Customer Reviews

Smashwords Book Marketing Guide - How to Market any Book for Free (Smashwords Guides)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have just had my book "From The Inside Out" published to the Premium list on Smashwords and i could never have done it without the Style Guide (also free on Smashwords). This marketing guide is simple and easy to follow and the logical next step for anyone who wants to market their book worldwide; yup worldwide and its free! Writing a book simply that can be understood by all is not as easy as it sounds. Mark you have once again done a great job for all aspiring authors. Keep up the good work!!

The publisher of Smashwords does see the future and it's not with regular publishers but self publishing and epub. The only issue with this is that many epublished books are not edited and proof read. The second issue is that most epublished books are not marketed or advertised in anyway so most ebooks will sell very poorly and very few will do well. And the ones that do well will get picked up by the large publishers so they can put muscle behind it and then make even more money. The advice he gives in the book is excellent but basic but it's a step in the right direction that authors self published or not must do some marketing or they will not do as well as they should. And this goes without saying that marketing should not be "hard" but a soft approach. This book has helped me with marketing my own ebook but again, this is a marathon and not a sprint.

I haven't quite finished the book yet but my biggest beef with it is, that it's a commercial for his company. In itself that's not a bad thing and the book is free. But I'm new to all of this so I want information and after reading over and over in the book that Smashwords is the ONLY way to do.... other research showed that if I really want to have my book show all the photos and graphics that will be included in the hard copy version I'm better off to use LuLu.

I just like getting ALL the info before putting forth any effort and money. Smashwords may work well for distribution of a book with all text that can look the same whether it's in a Word doc or a pdf but I'm a photographer and graphic designer and being told I have to put my book in a Word doc for submission is where I stopped reading.

He offers other good online marketing ideas but tends to turn most of it back to his company. I'm glad it was a free book because I would've felt ripped off if I had to buy a commercial

Update to last review...
I added 2 more stars because I did end up using Smashwords for my ebook distribution. It came down to how many formats their system supported and it's pretty much all of them. Once I read the whole guide for formatting a Word doc for their smasher I was able to include all the photos I wanted and was satisfied with the quality of how they looked.

I first published my book, "Touched By The Hand Of God," on Smashwords. I am so grateful to Mark Coker and the folks at Smashwords for making my dream a reality. Mark gives every writer the opportunity to get published. This marketing guide has helped me in marketing my book. He suggests some very simple ideas, like using links in your email, Facebook page, Twitter page and blog to direct traffic to your book page; to more complicated strategies like creating video and audio for your book. Every author should study this guide and keep it handy. It has helped me generate new ideas to reach my audience.

A good basic guide, but nothing really earth shattering here. If you're a brand spanking new author you might find some of this helpful. If you've blogged and used Facebook, you're probably already doing what's described in this book. Not a bad basic reference if you're a newbie though, and also good because it was free.

This is a great list of tips. There's a bit of marketing fluff in here but it's a free book. Some of the items are very easy to do and literally only take a few seconds. Not enough time has passed to see if the suggestions work, but they are solid ideas.

A good book has no ending. - R.D. Cumming


Mark Coker, Founder and CEO of Smashwords, has written a simple and user-friendly primer for ebook and print writers on how to market their books at his publishing company or elsewhere. the Book Marketing Guide is free and is available in multiple reading formats.
Mark suggests 31 DYIs. each do-it-yourself is clearly defined and supported with examples and helpful links. everything is feasible and can be outright implemented. some may give immediate results and others may require time for the changes to be noticeable.
what's interesting about the tips is that they not only apply to writers but to bloggers as well. writers need help on how to increase their sales in a competitive market. bloggers too need tools on how to boost their site traffic.
i am not an author but i am a blogger. this guide has opened a can of fresh ideas on how to attract more readers to my blog and where to find them. in fact, right after reading the guide, i immediately implemented a couple of his tips and they worked for me.
as Mark puts it, the guide is a living document and he invites everyone to contribute to its future updates by providing feedback and by sharing free marketing and distribution tools that would be beneficial to all.
i recommend this free marketing guide to amateur and professional writers and bloggers. in fact, i recommend this to anyone who does marketing and wants to see positive results - whether they be short or long-term ones.

Every guide Smashwords puts out is top of the line. If you want to know how it's done, explained clearly, simply and thoroughly, you can't do better than this.

Some might think this was written to push his own barrow. But there are helpful links and hints that make this book worth skimming through. It's free for goodness sake - so what have you got to lose, other than an hour of your time (I admit I just skimmed through it. It's well-ordered and clearly set out so you can zero in quickly on what you are interested in).

I have ideas about doing a book on cars. I wanted to explore the do it your self publishing thing. This helped by putting me off the idea.
It's a great little freebee.