You can show up at your signing pumped up and in the mood to sell a lot of books only to realize after a grueling two hours that a mere three people have stopped by your table. Fortunately, both the anticlimactic romantic encounter and the poorly attended book signing have a remedy: the “quickie.”

For unknown authors, the quickie book signing is a way to sidestep the labors of a traditional signing, which is often only effective for writers with more established names. So unless you’re Danielle Steel, you may be better off putting the notion of sitting at an oak table shaking fans’ hands to the back of your mind, and instead focus on multiple quickie signings in the same market. If successful, a traditional book signing can indeed sell a lot of books. However, with a lot less time, effort, and carpal cramps, a quickie signing (aka “stock,” “drive-by,” or “drop-in” signing) will give you most of the same benefits, which include:

• Securing premium store placement: Usually bookstores mark signed books with “autographed by the author” stickers and place them in prominent locations in the store. Competition for co-op space is fierce and typically involves large sums of money; signing your book is a good way to make a grab at that lusted-after space––for the cost of a few drops of Sharpie ink.
• Increasing buys on a store level: Let them know you’re coming; pitching quickie stock signings to bookstores a few weeks in advance can result in increased orders.
• Minimizing returns: Though the stores can return signed books, they rarely exercise this option. One caveat: Only sign unsold books on the store premises. Shipping signed books may result in booksellers returning them as damaged.
• Making a lasting impression on individual retailers: Meeting the bookstore staff in person goes a long way for an unknown author, and often results in the staff hand-selling the book.

Quickies (of the book-signing type) can be completed in as little as five to fifteen minutes. You drop by the store, sign its inventory of your book, meet the managers and staff, and leave. It’s that easy! Prior to dropping by, you’ll just want to call each store to confirm that they have books on hand. You should consider bringing marketing collateral and promotional items to hand out to the staff––and don’t forget to ask them to feature you on their “staff recommendations” wall. Finally, it’s a good idea to send each store a follow-up “Thank You” note, which could include your book cover or author photo.

Hit as many bookstores as you can. Whether you’re on an author tour, business trip, or personal vacation, there’s always time to squeeze in a quickie or two. Don’t get me wrong, there may be a time and place when your stars align and that perfect, packed, meet-and-greet book-signing event unfolds. But to get the most bang for your time and buck, “quickies” may be your best bet.

When Yahoo! Photos closes shop later this year, it will have stored over 2 billion photos on its servers. Flickr, the photo sharing service acquired by Yahoo! in 2005, will have about a quarter of that. So why is Yahoo! firing and replacing its own photo service? Is it because “Flickr” dangerously omits a vowel, thereby rendering it impossibly hip, young, and fresh? Maybe, but probably not. It’s because Yahoo! Photos is merely a photo repository, a junk drawer where your photos of Granny’s 87th nestle alongside that pic of you flipping off the camera with your tongue stuck out. Plus, Yahoo! Photos is very Web 1.0. Yuck. Can’t have that.

Flickr is quintessential Web 2.0—that’s to say that it’s part of a new generation of Web applications that, among other things, provide online communities with platforms to communicate creatively and quickly. If you were to put it into marketing speak, you might be compelled to call it “Web Two Point GO!” You know, because “Go” rhymes with “O” and “GO!” vaguely connotes speed, encouragement, and boundless capability. But please, please don’t call it that.

Used alone, Flickr can be a good way to organize and share your photos. But Flickr holds greater potential when it’s used to enhance a blog or Web site. And unlike Yahoo! Photos and other Web 1.0 photo sharing applications, Flickr gives the user the ability to “tag” photos–that is, to categorize them, which allows them to be easily found by search engines. Label the albums and photographs with appropriate tags: your name, your book title, “author,” “book tour,” etc. You’re not likely to get a lot of hits from people searching Flickr for “book tour,” (and I’m not sure you’d want hits from them anyway) but a link to a Flickr travelogue of your tour can be a really cool way to supplement your blog or Web site. Your readership will be able to plan to attend an upcoming event, get a chance to see you in action, and see that you have fans across the nation vying for a signed copy of your book.

Say you’re on the road, touring with your book. Surely you have a digital camera and USB cord. Document your trip by taking pictures of yourself and your adoring fans at each stop. Assuming you’re even marginally photogenic, snap scenes of the towering stacks of books and out-the-door lines, of yourself with noteworthy book industry people (maybe you’ll get to be in one of those PW “Picture of the Day” things), or simply giving a thumbs up next to an obnoxious landmark. You can then use Flickr’s oh-so-2.0 map function to visually pinpoint the stops on your journey.

Not sure if photo sharing is right for you? Take the handy Flickr tour and sign up for a membership. You’ve got nothing to lose since Flickr, like most social media, is free. Now all you have to do is remember to bring your camera and sexy smile with you.

In the next social media guide: Need a new life? Just get a Second Life and learn how to promote your book and interact with the seven million residents living in this virtual world.