Customer Reviews

How To Publish and Promote Online

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

First, most of the references in the book are out of date. Many times the author would list a website that seemed interesting and I would try to go to it only to get the "page not found" message. Second, the book is stuffed with "lists" of useless information that seem to be put there to take up space rather than to be of any use to the reader. Third, much of the book is writen by "guest authors" each of whom have a product to sell (their book, their newsletter, their service, etc.) and their articles are shamelessly self-promotional. When we're not reading guest articles, the author herself gives us a hard sell on her other publishing services, books, etc. You feel like you're just reading a never ending series of commercials! In the end, there's nothing in this book that you don't know already by common sense. It was a terrible mistake.

Over the past several months, I've read about a dozen books on electronic and self-publishing. Although I've still to find a truly excellent resource ("The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing" by Tom & Marilyn Ross is the best I've come across as of yet), "How to Publish and Promote Online" is one of the worst I've seen by far.

The general layout of the book is perhaps the biggest disappointment. Rather than having concrete, substantial chapters, arranged in a logical and progressive order, "How to Publish and Promote..." consists of 58 short essays. The text itself is only 246 pages, divided by 58 chapters...and, well, you do the math! Most of the "chapters" are written by "guest" authors. The old adage about "too many cooks in the kitchen" is applicable here - there are so many authors that the different writing styles become distracting. Even more problematic is their seeming lack of communication. No one appears to have read one another's essays, or to even have a vague idea of what topic the other authors are writing about. This holds true for the book's authors, Rose & Adair-Hoy, as well as the many guest authors. Thus, some of the information is mentioned several times and quickly becomes redundant, while other information is presented chaotically and in no clear order. The end result is that the flow of the book is choppy and erratic; the chapters aren't arranged in any obvious order, and no one section transitions smoothly into the next. What little information is included in the book is hard to find.

For example, a survey of radio and television media executives conducted by Paul J. Krupin is described in excruciating detail twice in the book: first in a chapter written by PAUL KRUPIN himself, and in a later chapter authored by both Rose & Adair-Hoy. Additionally, there are numerous instances where Rose and Adair-Hoy provide URLs for similar web sites in different chapters, when it really would have made more sense to group the links together for quick reference. It wasn't a big deal for me, since I was typing up notes from the book in my word processing program, and could reorganize the info any way I saw fit - but I'm sure I would have been much more aggravated had I actually shelled out money for this train wreck. By the way, I ended up with six pages of typed, double-spaced notes for a 254 page book; this should give readers come clue as to how much helpful information is actually included.

Adair-Hoy includes this "disclaimer" (her words, not mine) in her introductory chapter:

"Finally...my secret. I have never taken a formal writing course and I don't intend to. I write the way I talk."

Without meaning to, Adair-Hoy offers a succinct summary of the primary flaw in "How to Publish and Promote...". When writing a reference book, it just isn't acceptable for the authors to ramble on and on in a disorganized, roundabout manner, offering pieces of information here and there in a sort of word jumble. If writing simply involved "writing how you talk," then anyone could do it! Nonfiction/reference books such as these should be well-organized, informative, and packed with useful knowledge. They SHOULDN'T be thrown together piecemeal. Any one of these 58 essays is acceptable on its own, in a `zine or newsletter, perhaps - but lumped together under the guise of a "how-to" book, they simply don't cut it.

If you really must read this book, check it out of your local library before purchasing it - I guarantee you'll thank me for saving you $10+. Then put the Ross' "The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing" or (if you're just interested in marketing ideas for your book) their "Jump Start Your Book Sales" on hold. Their writing style can be somewhat grating, but they offer a ton of useful information - and, better yet, their guides are actually organized into REAL CHAPTERS!

If you're a writer or e-book author, beginner or advanced--and if your basic question is: "How can you make money selling your written material online?"--then this book provides a lot of answers for you. Most of the ebooks and information out there talk about what ebooks are, or how to create them. This book talks about all those and more...

While there are many topics covered, I chose to focus more on the useful marketing and promotion info found in this book. For example, it includes links to places that help you market your ebook.

And that's the key: Your ebook is worthless unless you can market it and get the word out to your paying customers that your product even exists. Here are some topics that I liked:

- How to post audio clips of you reading from your own books.
- 6 popular online promotional tactics...that didn't work (Learn from their mistakes, so you make better use of your time. )
- 6 surefire ways to write new releases that get published.
- 21 places to send your book-related press releases and announcements online.
- Sample telephone pitch to the Media, plus 37 responses and insightful tips from them.
- 22 sites that host author chats.
- How to get publicity via discussion lists
- 10 places to find Discussion Lists.
- 9 electronic newsletter promos you can send your sample chapters to.
- 6 Ongoing Publicity Campaign Tactics.
- 9 places where you can advertise cost-effectively.
- 5 case studies of authors who used the "FREE" approach to boost book sales.
- And a lot more.

