How to Use a Blog to Sell Your eBook

One of the questionsI am frequently asked is How Do I Promote My eBook?. There are lots ofanswers to this question, but the most important aspect is that you must acentralized hub for your promotion efforts. This hub is usually a blog or website that links into your other promotional tools, like Facebook and Twitter.

12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:auto; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:auto; mso-para-margin-left:0in; text-align:justify; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;

12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:auto; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:auto; mso-para-margin-left:0in; text-align:justify; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;

I have just finishedputting up an actual working site and eBook that demonstrate many of thetechniques I that I discuss in my Making Money Series Video Training Titles andeBook Training Titles. The web site is used for advertising the eBook,interacting with fans, announcing upcoming events, and other promotional tasks.

You can find linksfor the web site and ebook in the authors resource at the end of this article.Take a look at the web site so that you can follow along with this discussionof the techniques used.

The web site isdesigned using a free Blogger account on Google so the only real cost for theweb site is about $10 per year for the domain name. Speaking of Domain Namesyou will notice that the blog is hosted on its own domain instead of showingthe standard Blogger account URL, that is fairly easy to do using instructionsfrom Blogger, especially if you are hosting your domain name on Go Daddy,Blogger has a simple link to set up the forwarding automatically. You can alsobuy a domain name right through Blogger and have the forwarding set upautomatically. If your domain name is hosted somewhere else there are easy tofollow instructions on Blogger for that as well.

The first thing youwill see on deadofnighttales.com is the look and feel, this is set up using astandard template from Blogger with a few customizations for the type style andcolor. Next you will see 3 tabs, Home, Sign-Up, and Books. Blogger makes iteasy to create specialty pages for your blog. The Home page is a standard blogpage with all of the nice blog features, auto date inclusion, archiving of pastposts, ability to set up favorite links, etc. One of the reasons to use a blog asa web site is that they are so easy to set up using the supplied templates, youcan get a web site up and running in a week or less with no trouble. Once youhave gone through the steps you could actually set up a Blog in an afternoon, Ihave done several of these to promote individual titles or topics.

The tabs are specialpages that contain static information, more like a traditional web site. Astandard blog will have a list of posts with the most current post at the top,and the rest below or included in the archive. But if you want some informationalways readily available then adding in additional pages is the way to go. TheSign-Up page contains basic instructions on using the email sign-up form on theright, along with pointing out the Sharing buttons and links. This page isbasically for people who are new to blogging. Most experienced users will havealready spotted these links, but it doesn't hurt to put in some instructions aswell, just in case.

Blogger allows you tocustomize the blog by adding in what they call Gadgets. On the right side ofthe blog you will see several of these added Gadgets. The top Gadget containsshare links for Facebook and Twitter. I put these in basically as ademonstration. Blogger automatically puts in Share buttons at the bottom ofeach post as well.

Below the Share ItGadget is an Amazon Affiliate box, in this case pointing to the eBook that isbeing showcased on the Blog. To add one of these you need an Amazon Affiliateaccount, then you can simply do a search for the title on Amazon using theAmazon ASIN number. Set this up as a box using your Amazon Affiliate account andAmazon does the rest. You can sign up as an Amazon Affiliate using the link atthe bottom of the Amazon home page titled Become an Affiliate. There is nocost to join Amazon Affiliates.

You then grab theHTML code supplied by Amazon and put that onto your blog. In this instance Iset up a HTML Gadget (used to hold basic HTML or text) and pasted in the HTMLfrom Amazon. Amazon then serves the ad directly from their servers. By defaultthe ad aligned itself to the left side of the Gadget area, but by putting a Divtag around the Amazon code (in the HTML Gadget) I was able to put in analign="center" attribute in the Div tag and aligned the ad to thecenter of the Gadget area. If you click on this ad you will see how it takesyou to the correct page on Amazon and opens that page in a new window so thatyou don't lose the Blog (don't worry, it won't cause an automated purchase, itjust takes you to Amazon).

Next up is the boxlabeled "New Releases & Signings". This is placed into anotherHTML Gadget. The code for this is from AWeber and links back to an AWeberaccount set up for this blog. The whole thing is set up over on AWeber and thenthe code is simply pasted into the HTML Gadget just like we did with the Amazoncode. In this case I didn't need to center the box as it already displayedcorrectly. If you enter in your name and email address you can see how theAWeber form works, you will be taken to a confirmation page, plus you will geta confirmation email. If you confirm through the email link you will then be takento the blog's Book page. The confirmation page opens in a new window so youwill not lose the Blog page.

