You’ve been waiting by the mailbox and you finally receive the letter you’ve been waiting for. Your book is going to be published!

But your journey doesn’t end there. On the contrary. It’s just beginning. There are appearances to be made, books to sign and television programs to be a guest on.

In fact, many publishers want to know your promotional plan of attack before they even look at your manuscript. How you market yourself and your book is downright vital to success in these competitive publishing days.

The art of self-promotion can be overwhelming. Many people don’t even have the first clue as to where to get started on their own publicity campaign.

The hard work, you think, is over. You’ve labored into many late nights writing your book, struggled to literally make sure every “i” is dotted and every “t” crossed. Your book — your baby — is all grown up now; completed and ready to set the world on fire.

Then, the cold, hard truth slaps you in the face like a winter chill. Like the proverbial tree falling in the woods with no one around, your book isn’t going to make a sound — or even be known about by anyone — unless you get the word out. You could hire a publicist, but the often high-costs can be prohibitive, and perhaps most of your “book money” went to editing, design, layout and printing.

What to do?

Relax, set your ego aside, and set up a plan and course of action. Book promotion isn’t rocket science; but it does involve a lot of hard work, persistence and some added touches of creativity. Here are some basic yet invaluable pointers for the bold author who has decided to go it alone in the wild world of book promotion.

In the 21st century, it’s no longer optional to have a blog. All authors need to have a blog to promote their books. Before we go any further, let me expand on that a little bit. Every authors needs to have an active and relevant blog. That means there should be fresh and interesting content on the blog at least 2 – 4 times a week.

What is a blog?

Originally a blog was simply a way to communicate with friends. Four or five years ago I started a “blog” to post a novel I was working on and to share it with friends. Today blogs are a great way for authors to build a brand and establish a promotional platform for their books. You can use a blog to help potential readers get to know the author behind the book and to learn more about the books you write. Non-fiction authors can use a blog to share their writing style and it is a great way to build your credibility when you write about the topics in your books. Think of it as a cyber sales person who is representing you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. What does your cyber salesman say about you and your books?

Choose a Blog Platform

To get started, you can easily set up a free blog on www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com, each of these services offer free blogs. You click to “join” and the website is set up in a way that makes it very easy to set up a simple blog. Follow the directions and you can start blogging in minutes. Over time you can learn ways to fine tune your blog and to customize the layout or you can hire someone to set up a blog and to teach you the best ways to use that blog to promote.

As a book author, just reading the statistics on the sheer number of books published over the past few years illustrates the competition you face. It’s hard to stand out from the crowd, particularly if you’re the author of a midlist book whose publisher offers little promotion for your title. If you self-published, the entire promotional effort is up to you. This means that today’s authors must self-promote to ensure the success of their books.

One of the easiest, most lucrative ways to promote your book is through an online book promotion campaign. There are many reasons why online book promotion makes so much sense, but here are the three most important:

1. Online Book Promotion Reaches a Worldwide Audience

One of the major advantages of online book promotion is that its reach is worldwide. If you’re lucky, a signing in a local bookstore could attract 20 people. An online campaign has the potential of reaching anyone with an Internet connection. More than one billion people worldwide use the Internet and over 200 million of them have bought a book online. Many more have learned about a book online and purchased it in a local store.

As book coverage in newspapers and magazines shrinks, but hundreds of thousands of new books continue to be published a year, book publicists have an increasingly challenging job. These publicists use a mix of traditional outreach and social media in an attempt to not only spread the word about new books, but also build up the reputation of an author.

“What sets book publicity apart is that we’re promoting the books, but we’re also promoting the author’s career,” says Tracy van Straaten, VP of publicity for Scholastic Trade Book Publishing.

Traditional tactics of in-person author events, trade shows like BookExpo America, and SMTs are still popular with publishers, who mostly handle publicity in-house. Publishers get galleys, or advanced reader copies, to send to both print and online reviewers, long-lead media outlets, and other influencers within book publicity, looking to build buzz, get reviews, and set up author interviews.