Bottomline: Get the book if you need brushing up on how to market your publications online, or if you want to gain insight on what worked for someone who reportedly earns $5,000 a month in ebook sales alone.

I have read a lot about publishing, self publishing and promoting lately, but though many books devote a chapter or so to online efforts, I was looking forward to reading about online publishing and promoting in more detail. I was thoroughly disappointed by this book. It is not a comprehensive manual, but a series of (VERY) short essays, most of them not going beyond the obvious. For example, there is a section on using public speaking to promote yourself and your book. It sites just one website as the ultimate source to look at for speaking opportunities-- shawguides.com-- and while I'm sure this is a fine site, it is not applicable to the vast majority of writers out there. It is a shame the authors didn't take the time to do any further research to make the book more widely relevant, or to provide real resources on many of the topics they address.
If you are a total, and I mean total novice to computers and the internet-- for example, if you don't know much about word processing programs or what a newsgroup is-- this book may be helpful to you. But if you come into this with any prior knowledge whatsoever, no matter how basic, you may find this book a complete waste of money.

M.J. Rose and Angela Adair-Hoy know how to promote. They were sick of people cornering them in public and e-mail about how to "do it", so they wrote a book about it. All you need to know about publishing, promoting, where to target and who to contact is included in this useful book. Tips and advice are offered by over twenty e and print authors. The main thing to remember is that you will probabally work harder on the promoting piece than the actually writing of your actual book. The experts all got to where they are by working on these tips, using their time and effort, and not giving up. The thought alone depresses me, but there is a wealth of info found in How to Publish and Promote Online.

After two years of promoting my first book using primarily offline tactics, this book opened up a broader market for my less than new title. Some of the articles sounded more self-promotional than reader-supportive, but I also came away with about a dozen ideas to apply to my online promotion of my self-published book (How To Make Your Business Run Without You) and will become part of my promotion of future books. As with many of the comments already stated, many of the site links no longer exist, yet this is not due to author neglect but to the speed of change on the internet. It would have been nice for the authors to list a link of their own that had updated resource information. Still -- for my [money], this was a good buy.

This book is inspirational in the sense that it gives frustrated writers, like yours truly, a glimmer of hope for the future. According to the authors, the sheer number of manuscripts being presented to traditional publishers and bookstores makes publication for aspiring writers who lack celebrity status a long shot. The authors are also recognized experts/pioneers in the field of e-book production and marketing, and make a valid point that being a successful writer involves more than just writing a good book, it also means learning the marketing ropes.

This book has helped me identify a strategy to use to market my upcoming children's book, "Abby and the Bicycle Caper," which I anticipate having available on Amazon by January 2004. Using the authors' ideas, I have laid out a marketing plan encompassing e-mail, newsgroups, and search engine promotions, in addition to several other ideas. Whether it works out or not, this book has helped me learn a lot about the business of self-publishing, which I consider a good return on my purchase/investment.

If you are interestedin publishing as a means towards achieivng an income or wealth, you may also want to read "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill and "The 17 Principles of Creating Wealth" by Phillip Collinsworth.

The authors put together a collection of their own essays and of essays of other folks who have self-published on line, using publish on demand, or done a traditional off line self-published book. This book has lots of information, and includes numerous citations to other books, and, particularly helpfully, internet URLs where new information and answers to frequently asked questions can be gleaned.

The emphasis here is on how to achieve some commercial success for your book, including good advice on inexpensive and free ways to promote your work on line. This is not a "get rich publishing books" throwaway. This is a solid effort at an overview of how to really publish your own material with commercial success.

I found the work imperfect in two ways. My own mode of self-publishing--using inexpensive specialty chapbooks sold in on line auctions, is not covered. In addition, the work is more geared to the commercial author than to the author of poetry or specialty fiction who just wants to break even and be read. Still, this is a good book. It offers interesting info, like pamphleteer Paulette Ensign's story of figuring out how to make money in 16 page booklets. It's nice to hear this sort of thing expressed in real world terms, rather than in "how I made a million" copy.

Dan Poynter's book on self-publishing once set the standard for traditional self-publishing guides, and its updated version is still a good work on the basics of dealing with printers, etc. But this book offers the reader a good bunch of good ideas, and I recommend it.

It just goes to show... yes, anyone can publish and sell a book, even if it's unorganized and full of repetitive, outdated, and technically incorrect/incomplete information (for example, why would anyone want to zip a PDF file--they're already compressed!). This book is a loose collection of articles; a few actually offer worthwhile information, but most are completely useless.

This guide to promoting and publishing your book online is entertaining but I felt let down. The whole book is not by the authors. There are way too many guest articles and most are useless. Some of M.J. Rose's opinions about what constitutes good writing turned me off. Quite a few of the internet links are out of date. Will this system work? Maybe. It worked for the authors but they wrote very specific types of books. I just wasn't convinced that this is really a viable way of selling my book.