Free Marketing Book for Writers from Biffmitchell.com

    /24-7PressRelease.com/ - January 3, 2005 - "For most writers, writing the book is the easy part," said author Biff Mitchell. "The hard part is selling it, and that's what eMarketing Tools for Writers is all about."

Mr. Mitchell, author of several ebooks and print-on-demand (POD) books, including the best-selling ebook The War Bug (Double Dragon Publishing, 2004), has spent the last seven years using the Internet to market his books, both successfully and unsuccessfully.

"The Internet is a big place with a lot of people screaming for attention," said Mr. Mitchell. "It's hard to get noticed through all the noise, but it's possible. It takes time, energy and creativity, but mostly it takes persistence."

"I sent over a hundred thousand emails to book stores, libraries and other places to promote my first novel, Heavy Load," said Mr. Mitchell. "I doubt those emails generated a single sale.

"After publication of my second novel, Team Player," said Mr. Mitchell, "I created a web site for my books and offered some free short story downloads to attract visitors. Again, nothing happened."

"But as I learned more about the Internet and its marketing potential," said Mr. Mitchell, "I started to have increasing success. I learned about things like online directories where I could get my books listed free. I found web sites that would allow me to set up a free or inexpensive page with information about my books - where I could even include cover art. I joined forums and writers' groups where other writers could read my works and build awareness of my books. I discovered media release sites where I could announce my books to thousands of readers and media outlets free of charge."

"Sales of my books began to climb," said Mr. Mitchell. "But it took a lot of time and effort. In eMarketing Tools for Writers, I present a variety of these tools, explain how they can be used to market books, and provide links to further resources on each tool."

eMarketing Tools for Writers covers topics such as building an author web site, writing effective media releases, creating blogs and RSS feeds, and using forums, newsgroups and author/reader web sites to announce books.

"I see this as a living document," said Mr. Mitchell. "As I learn more, and as I receive information from other writers, I'll update the book and continue to make it available as a free download."

Recently, Mr. Mitchell attracted international attention by running an auction at eBay in which he auctioned off the right to be a murder victim in one of his novels. To build awareness of the print release of his novel The War Bug, he's running a contest in which people read the ebook version of the novel and submit a review to the publisher's web site. A blurb from the best review will appear on the cover of the book along with a picture of the reviewer.

"Writers have to look at what's available on the Internet and then use their imagination," said Mr. Mitchell. "The Internet can be a powerful marketing tool, but writers have to put aside time to experiment with what works best for them. Plus, they have to use just as much creativity in their marketing as they did in writing their books, maybe even a little more."

Biff Mitchell is the author of several novels, a volume of short stories, and two volumes of poetry. His satirical cyber-thriller The War Bug (Double Dragon Publishing) will be available in bookstores in June 2005. eMarketing Tools for Writers and several other ebooks are available as free downloads at http://www.biffmitchell.com.

Biffmitchell.com is the web site of author Biff Mitchell. His novels are published through Double Dragon Publishing, Echelon Press, CyberRead, and eBookAd. Free ebooks containing his short fiction and poetry are available on his web site and at Memoware.com.

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