Online book marketing is a terrific way to promote your book to a worldwide audience, but sometimes authors overlook book marketing opportunities in their own backyard.

In your local area and region, you have the opportunity to stand out as a bigger fish in a smaller pond. Here are ten tips to promote your book in your own area:

1.   Always carry books and literature with you. Keep a case of books and some flyers in the trunk of your car, and business cards in your wallet. You never know when you will run across a potential customer or marketing contact.

This post, from Graham Storrs, originally appeared on his site on 2/6/2010. 

A survey of book promotion tactics was conducted by The Savvy Book Marketer in December, 2009, and is reported today. It asked a number of authors what their book promotion strategy would involve in 2010. You can check the method and the outcome there. I just want to look at the list of tactics they came up with and try to get a feel for how appropriate they might be for marketing an ebook. The list, most popular at the top, is this:

This post, from Anna Miller, originally appeared on the Online Degree site and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission.

The old cliché states that artists and writers never achieve true fame or appreciation for their creative output until after their death. While the advent of bestselling authors who peddle their wares on television, radio, and other media outlets, the seductive cult of celebrity has begun trickling its way into the literary world at a much faster pace than yesteryear. But the following writers never had a chance to see the greater influence and love that their painstaking, passionate work earned due to dying before receiving recognition. Some, of course, never actively sought critical or academic renown for their novels, short stories, essays, or poems – though their intentions do not exclude them from proving the old adage true.

This post, from Fay Risner, originally appeared on her Booksbyfay blog in September of 2009 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission. This is Fay's entry in our anniversary contest, in which the winners are selected based on total unique page views. So if you like it, and would like to see Fay become a regular Publetariat Contributor, spread the word and the link!

Friday, Civil War Days begins in Belle Plaine, Iowa. I'm going to sell my books in the park on the fringes of North versus south battles. So am I ready?

This post, from M. Louisa Locke, originally appeared on her The Front Parlor blog on 2/16/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission. This is Locke's entry in our anniversary contest, in which the winners are selected based on total unique page views. So if you like it, and would like to see Locke become a regular Publetariat Contributor, spread the word and the link!

This post, from J. Daniel Sawyer, originally appeared on his Literary Abominations site on 3/1/2010 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission. This is JD's entry in our anniversary contest, in which the winners are selected based on total unique page views. So if you like it, and would like to see JD become a regular Publetariat Contributor, spread the word and the link!

This post, from Edward G. Talbot, originally appeared on the Edward G. Talbot site on 2/16/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission. This is Edward G. Talbot's entry in our anniversary contest, in which the winners are selected based on total unique page views. So if you like it, and would like to see Edward G. Talbot become a regular Publetariat Contributor, spread the word and the link!

The best things in life are free. But you can give that to the birds and the bees. I want money.
-The Undertakers, "Money", 1963.

Publishing is an industry everyone loves to hate. They publish too much garbage. They waste untold millions printing and shipping books that wind up in the dumpster. They're only in it for the money. These observations contain plenty of truth, but they also strike me as rather useless. The bigger question for me is how is the growing trend of free and low-priced fiction going to impact publishing, and by extension the price and quality of available books.

This post, from Shaun Kilgore, originally appeared on his site on 3/5/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission. This is Shaun's entry in our anniversary contest, in which the winners are selected based on total unique page views. So if you like it, and would like to see Shaun become a regular Publetariat Contributor, spread the word and the link!

Why did I start this publishing company? Here's the short answer: Because my wife was interested enough in starting a business herself that she volunteered to help me create Founders House Publishing.

You see, just before this happened, I was preparing to work with a friend on a small publishing venture, the first real push in that direction that had any legitimate chances of getting off the ground. (I still hope to work with him in the future.) It was in the process of helping my father find a place to publish his book, Echoes From The Past: A Memoir Of Family Heritage, that my wife and I decided to do it ourselves. Sure, there were other options, but this made sense in a variety of ways. Why do it, you might ask. Let me see if I can answer that.

This post, from Virginia Ripple, originally appeared on her The Road to Writing blog on 3/6/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission. This is Virginia's entry in our anniversary contest, in which the winners are selected based on total unique page views. So if you like it, and would like to see Virginia become a regular Publetariat Contributor, spread the word and the link!

