Authors can be promoted online in a number of ways, most of which can include an RSS/ Atom/ web feed:

• Blogging about the creation/ editing of a new book.
• Blogging about the promotional tour and the reviews after publication.
• Blogging about ideas for future books.
• Interacting online with fans via blog comments and/or in-house forums.
• Serializing parts of the book as teasers for getting more sales - possibly even online, or linked to an affiliate program such as Amazon. (Readers: Don't feel this is a money grab; large bookstore chains have been demanding 30-40% off a book's list price for over a decade. Most authors do not earn anywhere nearly as much as they used to per book sold, before these chains existed.)

All the above is text content. Authors can also use podcasting to their advantage, to promote a book. Audio content can include:

• Reports from the road while on tour. As I mentioned in the last post, AudioBlogger.com lets you phone in blog entries.
• Recordings of live readings. A quality digital recorder and a couple of good microphones should be sufficient.
  
• Recordings of bookstore appearances. Include both questions from fans, as well as answers from the author. Work out technical issues with the bookstore in advance.
  
• Excerpt tracks from an audio version of a book. If you don't have an audio version, consider recording some teaser readings.

If you want to promote this audio content exclusively via a web feed, create a feed separate from the blog's feed. In which case, you'd promote the exclusive audio feed in your blog, and would NOT include links to the audio files there.

One other consideration, if you have the equipment, personnel, and resources, is to capture video of bookstore appearances and live readings. You would then include teaser video files in your exclusive web feed (vodcasting), in the hopes of drawing feed subscribers to the site - either to view the full video, read the serializations, or buy a copy of either the ebook or print edition.

(c) Copyright: 2006-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://www.chameleonintegration.com/

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