Black Pearls / Plugging Your Book Online

This Memorial Day weekend finds me working hard to finish up the edits to Black Pearls. One of my readers has pointed out a few places where the manuscript needs tweaking. None of them serious, but they are time-consuming.

The kids and I were supposed to be going out to Long Island to visit a friend today, Saturday, but he had to cancel. That's just as well. We have a mountain of work to do. We're expecting a friend from Europe to arrive on Wednesday and the house is nowhere near ready to receive him.

I also have to finish editing a manuscript that I hoped would be ready on the 31st, but probably won't be.

Last, but not least, I have to get a move on with the SAW Project. I'd like to post a new story tomorrow night. It occurred to me that while I can grind out a story a week, that story might not be ready for posting at the end of that week. So I've decided to post previous stories while the new stories germinate and mature. In other words, I'll be writing them and setting them aside for at least one week to cool. That'll give me time to take another look at them and do any rewrites or revisions that are necessary.

I'm also wondering whether to write separately for Amazon Shorts. Amazon requires six months of exclusivity on a story. So I'd have to wait six months before using anything I write for the Big A. I guess that's OK.

In the meantime, I found this great online idea bank for plugging your book online, and guess what? It's called Plug Your Book Online. Author and entrepreneur Steve Weber has actually posted his entire book online for free. If you get tired of reading it online, you can also buy a copy.

I really like his ideas, not only about online marketing, but about posting his entire book for free. So many authors are worried about readers being able to see too much of their books online. Realistically, of course, when readers walk into a bookstore they have the whole book in their hands. They can plunk down in a corner and read the entire thing if they want to. Some do, but most don't. What does happen is that they get so hooked that when the time comes for them to leave they buy the book and take it with them. So having the entire book available has actually helped with the sale.

Of course, in the book store scenario, the reader is holding a physical copy of the book. Physical possession is in and of itself a powerful psychological persuader. The fact that a digital book in only on the reader's computer screen puts it at a disadvantage. However, one could argue that this very disadvantage makes it even more incumbent upon the author to use whatever other persuasive techniques are at his or her disposal, including making the entire text of the book available, in one manner or another.

(Obviously, Amazon feels this way. Hence it's online reader. I can't tell you how many hours I've spent on the Internet, folks, looking for similar software that would allow me to put text online, that would allow a reader to search the book, randomly choose pages to read, etc. So far, I haven't found any.)

I'm not sure I'm yet ready to publish my entire book online in one piece. However, I do think I'll be serializing it. I'm about ready to start doing that, too. Just these last edits and then there'll be an online launch.

Back to Steve Weber for a moment. Because the Internet and the world of online marketing is developing so rapidly, he also has a blog that presents new ideas or new spins on older ideas. It's worth checking out. Go to Steve Weber.com.

For those of us who are also thinking about selling books, i.e. opening up an online bookstore or selling books from the home, he's also got a dedicated site. View it by clicking here.