A well written press release or article to lots of online services is a great idea, but look for those services that provide direct links to both your website and your book. You should be incorporating both in your articles and press releases as well. BiblioScribe.com does this automatically for you.

Once you enter the ISBNs of your books in your membership profile, they automatically are entered every time you submit a press release or an article to BiblioScribe.com. Your free BiblioScribe .com membership also creates a public profile page that has links to your books as well as your website, so even the membership by itself provides a boost to the number of links back to your site.

As you look to continue your quest for new ways to market your book at little to no financial costs, virtual social networking as well as actual human networking are the best venues. In human networks, your goal is to start a “buzz” campaign about your book in hopes that word of mouth marketing turns into sales. Virtual social networking can work the same way, but how can you measure the effect of your “word of mouse” campaign? The answer is Digg.com

You undoubtedly have seen many article submission and press release sites on the web, however, no good service, free or otherwise will succeed unless it is seen by users to be beneficial to them as well. Before posting your press release or publicity article to free posting sites, you should review the sites to make sure that they meet the following criteria:

1. Will your submitted article or press release translate into a quick sale, or at least a look at your book?

Many authors have their own websites under their own domain names to help promote their works. Those who do not may use other web-based tools such as Bookmarket.ning.com, MySpace, Face Book, or other social networking venues.

My question to authors is, “How’s your traffic?” Are you getting the visitors that would be interested in your books? The whole purpose of your website is to be one of, if not your primary marketing tools.

The first thing that ANY website must instill in visitors is a sense of credibility. I find it interesting the type of things people will put into their website that actually lessen the credibility. Much of it is design related, but it is also a balancing act.

There are a lot of writers, authors, publishers, and marketers like myself that offer interesting advise on free or at least low-cost book marketng. Many can be found in excellent books like those from John Kremer, Carolyn Howard-Johnson, and Steve Weber. I also think that there also may be some overlooked things that can be done to generate links, both human and virtual, back to your book.

Maximize exposure on Amazon.com (and .ca, .co.uk, .fr, .jp, .de)

There are programs on Amazon that may boost an author’s book sales. Check out Amazon Connect at http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=15700651.