The Best Way to Market Using Your Index

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You’ll see a print book that includes 124 online articles about wilderness skills. These are essays from the web site, PrimitiveWays™.  This site goes “right for the jugular” on behalf of its book. With only a cover photo and a brief sales announcement, PrimitiveWays™ invites the reader to step right into their index for a look around!

As the publisher tells you on their sales page, their “index link” actually takes you to their table of contents, a list of titles for the 124 essays inside. Below that you’ll find an alphabetical “names index” on this web page too. Their “names index” lists in alphabetical order the authors of the 124 essays in their book.

For a collection of essays like this one, the table of contents along with the author index provides all the reader needs to decide whether or not to buy the book. You, however, will most likely want to use your subject index to market your book online.

Every book needs a page of its own

In my opinion, no matter how you plan to sell your book, every serious self-published book needs a search-engine-optimized web page of its own. This can be a whole site devoted just to your book, or a page on your professional services site.

One of the chief reasons to have your own page is to capture information about people who are interested in your book. A well-designed web site with free-stuff incentives gets people to sign up with their names and email addresses. You’ll need this mailing list for your “keep in touch” marketing campaign for your book. That can include a newsletter or periodic announcements of new products, services, or events.

And when you publish another book, you’ll have a list of prospects who will be likely to buy it.

There are many other things you can do with your own web page for your book. You can sell your book through it. You can link to online sellers of your book, such as Amazon or iTunes or smaller specialty book distribution sites. You can even create a widget to collect affiliate fees from Amazon for sales of your book on Amazon.

The best way to market using your index is to put a .pdf of it up on your web site. Include a cover shot of your book too. Be sure there’s a “Review Copies” button on the navigation bar of your site. This page will be where book reviewers can contact you about reviewing your book. Think about adding a video “book trailer” or podcast to your site too! There are no end of ways to promote your book online if you have your own web site! (I recommend an excellent web designer, strategist, and marketer, Susan Pomeroy, susan@creatingwebsuccess.com.) Doing your own web site and marketing? See Susan’s blog for great tips!