Book Review: Smashwords Book Marketing Guide

Smashwords Book Marketing Guide by Mark Coker

Summary:
This free marketing primer provides authors actionable advice on how to market their books on Smashwords. It starts with an overview of how Smashwords helps promote your book, and then provides a series simple do-it-yourself marketing tips. The book is useful to all authors, even those who don't yet publish on Smashwords. Updated October 23, 2009.

My Thoughts:
This is a great free and easy to read book about marketing your book written by Smashwords founder, Mark Coker. I have yet to publish my book, but am doing so soon, so am doing research to help with the marketing. Coker's book has lots of great tips, all of them free, about how to market your book.

The first half of the book gives a bit of a history of self publishing and outlines what Smashwords does, how books are distributed. I have seen a lot of complaints that this book is just a big advertizement for Smashwords, but I enjoyed learning more about what they do -- and it is a free book put out by Smashwords. Also, don't read that part of the book if you don't like it.

Next, Coker explains about book marketing and social media, how hyperlinks work, building a platform, and how authors can help each other. This was a useful overview, especially for someone like me who is diving right in and trying to understand how it all works.

Finally, there are 41 free marketing tips. You can pick and choose what to do and what will work for you. Some are easy, like updating your email signature, and some are more involved like, publish more than one book. This is a great check list of things to do, compiled in an easy list with clear instructions on how to do them and why they are a good idea.

Overall, I got a lot out of this book -- and it gets the juices going for how to market, something I'm not familiar with at all. I appreciate Coker putting this book out and especially that it is free. I didn't always agree with his advice, but it gave me a place to start and lots to think about.

If you are interested in downloading a copy of the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide, click on the link.

For those of you who have self published or are in the process, what books and resources have been helpful for you? Which would you recommend?