The Book Stacks

Hello everyone! I have a special guest here on The Book Stacks today. Deborah Woehr has been kind enough to stop by and speak her mind. Please welcome her to the site and check in at Fiction Scribe where I will be interviewing her.

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I was still a few years from finishing Prosperity when I realized something very important: marketing. How was I going to let my prospective readers know about my book? This question sent me on another quest for book marketing. I bought a handful of books on the subject, but still had only the foggiest clue as to how I was going to reach people.

Then I discovered blogging in 2004 and instantly fell in love with this technology. I didn’t have to rely on email, and I no longer had to tread carefully on forums. Blogs are the perfect platform for writers not only to buzz about their upcoming books, but to build relationships with their readers. I set up my account with Blogger, posted a few articles, and waited for the comments to come. When they didn’t I became frustrated.

This sent me on another Internet search, this time for blogging. I felt like I had hit a bonanza. There were other, better software programs than Blogger. I ditched my Blogger account, paid for a domain name (deborahwoehr.com/blog/) that would make it easy for people to find me, and signed up with an account with Blog Explosion. The last move turned out to be my best because I began receiving comments on a regular basis from repeat visitors, who eventually became friends.

While blogging is still a popular networking tool, social sites such as MySpace and Ning are booming. Podcast and video technology is growing. This year, I watched several book trailer companies launch. Many writers produced their own book trailers and posted them on YouTube.com. I don’t know how many sales came from their book trailers, but the exposure they got for their books was huge.

Thanks to the Internet, the playing field for writers of all skill levels has opened wide. Today, you can build a huge following of loyal readers on a global scale that was nearly impossible twenty years ago, unless you had a sizable marketing budget. So many doors have opened up for writers, both in the publishing world and in freelance. As the technology continues to evolve, I see the Internet opening more doors for writers.

About the Author

Deborah Woehr is a writer, designer, and problogger who lives in San Jose, California with her husband and two children. She earned her A.S. in Computer Graphics in 1993 and began writing in 1997, publishing one short story and several articles. Currently, she is a freelance writer for Syntagma Media. In 2006, she edited and published the 2006 Writer’s Blog Anthology, a collection of essays and poems written by bloggers. Her novel, Prosperity, will be available on Amazon in February. For more information about her books, please visit her website at DeborahWoehr.com