Last Sunday I had a wonderful thing happen in my absence at church. My mother (who is one of my biggest fans ) took my book to her Sunday school class and, for lack of a better description, “marketed” it. Before the class was over there was a volunteer to write up an article for the church newsletter. Before the worship service that follows Sunday school concluded, the minister was informed of my book. He said that, if the person who volunteered to write the article hadn’t, then he would have. From there it’s supposed to make it’s appearance at the next monthly elders’ meeting. It seems that things are beginning to roll for Fear Not! Discovering God’s Promises for Our Lives.

So why does it all feel like I’ve failed?

This post, from PJ Kaiser, originally appeared on her Inspired By Real Life blog on 3/6/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission. This is PJ's entry in our anniversary contest, in which the winners are selected based on total unique page views. So if you like it, and would like to see PJ become a regular Publetariat Contributor, spread the word and the link!

As readers of this blog will know, I’ve been writing stories and working on my novel for several months now and I am approaching the point where I am considering submitting some stories to literary magazines.  A few weeks ago, I started perusing some of the magazines listed at Duotrope’s Digest and I came across several magazines and online sites that admonish writers to avoid O. Henry endings.

With this cross-posting, the very knowledgeable yet down-to-Earth Mick Rooney joins Publetariat's roster of regular contributors. 

Today, publishers are looking more to cut back on the amount of titles they release and focus their marketing clout and expenditure on extracting as much as possible from the branding of high-end authors. That doesn’t mean mainstream publishing editors aren’t open to new authors with an original book or voice. It just means the playing field is getting a little less hospitable.

Along with most citizens of Kindle Nation, I happen to believe that some of the big publishers are making a big mistake by trying to control retail ebook prices and raise those prices by 30 to 50 percent. This mistake is compounded, in my view, by the apparent circumstance of its having been arrived at through a collusive, anti-consumer process in which the "Apple 5" of MacMillan, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, Penguin, and HarperCollins have been lured by Steve Jobs into trying to fix prices and restructure retail relationships all at once.

That being said, congratulations to MacMillan CEO John Sargent for having the guts and transparency to speak up and address readers directly in this post on the company's blog yesterday:

This post, from author Charlie Stross, originally appeared on his Charlie's Diary blog on 2/23/10.

I'm back home, I'm over the jet lag (for now), and I'm looking for something to write about.

It struck me, reading the comments on my various postings about the Amazon v. Macmillan spat in January, that many people don't have the first clue about how the publishing business works — or even what it is.

Hey, wouldn't it be great if you had a little brother or sister hanging out on the interwebz all day and tattling on anyone who said anything about you or your work online? Then you could quickly respond with appreciation to any kudos, and if it seemed like it would do any good, with damage control to any not-so-kudos. As it turns out, you already do have just such a little tattle-tale, ready and waiting to report back to you. Its name is Google Alerts.

There’s no bigger decision you make in designing a book than picking the body typeface. A book by its nature is a long reading experience, and as book publishers we want our books to be as easy to read as possible while communicating the author’s intent. Style and fashion also play their part in many book designs, particularly in popular niches. The accumulated expectations of 500 years of book readers also come into play. Books are pretty conventional objects, after all.

Over the past few days I’ve been reading up on e-book file formats. I have a collection of short stories I want to publish, and I have a working understanding of the technology that readers will use to embrace that content, but until recently I haven’t worried too much about delivering content to that technology. (The main reason for my delay is simply the pace of change. Time spent trying to understand or master e-content technology six months ago would have put me at buggy-whip risk.)

I watched the most godawful movie the other day. It's my fault, usually my 10-minute rule is pretty good. But somehow this one lasted beyond 10 minutes and we suffered through it. [New York, I Love You] With a cast of people who I generally like, an interesting soundtrack, and pretty good cinematography I had to think about why it was so terrible to watch. First, the stories were not compelling. They were overly dramatized in these long cinematic sequences.

It was smug. It was self-gratuitous.

I’m struck by 2 posts today that I need to share with anyone who has not “got” social media yet. The bottom line is that authors/writers need social media and vice versa. It is increasingly important if you want to connect, sell, network and promote yourself and your books.