Free ways to market your written masterpiece.

Marketing your book whether you went the POD, e-book, or traditional route can be a daunting process. Figuring out what works and what doesn’t can take time, energy, and if you’re not careful a lot of money. When I first self-published my science fiction novel GETTING OUT ALIVE, I had already done quite a bit of research into ways to market my novel that didn’t eat into my pocket book.

Here are the top 8 ways I’ve marketed my book and seen results:

*Create a presence on the web. There are many ways to do this, but having your own website to promote your writing is the best way. There are lots of places that have free webpages, but Bravenet.com has everything you could ever want (webjournals, tell-a-friend service, guestbook, and mailing lists to name a few) and this includes free hosting.

*Sign other author’s guestbooks. The author is not the only one who reads the entries, and make sure you add your website address even if they don’t give you a spot to put it. Put it beneath your name when you sign your entry.

*Be a regular on message boards, answer newbie’s questions, and don’t forget to add your signature with your website address. The important thing to remember here is to pop in on a regular basis, otherwise it looks like the only reason you’re there is advertise, and participants won’t take you seriously.

*Join writers groups online and post, post, post! That’s not to say you should inundate any group with advertising e-mails about your book, but rather to participate in the discussions. If you have a signature line at the end of your e-mails this will do your advertising for you.

*Speaking of signature lines, create one and add it to all of your e-mails. This is one of my favorite freebies. People do read signature lines and I have actually ordered books because I found them via the signature line.

*Give away free PDF electronic versions of your book (not too many now, just 2 or 3) in return for reviews. This has worked very well for me, and I’ve gotten some good reviews from doing this. Readers like free and are usually more than willing to write a review in return.

*Trade electronic versions of your book with other published authors and do a review for each other.

*Once you have reviews post them on your website and anywhere else you can. There are many places to post reviews for free, just search on google for book reviews. See if your reviewers will post their reviews for you at these websites.