Below that are somelinks that are put in by default by Blogger, a button to join the site usingGoogle Friend Connect, an About Me link, a Favorite Links section that isanother Blogger Gadget, followed by the Blog Archive.

Back to the top, theBooks tab is a separate page put into the blog using Blogger's tools. In thiscase it contains basic information about the eBook including a picture, a linkto purchase the eBook (right now at only .99, or you can read it for free ifyou are an Amazon Prime member). Plus the description of the book that is alsoused in the Amazon listing.

The eBook itself is acollection of 4 timeless old style ghost stories (no blood and guts, nozombies, no vampires, just good old fashioned ghostly chills), and uses many ofmy formatting techniques that I have talked about in my eBook Training Titlesand discussed at length in my article on eBook formatting (available for freeat howtogurus.com). The eBook stories were first written in Microsoft Word,then saved as HTML and transferred to Dreamweaver for setting up the eBook. AllWord formatting was removed and new formatting put in as required. The eBookwas then converted from the HTML to the Mobi format for use on Kindle using aprogram named Calibre.

The cover of the bookwas uploaded as a separate file to keep the eBook clean for Kindle use and alsoto be used as the thumbnail in the Amazon Kindle listing page. The coverpicture is sized at 600x900 and saved asa jpg file at 72ppi. This size fits well in all Kindle devices. The image is incolor for use on the Kindle Fire, but was checked to make sure it looks good inblack and white for the other Kindle devices.

The Title Page hastext that was sized using the [h2] tag with an align="center"attribute added to the tag, like this: [h2 align="center]Title ofBook[/h2]. The image below the title is put in a regular paragraph tag with thecenter align attribute and is based on the cover. I simply removed the text andconverted the image to a sepia tone to match the rest of the images in thebook. The author attribute is again inside of a h2 tag. Between this page andthe next page are several blank paragraph tags to get the spacing correctfollowed by a page break tag to force the next page onto a new page [mbp:pagebreak /]. I have found thatif there is not enough content on a page the Kindle will ignore a page breakand merge two pages together, so I added in the blank paragraphs to stop thatbehavior and make the page break work correctly.

The next page is theCopyright Page, a very important page to include and get right. Notice thatthere are separate copyright and printing notices for the different shortstories and a copyright notice for the eBook as well. This page is separatedfrom the next page by another page break tag. Make sure that your copyright islisted correctly. The proper format is copyright (or symbol) Date Name.

Like this: copyright2012 George Peirson

The name has to bethe name of an actual person or a corporation (which is considered anindividual by the US Govt). If you leave off the name, or put in the name of abusiness, or DBA, or partnership, etc. it will not be a legal copyright notice.I see this mistake all the time.

The next page thatcomes up is the Index (table of contents). This contains standard anchor tagstyle links to the different stories in the eBook. I didn't use the wordsChapter or Table of Contents so the Calibre program and the Kindle properlyidentify this list and use it in the Kindle TOC tool correctly. If you open upthe Kindle Tools you will see that the links are referenced correctly. Thispage again is separated from the next by a page break tag.

Next up is theForward to the book. The text in "Forward" is actually an imagecreated in Photoshop. Kindle is rather limited on text styles so if you want afancier type face you will have to create it as a picture. The quote usesstandard italics tags and block quotes to properly set it on the page. Thespacing between the paragraphs is created using break tags instead of paragraphtags for more control. The indent at the beginning of each paragraph is createdwith 9 non-breaking spaces in the HTML code. The rest of the text in the bookfollows this same basic format. The forward and the rest of the stories areseparated by page break tags so that they all start correctly on new pages.

Each short storybegins with the Title created as a graphic in Photoshop followed by a picturethat was also set up in Photoshop. All images in the eBook have been given thesame sepia tone settings and heights for a consistent look. At the end of eachshort story is a small picture again formatted to match the rest plus anotherpage break tag. The rest of the stories follow this format.

After the shortstories is a Biographical Notes section, again the title is an image. At thebottom of the Biography are links that lead back to the Amazon sales page, theemail sign up page on the blog, a link to the main blog page, and links forFacebook, Twitter, and Google+. All of these are set up as standard web pagestyle links when the eBook was created as HTML in Dreamweaver.

The Table of Contentsat the end of the book was generated by the Kindle and matches the TOC in theKindle Tools.

So there you go, anicely set up eBook with a matching marketing system based on free Bloggingtools from Google. Below are the links for the Blog/Web Site and eBook: