Book Promotion Ideas for Chris Brogan's Trust Agents

Chris Brogan posts some great ideas about how to promote a book online. He and Julien Smith writing their first book, Trust Agents, about how the social web helps turn relationships into serious business (or some such). So now, they’re thinking ahead about their strategic public relations plan. Brogan also asks a great question about what else you can do to promote your book online (other than the ideas he’s outlined). That is a great question. Here are a few things we did to promote my book, “Everyday Public Relations for Lawyers” that worked well:

*Issue search engine optimized press releases via Business Wire’s EON (enhanced online news) service.

*Create a blog for the book and link the blog to the authors’ websites, other blogs, etc. Then add a hyperlink to your email signature, on your Social Networking sites, etc. – In this case, we already had “The PR Lawyer” blog so we used this is a way to share the story about our book too.

*Ping the blog - To keep SEO high, “pinging” allows the Internet provider to refresh the status of your blog whenever an entry is made or related searches are entered in the search box.

*Register the blog in Weblogs, Pinggoat, Technorati, Daypop, Blogdex, Popdex, etc.

*Add your book to Amazon and actively seek reviews from readers. Here’s a link to some of the reviews for our book: http://www.amazon.com/review/product/098017190

*Add book URL or blog to online book directories and listing sources:
1. Independent Online Book Association
2. Top 101 Book Marketing
3. DearReader.com
4. Shelf Awareness
5. Bookmovement.com
6. Author Reviews
7. Authors and Experts
8. Author-Reviews.com

*Send an advance copy to other industry bloggers for endorsement and mention on their blogs.

*Submit for Book Awards. Here are a few for independent publishers:
1. Annual Writer’s Digest International Self-Published Book Awards - www.writersdigest.com/contests
2. Best Book Awards - http://www.usabooknews.com/
3. ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Award - www.forewordmagazine.com/awards.asp
4. Indie Excellence National Book Awards -http://www.wmaconnect.com/

5. Independent Publisher Book Awards - http://www.independentpublisher.com/

6. Writers Notes Annual Book Awards - http://hopepubs.home.comcast.net/awards.html

7. Axiom Book Awards Entry Form - http://www.axiomawards.com/entry.php

*And I love Brogan’s idea of Trust Agents. It’s fabulous!